Goodwill and better friendships

[Mark Thibodeau]

Very intriguing exchange, folks.

I'll be watching!

Now, to dig up my copy of Vineland...

YOPJ

On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 10:17 AM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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