The RISM Guidelines

RISMProust is a meeting space for members of the Reading in Slow Motion Discussion Group. We meet every Sunday on Zoom. One group meets from 12:45-1:45 EST; the other meets from 2pm-3pm EST.

We’ll all be reading this edition:

It’s important that we all are reading the same edition so that we’re all referencing the same page numbers and working with the same translation.

We read 10 or so pages per week. (This means we often stop mid-page, mid-scene!)

We never read ahead. (And those who have read the book before never discuss what the others have yet to read.)

Zoom is the only technology we use while we’re meeting.

Outside the meeting time, we re-read; we research matters that come up in the reading that we are curious about; we rethink; and then we reconvene.

Here’s a brief three page pdf that lays out the guidelines for conducting our discussions: Getting Started.

And for those interested in a fuller explanation of the rationale for reading in slow motion, here’s a pdf of an article I wrote reflecting on “A Decade of Reading in Slow Motion.“

This piece that Annie and I co-authored, “On Reading in Slow Motion,” comes from the third edition of our collection of essays, Habits for the Creative Mind. In it, we discuss a RISM course I taught that focused on Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby.

“On Joining the Conversation,” also from Habits, provides our rationale for pursuing open-ended, connection-driven discussions focussed on the details of creative works.

Finally, “On Creative Reading,” also from Habits, provides examples of how independent research prior to discussion sessions underwrites the experience of reading itself as a creative activity.