Goodwill and better friendships

[Raphael Saltwood]

Mr Mark Kohut, p-list mainstay & much appreciated commentator, expatiated as excerpted in the following manner. Replies inline.


Smallwood,


- that'd be "Saltwood, purveyor of small topics": although the idea of Smallwood suggesting a "salty topics" read does hold some appeal. Everybody pick their favorite x-rated passages & go from there.


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I like your enthusiasm and your originality. I think it overtakes me with
my pedestrianism. I Know we've all
read Vineland at least once, but I do not think I could answer decently
into your list of questions until I had read it again
anew. Which I can't understand as a way for another group read.


- B-but it's a great thing, a pedestrian view. Rhizomic, non-linear, or at least no more linear than you want it to be, clumpy, low speed, variable involvement.

Topics that you don't have to know the whole book right away to pose, answer, and build upon.

Things that stuck in your mind from before.

Stopping for a coffee on the boulevard, smelling the flowers...


———

Mr Kohut went on thusly:

All I can see is From the Beginning again. Bringing what we think we know
or believe into new eyes focusing on every sentence
like we are reading in Braille. (in War & Peace, Tolstoy describes Prince
Andrew as starting to read something "only with his eyes"
until something grips him...and he slows and enters. )


- which is great, no question. Why do I want to do something different?

Also that is a great song, “From the beginning”

https://youtu.be/UtGjJVcrKQU


——————


Self-deprecatingly, Mark continued:

My unimaginativeness can only see you doing what we do here outside of a
group read. That is riffing on whatever hits us in and because
of one of P's books. A laudable thing for the Plist.


- well, if one person poses a bunch of small VL topics, answers a couple, and walks out, they'll think he or she is crazy, and they won't take him.

But if 2 people pose a bunch of small VL topics, answer a couple, comment on the other topics and walk out, they'll think they're bonded in an unusual way and they won't take either of them.

And if 3 - can you imagine 3 people posing a small finite number of small topics, answering  a couple others, commenting on still others, and interjecting some wacky theories or personal sharing, or intertextual matter of their own?

why, they may think it's a group read -

the love is strange, small and/or salty topics, pandemic, epizootic, Vineland read,

 and all ya gotta do to join it is to post a small topic, a response, a meander, or any combination (linked loosely or tightly to VL) the next time you get a notion.


—————-


With a (quite reasonably qualified) offer to host, he concludes:


So, let me ask again, I count you and two others, and Jerky as a
non-hosting contributor to something like a group read, is that correct?

As I have said before, I am not going to host one all
alone....again.......where no one responds.


- I love linear group reads.

If the liss/stpevgr really doesn't work for anyone else, (Bueller?) please count me in.

What say you, Mark?


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