Notalona 21/ Slow learning

No, lockdown wasn’t over for me at episode 20 of my Isolona Diary.  My communities of writers have put some air under my wings, so its morphed into the Notalona series.  Yet there was a satisfying ring to 20. It felt neat – a good number, 2 decent digits to move on from. Like flying up from the Brownies to the Guides.  (If you know what I’m on about you were born before 1960, in England).   I’ve been on overground trains and in shops with my mask on.  That’s about it for this semi-shielding septuagenarian.  Whatever I do, indoors or out – everything is slower. A good thing. I pay attention – and attention hands over the goods.  My publishers slowed down too, in the best possible way, unlike a myriad of others, all launching new books this September 3rd, a tradition on the first Thursday after August bank holiday, seeking buyers for the Christmas market.  After a blocked lockdown, there will be a tsunami of Covidian literature: but no stocking fillers from Riversmeet.  My book was launched just before the big bug, and Riversmeet have been on a slow burn. One of these initiatives is a new course on James Joyce’s Ulysses by writer/academic Richard Bradbury. Who blogs on the site about… 

 

Slow learning

Fast food and multi-tasking. Together, they define the days of many people. “Time is money”, Benjamin Franklin declared over 250 years ago and ever since the price has been dropping and so we have to run ever-faster to keep up. In more recent years, governments have begun to sing the praises of the 2-year university degree.

As long as these ideas have been around, there has been resistance. American idlers, from Henry David Thoreau to Utah Phillips,  have been taking the world at their own chosen speed for as long as Franklin has been urging them to get a move on. Carl Honoré documented the rise of the Slow Food movement in 2004 and that movement has been, slowly of course, growing ever since.

So when I want to introduce you to the idea of slow study, I am aware that I’m in esteemed company. My undergraduate degree took four years and when I started on my PhD my supervisor gave me some advice that, today, sounds almost ludicrous: “go and read for a year” he said. That year gave me the space, the pace, the time, to think about, to absorb, to consider, what I was reading.

These days, too much education consists of a rush from one topic, one book, to the next and then at the end a piece of paper that all too often represents nothing much more than itself. Even more depressingly, cut-and-paste essay writing and online essay factories are becoming more and more common. The end has become all-important.

I disagree. I think the process is all-important. The difference between the end and the process is akin to the difference between information and knowledge, and I know which I prefer.

We will take our time, we will read one section of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” each fortnight and it will take 8 months to read the whole book. That will give us time to read, possibly re-read, think about and discuss the rich complexity of the book. And at the end we will celebrate that we took our time and spent hours, days, weeks, and months in company with the book and with each other.

 

Richard Bradbury

 

 

Anyone want to join me for Ulysses?  

Here’s the site.  Jan Woolf

https://riversmeetproductions.co.uk/


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