Of course, the Harry Mathews course...

was immensely enjoyable. Harry was very generous and the whole group was brilliant, really. It felt in the end that we'd spent much more than 8 hours writing together. The course description we were given beforehand read: "The purpose of the workshop is not the usual one of developing the ability to write well or better: its aim is to dissolve the reticences and anxieties that beset most writers whatever the extent of their talent and experience. The actual writing called for by the workshop will all be done collectively during its four two-hour sessions. Uninterrupted attendance at each of these sessions is an absolute requirement."



I misunderstood "collectively" to mean collaboratively. Our exercises were done independently, but some did have a collaborative element. I'm going to post them here (since some of y'all have indicated you're interested) and perhaps also some of my results, just so you have an idea of what the class experience was like.



Friday morning we got off to a late start because of the subway fire, and when we did finally settle in, the New School blared the fire drill alarm. Once thoroughly drilled on how to walk downstairs and across the street, we got down to business.



Harry provided us each with two notebooks--a large one for straight exercises, and a smaller one for automatic writing only. We were cautioned not to take notes--the only writing we were to do was to be for the exercises. And we learned that nobody would read or hear anything we wrote unless we chose to share it. No pressure. We should feel free and be confident that we could do anything. We had been asked to write a few lines about our expectations of the class, and Harry went over each of those, correcting any misconceptions we had about what the class was about (like my misunderstanding about collaborative work, for instance).