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Story Club: An Annoying and Tedious Place Full of Positive Comments

There's our t-shirt!

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This method of study, taking a small chunk of primary text and then digging deeply into the meaning and implications held within it, and doing it together with a bunch of people commenting around it in the margins of the primary text, feels sort of Talmudic. There's a Hebrew word, Chevrutah, which translates as the connection between study partners, or friendship, or companionship, and some might say that holiness is found in that connection.

If we accept that time is an illusion, and the current moment, the now, is infinite, then it becomes easier to be patient and go slowly with this method, and shift our focus to our connection with each other. We can also learn to be better readers and better writers, too. Things go in deeper that are lingered over longer. Thanks, George, for creating this delightful container for us.

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Howdy all, I'll, (as instructed) refrain from adding my comments about this story, which is new to to me, and just say that I'm going to make an effort to participate in the comments and not just lurk. Like many of us caught up in a love/hate/dependency relationship with the architecture of surveillance capitalism and the attention economy, my vows to "never read the comments" are informed by far too many precious hours spent, well, reading the comments, usually to the detriment of my mood and personal view of our society's short and long-term prospects.

Anyway, since everyone keeps saying this is such a positive place (and I believe them), I'll do my best to get over myself and contribute. A lesson I keep having to relearn is that the perceived risks of connection are almost always revealed to be unimportant, or even imaginary, after I've put myself out there. So hello again!

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Dec 14, 2021Liked by George Saunders

I'm often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of literature that exists and find myself racing through a book so I can read MORE to get caught up. I realize this defeats the purpose of reading quality literature. My FOMO just causes me miss what I'm trying not to miss! Hopefully these small chunk exercises will help me curb this habit.

George, I've read you practice Nyingma Buddhism. The teacher I follow is Anam Thubten and he is in this tradition. What you are saying about slowing down, noticing with more clarity, watching how our understanding and experience evolves, etc. are very familiar teachings. Thanks for the reminders! This is going to be (it already is!) a lot of fun and very helpful.

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This not reading of the whole story, and then not posting on this thread, is like an adult version of the marshmallow test. Much like the kid who puts the whole marshmallow in his mouth and then takes it out again, I walked over to my bookshelf, grabbed my copy of The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, found Cat in the Rain, noticed that I had underlined some stuff (which means that I must have read it in college, years ago) and then put it back, unread.

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Ah I love waking up to Story Club. I keep it tucked away to be pulled out as a reward for when I have finished my chores.

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Love this exercise. It immediately reminded me of a book I read 4 or 5 years ago: What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund. He says "reading is a story of pictures and picturing" and spends much of the book reflecting on the way we imagine characters and settings. Or don't, but think we do. A favorite statement of mine from the book: Words are effective not because of what they carry in them, but for their latent potential to unlock the accumulated experience of the reader. Words 'contain' meaning, but, more important, words potentiate meaning..."

As an example he introduces the word "river" and goes on to say that that single word "contains within it all rivers. . .but more important all my rivers." Which is maybe what makes stories magical. They have a geography, but also continuously remind readers of their own place/s in the world. Of their own idiosyncratic geographies.

Also, I'd be totally down for a t-shirt.

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founding

I'm totally there for the Story Club two-headed dog t-shirts.

It was interesting - I love how your next thoughts/questions about the two-headed dog were interior and philosophical (how does it work? who eats first? Divide self or shared experience?), whereas my first reaction was exterior (what are they going to do with these heads and who is going to be terrorised by them?). My instinct is to race to plot, but I like the idea of slowing down and thinking introspectively. Kind of like "The Falls" - you start with a guy that's walking along a river, and rather than ask where is he going? what will he see? what will happen to him on this walk? (my default writing mode), you ask: why is he walking? is he walking fast or slow? is he enjoying the walk?

I like how this gets us closer to character. And then, by understanding character, we can develop a resonant (rather than confected) plot.

So, yeah, sign me up for one of those t-shirts.

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I was, just now, looking around on YouTube for unreleased and alternate recordings from Radiohead and settled on a version of “Pyramid Song” slowed down 800%. It was playing as I read my Story Time email update where you describe the “…radical slowing down of the reading process, so that we can notice with more clarity how its meaning is accumulating and how our understanding of it is evolving.” Inspired by this synchronicity I was thinking of music when I read Hemingway here.

George, I believe it was a talk at Google after the publication of Tenth of December where you mentioned your struggles with a bout of “Hemingway Boner”.

I know what it’s like.

Here’s an interesting article about Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov’s two-headed dogs.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/vladimir-demikhov-two-headed-dog

Here’s Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” slowed 800%: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiKWfcy-Z70

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So excited about this — I loved the in depth look at “In the Cart” in A Swim in a Pond. I was thinking of maybe trying to write a story one page at a time as this post moves forward in a kind of reverse engineering that aims to achieve what Hemingway does in the same amount of space. Anything to get me writing…

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Finally, a use for one of the thousand notebooks littering my office!

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I'm working on the Two-Headed Dog concept (see my tiny sketch) and maybe a T-shirt with a Cat Swimming in a Pond in the Rain. Dogs and Cats, infinite possibilities. By the way, I'm thoroughly enjoying slowing down the reading process and studying stories on a granular level with such a master writer and teacher. This is a noble experiment--and so generous on your part.

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I love picturing the benevolent reader, one to respect but one who isn't trying to dodge our sure punches just for the sake of dodging.

I'm thinking about the role of the subconscious mind that I've heard you talk about, George, and how much of drafting comes from that place. And then I'm thinking about the P/N meter and this very deliberate, well, thinking, that doesn't seems like the subconscious mind at all. But maybe I'm creating a binary when there isn't a binary. Like, the P/N meter might be about listening to that subconscious mind to get to that sweet spot that addresses expectations but without hitting them so hard on the head that they have a concussion?

I do love these comments. And then, because my Internet time has conditioned me to fear the comments section, I get sheepish about leaving one. Which is the opposite, I suspect, of the mood being established here. Thank you, everyone!

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This is so fun! After leaving my MFA and having a monthly writers group with my buds from there I am woefully surrounded most days by people who give zero Fs about writing: the obsession du jour in Tick Tock and desperately ignoring what the Fed will do today seem popular. Is it okay to say zero Fs? Tshirt: story club gives zero Fs 💀

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With all these t-shirt ideas, I'm not even sure I care what's on it, just as long as there is, in fact, a Story Club t-shirt. I have never really had a chance to interact with someone in "real life" who had an interest in writing. T-shirt would serve as: a)an excellent participation trophy and b)a beacon to other writers out in the wild, who may be following this course.

Excellent post. I thoroughly enjoyed the similar exercise in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Think I even preferred the page by page breakdown more than the latter exercises that called for a reading of the entire story before your comments.

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The comments section was indeed a very rich and enriching experience.

A few people in an effort to "read all the comments", understood that some comments were actually begging a reaction. In some cased the reaction sparked a dialogue, a mindful dialogue such as we all wish would be the rule with more popular, mass social media.

Bravo!

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