#KateBriggs24 Week 9
This Little Art, p. 195-206 and Sessions of Dec. 15, 1979, Jan. 5 and Jan. 12, 1980
Hello everyone! Kim and I are looking forward to our video call on Saturday, March 16th at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT / 7pm GMT. Everyone is welcome to join us, no matter how much of the reading you have or haven’t done. The meeting will be informal, a chance to chat with one another and share thoughts and impressions of our reading. Come join us!
Click here to join the meeting beginning at 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT / 7pm GMT.
If the meeting goes longer than an hour, then click here for the second part. We won’t get cut short this time!
Check out this lovely book stack belonging to Frances Evangelista with all those #KateBriggs24 books on the left! The books on the right are those she finished in February.
Schedule
Here’s our schedule for the upcoming week:
Resources and Links
Rebecca Cullen posted on the Week 7 reading over at her substack.
Kate Briggs’s novel The Long Form has been shortlisted for the U.S. Republic of Consciousness Prize!
Check out Kim’s website for resources and links.
From Isabella Streffen, photos of a pamphlet called Desire for the Haiku:
Discussion
From Rachel Malik. Here is a link to the essay “From Work to Text” that Rachel mentions. Link courtesy of Kim McNeil. I love this idea of walking with Barthes!
From Nicholas Greco:
From Meg. The Ruefle essay referenced here is “Hell’s Bells: Notes on Tone”:
From Liz McCausland. The New York Times article she mentions is here.
Slnieckar, making me smile:
From rpmoon:
And, finally, from Adam James Smith:
Thank you all for your company and your comments!
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The Sessions of Dec. 8 and 15, 1979, are so good! All the material on writing for its own sake vs. writing a particular thing; writing as the "middle voice," the thing that you do that also shapes who you are; the desire to have finished and the disappointment that inevitably comes with finishing; the digression on idleness and not writing and wou-wei; the "little exertions that life forces upon you over the course of the most ordinary day" (!); the boredom in not writing and also in writing; writing as a monument that is flattering but also embalming and therefore must be dismantled; "I'm worth more than what I write"; "I write to be loved: by a few, but from a distance." I mean, come on! This excellent book just keeps getting better and better.
I read just the first five pages of Barthes's Session of Jan. 5th, 1980 -- as the sessions get longer, I break them up over 2-3 days so I don't feel bogged down -- and I'm smiling at the "would-be writer" idea that he takes so seriously. As he should! His writing about wanting to write is SO interesting. But we have this stereotype of the person who fantasizes about writing and says they are going to write ("I'm going to retire and write my memoirs!"), and yet they never do, and that person is a little ridiculous. Barthes is not that, of course, as he DOES write, brilliantly, but lurking behind all his complex thoughts about wanting to write, for me, is the image of the ridiculous, unrealistic dreamer. And maybe he is a little of that?