part0039

Maybe initiated by the title of the book, an unexpected gift came to us just as we finished editing this new edition of Coincidance . A member of Bob’s private GroupMind email list, John van der Does, sent me an interview he did with Bob in 1983 – right when Bob was writing Coincidance . In the interview, Bob talks about the book and goes into detail on a number of the book’s topics. John just gave us the piece, thinking that Hilaritas Press could do something with it, not knowing that we were working on Coincidance , or that his interview would make a wonderful addition to the book.

After John recorded the interview, he transcribed it and sent it off to Bob to edit. John then translated the edited interview into French and gave it to Gerald Blanc, owner of Revue CoÉvolution, the French version of Stewart Brand's CoEvolution Quarterly. Blanc cut out 80% of the interview for his publication, and John always felt disappointed that the whole piece was never published in French, and that he and Bob were the only ones who ever read it in English.

What we found interesting about this interview is that Bob knew it would be for a French audience who he thought may know little or nothing about his ideas. John had the same thought and so came up with a list of questions that covered mosbunall topics that a lot of readers of RAW’s work would find familiar. Great for a new French audience, but I wondered if adding an eighty-page encyclopedic account of RAW would be appropriate for an appendix to one of his books. I sought advice.

Hilaritas Press is working with a talented group of RAW enthusiasts, a subset of which I’ve been calling the RAW Trust Editorial Advisors: principally Gary Accord, Tom Jackson, Mike Gathers, Eric Wagner and Bobby Campbell. Gary and Tom went beyond the advising role and volunteered to edit and proofread Coincidance. Editing this book was not an easy task given the topic, the use of language and having to deal with all the new tiny graphics we created to represent the Joyce code. I sent the advisors the interview, and they all loved the idea of including it in the book, at first, and then they started reading the eighty-page interview.

After three days of emails flying back and forth, opinions changing, suggestions popping up only to be amended or discarded, I realized that I liked everyone’s final thoughts. That was a bit tricky because the thoughts conflicted. They ranged from putting the interview in the book as is, to putting it in the book but editing out material that was “too familiar,” to not putting it in the book at all, but creating a whole new RAW title that features the whole interview, but heavily annotated.

I suggested that we include the entire interview as is, but add an introduction, what you are reading now, and an Interview Afterword featuring the observations and speculations that grew from the group email discussion. I think we all felt it was an enjoyable three days of brainstorming, and in the end all agreed to that compromise. Many thanks to Mike Gathers who graciously offered to write the Afterword. Enjoy the ride!