Goodwill and better friendships

[Smoke Teff]

I will try to follow along and contribute. If there has been yet some clear delineation of when the thing kicks off, as all as some semblance of a pace or organization it aspires to follow, I haven’t seen it. Not that we need those things. 

A friend recently read it for the first time and said it should be required reading for all California natives, of which he is one. 

> On Apr 15, 2020, at 2:55 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Mr. Smallwood, (can I call you Raphael?)---
> 
> You have won me over and let's do it. All, jump in and line up.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 12:25 AM Raphael Saltwood <
>> PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 
>> ————-
>> 
>> 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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