Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary
Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 18:14:27 CST
From:         franko <BAE03@TWNTKU10.BITNET>
Subject:      speed

Hi folks.....just back from a brief flight to the moon, actually a logging camp
in the pacific northwest were everyone was kind of "logged in".....i have a ver
very modest question to pose: Why havve people been talking (maybe no longer)
about "speed reading"? Could it possibly be traced back to a posting I posted
sometime in June (before disembarking for moon) in which i suggested that i my-
self can't read books very fast, especially philosophy (my main field) but also
things like joyce or laurence sterne in which, incredibly enough, i'm also in-
terested...(beckett's trilogy also extremely slow going, for me at least....am
i retarded? i keep going round & round, ie regressing indefinitely, when i read
it, as perhaps with ulysses & sterne & lots of phil & perhaps lots of fiction &
theoretical writing too...regressing is the demon or bogey man for speedreaders
no doubt...and yet....by another name its (re)thinking (about) what you've read
....) (sorry, i digress)....? Anyway, in that June posting or another just be-
fore or after it I had the poem "Librarians' Tea Party" (ring a Pavlovian bell?
) to/on which i was openly soliciting comments/criticisms...as also on my be-
lovved Ezra POUND and E. DICKINSON (I'd quoted some lines i liked, seeking com-
ments/responses...Also in one post I said Pound's supposed (well, pretty evi-
dent) "Fascism" & anti-Semitism has no connection to his (great) poetry itself-
-an opinion whgich i'm sure is shared by Hugh Kenner and other major Pound scho
lars....
    Anyway, the pt. is that if any responses came to these questions/issues/
lines back in late june or july i didn't ready them as i suddenly had to leave
for the usa & all that came in subsequently (unbeknownst to me) got erased...
Thus, tho it may seem absurd, or a bit egocentric, for me to be asking about
these "archival" matters now (is it possible to see the archives? i don't know
how, if it is)...but you can also see how i'd be curious: i was frustrated at
not being able to see possible responses that may have (but i realize proabalby
did not) come in.....And again, the key question: coould my talk in june about
slow reading being necessary/valuable, in fiction/poetry/theory/phil, havve
possibly influenced the recent discussion of speed-reading....? And if not,
might i be so bold as to ask, what did prompt the discussion of s-rreading?
Was there any recognizable trigger-phenomenon here? (My pt in june, you may re-
call: i'd rather spend time reading ulysses or whatever, or just really reading
it once for that matter, than 1st-time reading some....best-selling sci fi
 writer....or even obscure sci fi writer...(i suppose being obscure is more
 pc than being a best-seller?)....REREADING, yes, important don't you think?
 For really good/heavy books....and RETHINKING....(and rewriting...) With
 phil/theory, it's possible you only under-stand after reading it seeral times,
 and/or (esp with phil) each time you read the book you understand it in a
  new different way....(very interesting)...also with fiction & poesie,
          i should imagine..............best regards.......franko
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary