The Chamber Pot

While it wasn't a writer's group, it did offer a great deal to my education and gave me direction to my various hobby horses. The Chamber Pot Society existed in West LA for maybe twenty years? I came into it late. It was a large group of folks, that originally met once a month to discuss poetry (my understanding anyway) and it grew and grew. It met once a month at different people's houses or apartments and a speaker or presenter would give forth on the subject he or she signed up to do. These things were attended by up to forty people and food was usually served and it was a great way to met other intellectuals (single smart people) and learn about things you hadn't focused on before. There were poets that were examined, music, art and literature and philosophy and the latest in intellectual fads. You had to sign up a year in advance and were responsible for coming up with your own location for hosting it. The host generally paid for it, you could put out a donation basket but would seldom get more than thirty bucks. I did several: the first was on James Agee's "Death In The Family" - I did it at a friend's condo, picked apart the book, talked about how it was put together after Agee's death, did a slide photo interpretation of the intro that had been set to music by Samuel Barber. Also, was scared to death myself because I had never spoken in front a large group of people before and drank coffee and wine all night and managed it. I did Robbe-Grillet's "In The Labyrinth," did Robert Frost, Kokoshka the painter, Stevenson's "Travel With A Donkey." Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," Winslow Homer the painter, Mead's :Coming of Age In Samoa."  Usually worked on each for the year before hand- it was a great way to concentrate one's interest and have an end result. Did Virginia Woolf's "The Waves" - did a little three voice play from Woolf's diaries, her letters and from the book itself to dramatize the process. This accounts for about 10 years of my life. I went to the other folks' presentations and  read stuff that I might not had gotten to. I hosted a friend doing the first volume of Proust in my slum apartment in Oakwood in Venice. In it's hayday, it was quite fun. The organizers retired from doing it and it reorganized as a group called Bloomsbury West, but they imposed a time limit and the group really wasn't as smart as it used to be. I went to one of the last one on Flaubert's "Salambo" which the presenters and the people who said they read it, didn't quite get the meaning of it. It was sad. The last one I did on Mead, one of the guests started complaining that I was taking too long, because they wanted run off to a restaurant for dinner and how dare I bore them. I never did a presentation longer than 90 minutes, which is the length of a movie. I timed my things before I did them.  
It was was to meet other single people and to drink and be silly. They did Freud one time and there were fifty very angry ex-Freudian patients that riled at the presenter. Kistel did one on music that went on for three hours. We even one of folks' creative works which was fun. I turned to building web sites when the whole thing died.
The original organizers did have a chamber pot that someone had given them.