Discuss Pages: Reading Schedule

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    • CommentAuthoradmin
    • CommentTimeNov 21st 2008
     

    This thread is for discussions about Reading Schedule of the online edition of The Golden Notebook, and the readers' comments. Please show a courteous regard for the presence of other voices in the discussion. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments that do not adhere to this standard.

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    It would have helped greatly if this schedule had been decided on and printed at the beginning of the project, not 1/4th of the way into it. Several of us on the margins asked for a plan on the first day, so it's nice you listened to us --thanks! -- yet coming so late in the game it adds to the confusion of this site, and my doubts about any planning that went into it. You actually thought you could have a 6-week group to read a very difficult, emotionally-driven, psychologically dense 600-page book by one of the few woman who has won the Nobel Prize for literature, in the months after she won it, with all the issues of war, race, gender, suicide, madness, and writing packed into the GN, without a schedule and without planning? And you're getting paid? This is an insult to the busy professionals who are your readers. All university literature classes & small book groups plan well, and have a focus/thesis from which to approach the book. (University libraries have dozens of books on how to read Lessing, and reading guides for the GN which you could have easily tailored to this project.) Even Oprah plans and has outlines for the (much simpler, less controversial) books on her shows. You could have come up with a great statement, introduction and way of framing this book which would have helped readers immensely, and attracted more of us BEFORE the project started. Instead we get this schedule 10 days the 42-day project, accompanied by a few 'I'm bored', 'I don't get it' and 'What is a reader?' comments of the Readers. I'm thorougly insulted and pretty aghast at this project. Knowing how many devoted, intelligent, thoughtful & discplined readers exist in the world, who love Lessing or could read her for the first time with more depth and lively eloquence than these 7, and who are unable to find jobs in universities, publishing, or in any literary field, while the 7 of you are paid, has me absolutely flummoxed.
    • CommentAuthorTaryn
    • CommentTimeNov 21st 2008
     
    I can appreciate these frustrations and I'm glad someone voiced them -

    It's helpful to look at this as something other than a book group and to release some of the expectations that come from a familiarity with them. This project embraces aspects of an evolving participatory medium - most specifically transparency, immediacy, collaboration and experimentation. If it seems as though it suffers from a lack of structure, it might be because the appropriate structure needs to emerge from the activity and not that the activity needs to occur within a pre-defined framework. In that regard, premature decisions will stunt these efforts, and the arithmetic behind the conclusion that we are 1/4 of the way through is less accurate than it needs to be. I'm saying hang in there, marthaquest, and let's see what the Readers are able to do here that *can't* be done in a classroom or book group.

    One of the things I'll be looking for is how the Readers re-visit their own earlier commentary as they move through the text. Right now, it seems as though the discussion is happening linearly and tangentially ie: read some, type some, move back to the text and on to the next chunk, repeat.

    The online margins invite input in a way unlike paper margins do, and as a result we readers are privy to thoughts and ideas as they develop instead of just final and often times more polished ends. As I mentioned in a different discussion, we'll soon (if not now) be better served by a navigation method other than chronological page or time order. Where will the technology for that come from? This is good stuff!

    I am curious as to why I don't see more out-going links in the commentary. If you're going to talk about feminism, for example, if parts of the text remind you of something else, why not use the space and functionality to build the bridge to it and open this novel up to its own themes and implications? (I have my own answers to that question.)

    Also noteworthy and curious is why a writer given (theoretically) infinite space to build on an idea might limit her handling of the text to short responses and critiques. Expectations appropriate for a different medium or setting, maybe.

    Any.way. The Readers have so far provided a bunch to work with. If anyone's feeling lost I say "good!"

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