Book Club meeting # 1
Jun. 7th, 2006 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrAs I suspected, Minnesota Nice ruled the day, and no one breathed a hint that they had any objection whatsoever to the book. I enjoyed a lovely evening and at the same time was deeply amused. Nancy said, though, that my opening remarks put to rest a number of the concerns that people might have had.
I find that people start seeing many more connections between the storylines if they have had a chance to reread, but in some groups I've visiting, maybe 40% of the readers do catch connections the first time through. In this group, virtually no one saw any of the major connections at all; i.e., no one saw what the 17th century equivalent of the bathhouse was (the graveyard) or what the 20th century equivalent of the nettle shirts was (the panels of the AIDS quilt). Very lowering--you want, after all, for the reader to make the connections without the author being there to explain--but they still seemed deeply interested in what I had to say. As I always do when I visit a book club discussing Swans, I brought a huge satchel of a large subset of the books I used for research. I think I brought out twenty or thirty of them or so, and passed them around, explaining how each was helpful. I showed some of my notes, my plot calendar (historical events in ink, fictional events in pencil), the photographs I'd collected of people that remined me of characters, and the artists sketches of possible covers. It is always a surprise to people how much work can be involved in writing a novel.
It will be interesting to compare how Friday's meeting goes.
I find that people start seeing many more connections between the storylines if they have had a chance to reread, but in some groups I've visiting, maybe 40% of the readers do catch connections the first time through. In this group, virtually no one saw any of the major connections at all; i.e., no one saw what the 17th century equivalent of the bathhouse was (the graveyard) or what the 20th century equivalent of the nettle shirts was (the panels of the AIDS quilt). Very lowering--you want, after all, for the reader to make the connections without the author being there to explain--but they still seemed deeply interested in what I had to say. As I always do when I visit a book club discussing Swans, I brought a huge satchel of a large subset of the books I used for research. I think I brought out twenty or thirty of them or so, and passed them around, explaining how each was helpful. I showed some of my notes, my plot calendar (historical events in ink, fictional events in pencil), the photographs I'd collected of people that remined me of characters, and the artists sketches of possible covers. It is always a surprise to people how much work can be involved in writing a novel.
It will be interesting to compare how Friday's meeting goes.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-08 10:05 am (UTC)Some readers just aren't good at that sort of analysis - I'm one of them. Always had a horrible time in English classes and needed other people's discussions to help me see connections and such. Once they were pointed out, I could take that ball and run with it, but, alas, I'm otherwise one of those people who just tends to read, unless something is so obvious it hits you over the head with a hammer. :P
I'm glad it went well overall, though!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-08 02:11 pm (UTC)I remember seeing a lot of the parallels the first time I read The Wild Swans a few years ago, but right now I'm in the middle of re-reading it for the first time since then, and it astonishes me how many more I'm spotting now that didn't even occur to me before. It's like fitting puzzle pieces together, and it makes the book seem even more clever and fascinating. I wasn't certain it was possible to love the book even more, but you've proven me wrong. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-08 04:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-09 07:30 pm (UTC)That kinda boggles me, altho I missed the graveyard/bathhouse first time around. Every time I reread that book, it has something new. I have recommended it to quite a few people.
What books did you use for research? Just curious....
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-09 09:00 pm (UTC)The key foundational work was Randy Shiltz's And the Band Played On, which told the history of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. Set up in chronological order, very helpful. I calendared the events from that book on charts, marking them with highlighter (blue for events in new york, pink for events in California, yellow for events involving the government, green for events overseas).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-09 09:05 pm (UTC)I'm going to donate a copy of Wild Swans to the library of the AIDS care center organization where I volunteer.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-13 04:04 am (UTC)