Bob's 2020 book on Trump — the second part of his Trump work, after the 2017 tech-body pamphlet — and the text the dialogues read line by line from dialogue 13 onward. Its title is unstable by design, "what we" and "what you" both appearing on the cover, and Bob uses the slash when he says it aloud. The reading method is fixed early: the book is worked through the Tiny Note Chart rather than on its own, so each page is an occasion for the chart. Start at dialogue 13, where the reading begins.
Across the dialogues
Becomes the series' running text — after twelve sessions on the charts, the book is opened and the reading that occupies the next forty dialogues begins
Bob cannot retrieve his own title and Cameron supplies it, which opens the forty-session reading on a note of comic distance from the text — the author is the least fluent person in the room about it.
"What We Didn't Know About Trump."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 13 (11 Feb 2021), 0:35
The correction preserves the slash rather than choosing a side, and the ambiguity is the point — the book is addressed to a reader it also counts itself among.
"What We slash You Didn't Know About Trump."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 13 (11 Feb 2021), 0:48
The method is stated outright — the book is not read on its own terms but through the chart, so the two artifacts interpret each other
The method is declared rather than discovered: the book is not the object of study but the occasion, and the chart is what is actually being expounded across the sessions that follow.
"And we're looking at my book through my Tiny Note Chart."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 15 (25 Feb 2021), 0:12
Read page by page deep into its second half, where its epigraphs turn out to be doing the argument — a 1973 Hydro-Québec interview carrying the weight at page 101
Thirty-eight sessions in, the book is being read at roughly two pages a session — a pace that turns a small book into a multi-year seminar and makes its epigraphs load-bearing.
"We're now at page 101 of my small book on What We Didn't Know About Trump, and there's a quote at the top."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 51 (23 Jun 2022), 0:15
The book's real content is its citations — an obscure utility-company magazine is where Bob goes for the McLuhan that carries the argument, which is why the reading takes years.
"and this is from a very rare, valuable interview in something called Forces Magazine, put out by Hydro-Quebec. And this was issue number 22 in 1973."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 51 (23 Jun 2022), 0:26
Connections
Bob's 2020 book on Trump — part two of his Trump work, after the 2017 tech-body pamphlet.
The second of Bob's two Trump texts; the 2017 pamphlet is the first.
The dialogues read the book through the chart, having spent the first twelve sessions on the chart itself.
Its subject, read as a media effect rather than a politician.