Two Studies in London June & July (use the links to register)
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf Two evening meetings Tuesday June 24th and July 1st 7:30-10 PM (Two spaces available)
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning–fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”–was that it?–“I prefer men to cauliflowers”–was that it?”
Woolf’s writing hits emotion first– ‘what happens’ takes second place to ‘what feels’…and the language is packed with subtlety, nuance and evocative image. Come join us for this exploration of a warm June day in London– on a warm June day in London. Madness, aesthetics, the nature of love and intimacy, war, relationships across and between genders, Imperialism — all are prodded in this delicate and lyric work.
Alice Munro and Eudora Welty Short Stories One meeting July 14th 7-10 PM
“As many critics have observed, however, the real delight of reading Munro – slowly and deliberately — is this: one awakens to the beautiful and perverse in the very ordinary people living among us.”
Coming in September:
Marcel Proust: Swann’s Way, Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom! …in January, time to re-meet Ulysses– so perhaps an Odyssey and Hamlet en route? …and more….send me your requests now!
