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Surface Tensions: Searching for Sacred Connection in a Media-Saturated World
Nathan Roberts's book recounts his adventures in the new media jungle, blending personal experience with media theory, philosophy, literature, and theology to meditate on the question: How do we, and how should we, behave and believe in a media-saturated world?
Nathan's adventures span the American landscape. In a journey that moves from suburban California, to rural Texas, to downtown Manhattan and back again, his story explores the often maddening, sometimes heart-wrenching, power of today's media to create simultaneous presence and absence, as it reproduces (increasingly) powerful art and the uncanny echoes of other lives.
With humor and insight, Roberts's story calls us to conceive of media not only as a tangled postmodern phenomenon, a media jungle of befuddling proportions, but as a digital architecture that creates real meeting space where we can become ourselves, commune with others, and meet the God who created a world immediate, sensual, and oblique all at once, a world of surfaces illuminated by his presence.
Nathan's adventures span the American landscape. In a journey that moves from suburban California, to rural Texas, to downtown Manhattan and back again, his story explores the often maddening, sometimes heart-wrenching, power of today's media to create simultaneous presence and absence, as it reproduces (increasingly) powerful art and the uncanny echoes of other lives.
With humor and insight, Roberts's story calls us to conceive of media not only as a tangled postmodern phenomenon, a media jungle of befuddling proportions, but as a digital architecture that creates real meeting space where we can become ourselves, commune with others, and meet the God who created a world immediate, sensual, and oblique all at once, a world of surfaces illuminated by his presence.
218 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2016
11 people want to read
About the author
Nathan Roberts
1 book7 followersNathan Roberts is a PhD student in the Film and Visual Studies program at Harvard University and a creative nonfiction writer. As Alissa Wilkinson puts it in her foreword, Nathan's book Surface Tensions “works equally well as a small primer on media and a memoir of growing up in a thoroughly mediated age.”
Nathan is the co-creator of the film podcast Kinovision. His writing approaches the nexus of creative nonfiction, film studies, media theory, philosophy, literature, and theology. It has been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, TIME.com, 4:3, The High Calling on Patheos, and Prague Wandering. He lives in Cambridge, MA. He has previously lived in Southern California, Texas, New York, and Prague.
Nathan is the co-creator of the film podcast Kinovision. His writing approaches the nexus of creative nonfiction, film studies, media theory, philosophy, literature, and theology. It has been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, TIME.com, 4:3, The High Calling on Patheos, and Prague Wandering. He lives in Cambridge, MA. He has previously lived in Southern California, Texas, New York, and Prague.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 14, 2016
I realize that in writing this review I am completely biased, but I do not care, quite frankly. I know Nate and I am continually impressed by him and his work, just as I was with this memoir. What prompts a person in their 20s to write a memoir? How do they have enough "life experience" to even consider writing a memoir? In my opinion, through this book, Nathan proves that these questions are often unnecessary or invalid. The book is a meditation on life, his life, and the forces that have affected it thus far. It is full of grace, laughter, brilliance, vulnerability, and honesty. I can't think of anyone else who can quote Derrida (without making me squirm or flinch) and then make me laugh on the same page. Well done, Nate.
May 24, 2016
A media-saturated culture is a disorienting environment.
Here we are.
Sometimes we're having fun. Sometimes it’s crushingly depressing. Sometimes we're Raiding with our Guild or in the middle of the Tweetstorm and we feel like we're caught up in something bigger than ourselves and the sense of belonging is transcendent. Sometimes we're just alone despite the crowd, the light, and the noise. A lot of the time, for one reason or another, we can’t even.
So Nathan’s book is about that confusion, about being caught in the network that connects us to each other. Basically, by telling his story, he gives one answer to the question: how does this media-saturated environment shape us as people, and shape our relationships to others?
This thing was a pleasure to edit.* It's a memoir by a pastor’s kid that is primarily about what it feels like to be a person fully engaged in the world in the social media age. (Specifically, Nathan really, really loves movies.) It's thoughtful, and touches on a lot of different kinds of media—social media, yes, but also music, films, art, theater, podcasts, standup comedy etc. It deals a little bit with the difference between “Christian” and “secular” media, but it’s not dogmatic. It’s less about making arguments about what we should do, and more just about what it has been like to grow up today awash in SO MUCH media around us all the time. This isn’t really didactic. It’s not Nathan’s dissertation (though he’s studying media at Harvard). It's his story.
Nathan is really funny, so this is also a really funny book, and Nathan is an excellent writer, so on top of all of that, it’s beautifully, interestingly written (I mean, just wait until you seen how he uses semi-colons...).
There are awkward relationships with messy breakups, sibling rivalries , and lots of battles with authority figures (some of these even get resolved—which is not to be taken for granted!). I think readers will appreciate feeling like they’re having a long, deep, close conversation with a really smart friend who has watched a ton of shows, read a lot of books, made a lot of mistakes, learned from those mistakes, and who knows how to tell a funny story that hits you in the feels. That's my feeling, anyway.
*I edited this book and I'm really proud of the work that Nathan did here.
Here we are.
Sometimes we're having fun. Sometimes it’s crushingly depressing. Sometimes we're Raiding with our Guild or in the middle of the Tweetstorm and we feel like we're caught up in something bigger than ourselves and the sense of belonging is transcendent. Sometimes we're just alone despite the crowd, the light, and the noise. A lot of the time, for one reason or another, we can’t even.
So Nathan’s book is about that confusion, about being caught in the network that connects us to each other. Basically, by telling his story, he gives one answer to the question: how does this media-saturated environment shape us as people, and shape our relationships to others?
This thing was a pleasure to edit.* It's a memoir by a pastor’s kid that is primarily about what it feels like to be a person fully engaged in the world in the social media age. (Specifically, Nathan really, really loves movies.) It's thoughtful, and touches on a lot of different kinds of media—social media, yes, but also music, films, art, theater, podcasts, standup comedy etc. It deals a little bit with the difference between “Christian” and “secular” media, but it’s not dogmatic. It’s less about making arguments about what we should do, and more just about what it has been like to grow up today awash in SO MUCH media around us all the time. This isn’t really didactic. It’s not Nathan’s dissertation (though he’s studying media at Harvard). It's his story.
Nathan is really funny, so this is also a really funny book, and Nathan is an excellent writer, so on top of all of that, it’s beautifully, interestingly written (I mean, just wait until you seen how he uses semi-colons...).
There are awkward relationships with messy breakups, sibling rivalries , and lots of battles with authority figures (some of these even get resolved—which is not to be taken for granted!). I think readers will appreciate feeling like they’re having a long, deep, close conversation with a really smart friend who has watched a ton of shows, read a lot of books, made a lot of mistakes, learned from those mistakes, and who knows how to tell a funny story that hits you in the feels. That's my feeling, anyway.
*I edited this book and I'm really proud of the work that Nathan did here.
October 7, 2016
Nathan's words are nothing short of magical. He writes with a skilled voice I can only dream of. If you enjoy reading, and participate in social media of any kind (duh you do you're reading this), buy this book. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll have a grand time.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews