High-Point Theory: A critical moment in a piece of art from which all understanding descends, as if rain from a roof.
In his rejected master’s thesis, Kurt Vonnegut argued that “stories have very simple shapes, ones that computers can understand.” Undeterred by the University of Chicago’s anthropology department, he would often enlist this analytical framework in public speeches to lampoon human confidence. In a similar fashion, I lean on repurposed mechanical engineering tools to physicalize story structures. Thus, the High-Point Theory.
A classic example of this technique comes from Vonnegut, himself, in Sirens of Titan. The 1959 effort that lit bestseller lists ablaze the following decade, began as a drunken party encouragement. One reveler’s inquiry into future novels inspired Vonnegut to steal away and frantically piece together a meditation on free will nestled amongst campy science fiction tropes and Vonnegut’s wit. We learn that the characters’ fates are fixed and that Tralfamadorians force humans, through the Universal Will to Become, to construct the Great Wall of China and Stonehenge as a way to send messages of operational updates. Vonnegut’s story-shape theory’s conclusion (“we don’t know enough about life to know what the good news is and what the bad news is”) abounds.
The High-Point of Sirens (which inspired the title template for my essays) comes after the characters recognize and accept the inability to control their lives. Malachi Constant concludes, “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Enjoy the people at your party.
As Camus imagined Sisyphus’s happiness as a way to live in revolt of the Absurd, Vonnegut imagined a path to meaning through those around to share time with, no matter how random the reason for their proximity. We (definitely I) can be frustrated by a perceived lack of agency over the events and fortunes of our lives. Yet that trapped feeling is irrelevant compared to the gift of being alive to experience anything at all. Paying attention to those lives intertwined with our own as a foil to powerlessness and seemingly arbitrary engagements. All understanding of this book descends from this line, the High-Point.
Other classic examples of High-Point Storytelling: Lady Bird (“Don’t you think they are maybe the same thing? Love and attention?”); Toy Story 2 (“Life’s only worth living if you’re being loved by a kid.”); Pieter de Hooch’s open doors.
Essays by Cameron 