I almost left when the moderator told a newcomer who announced at the outset that she hadn’t actually read the book that doing so isn’t a participation prerequisite.
This group had been assigned Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, by Jamie Loftus (2023). Its publisher insists that it’s a travelogue-culinary history-capitalist critique combo.
The moderator admitted after I asked that he had chosen it, and had done so before reading it.
One regular contributed the usual under-cooked observations with seemingly irrelevant experiences. Another newcomer shared a review of his self-branding efforts, including his cross-market promotion and personal publishing experience.
I just wanted to know whether this book aside from its gratuitous sexualization is actually about hot dogs.
If so, it seems like a failure as it’s primarily an account of the author’s road trip from one hot dog joint to another, which she scheduled around supervising her father’s surgery. If not, it might be an even bigger failure insofar that its critical component consists of drive-through thoughts about hot dog eating contests for example or hot dog factories.
These limitations were explicable after the final chapter, in which Loftus reveals that she worked alone over the holidays to finish this manuscript. She had spent the advance on the road trip, was no longer dating her chauffeur-boyfriend who had the only driver’s license, and needed to produce something for the publisher.
But maybe I had missed something, which is why I wanted to ask others who had read it.
The session ended before I could. On the walk home, I remembered that this group had been the more productive one even as I realized that this conversation was consistent with others I had recently had.
Participants seem more concerned with displaying knowledge, and impressing moderators, which are even more embarrassing given our relative ages. Moderators appear to consider these events more like Q&A sessions than sustained content-and-or-craft conversations.
I frequently suppress the urge to ask follow-up questions. I cannot commandeer these conversations, I tell myself. These spaces aren’t my classrooms. And I’m trying to be more patient with people anyway.
That I suppose could make me part of the problem. A bigger problem is my assumption that a good place for substantive book discussions is the downtown branch, and administrative hub, of a major metropolitan library system.
I might have attended a bad sessions or two but had joined these groups at the start of their seasons, and dutifully finished the selections before these sessions.
I’ve been told that I’m not the target audience, and that I should stop attending. However, I’m not expecting graduate literary studies seminars, and reject culturally elitist ideas about proper discussion protocols and canonical literary content.
Moreover, I’ve believed in relevant intellectual work, or work that is useful beyond ivory towers, since before graduate school. I maintain that reading and thinking aren’t only activities for classrooms, and are essential practices for people in democratic societies, and perhaps humans generally.
I’m telling myself that I have if nothing else some insights about conducting content conversations that I can carry to my classrooms this fall. At the same time, I have more questions about meaning-making and the humanities than I did before I joined these groups.
I just need to decide right now what to do about the next scheduled session.
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