Head Divided–coming salons in London–looking towards September

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“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”– Mrs. Dalloway

It may be bad for the mind to try to be equally in Moby Dick, Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway and Magic Mountain all at once. I feel the mind muscle aching with the deliciousness of over-use –but wonder if this will result in a Pentecostal babble of tongues–unintelligible and aching for meaning. What I know is that when I am fully in each of these works– and deeply submerged with a gathering of other lively minds– the tempo slows and the language transcends– and suddenly we are swimming in ideas, insights and connections fresh and rich.

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

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!

Paris Salons 4-6 April: Magic Mountain, Short Stories

Hello all–apologies for the repeat info– but when I sent out the newsletter last week, the website was TIRED and when people tried to access the information, they found it unavailable. So writing to say  I believe it is fixed…and now would be a good time to sign up for the following if you are interested….

See you in the pages…

Three studies coming to Paris in April:

Friday April 4th: Two short stories by Alice Munro & Eudora Welty (see Events page for more details)

Saturday April 5th: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann –first third

Sunday April 6th: The Magic Mountain –second third (those who completed the first third in February have priority for registration)

 SHORT STORIES Salon Intensive

Why I Live at the P.O. (1941)
Boys and Girls (1968)
Both of these works are available on line using the links to the titles.
alice munro

Cost: 30.00 euro (includes opening notes and critical work)




April 4th: 6:30- 10 PM

I have loved the craft and world evoked by Alice Munro for years–I first taught her work Lives of Girls and Women in a very energetic and popular Salon in Paris some years ago.
I suggest that Munro explores juxtaposed worlds in her fiction…that she uses her characters to probe the relationships between psychological spaces and the outside world.

Munro’s award of the Nobel Prize for literature is the perfect excuse to offer a study based on  her short stories. We will look closely at both short stories in this single meeting and consider each writer’s unique voice in probing the intimacy and peculiarities of the human heart.
Eudora Welty offers a different world, a different rhythm, perhaps a sharper comic edge in “Why I live at the P.O.”. It is easy to be seduced by the humour there– but there is also a disruptive family event explored and analysed. There is always an outsider in any group–this is at its most awkward in family structures–but often the outsider has the widest view…

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann–first and second third

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain has been grouped with the two other giant Modernist classics Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past as the formative novels of the Modernist era. A first dip in to the text reveals an accessible, lilting narrative that once in, you find yourself considering time, society, passion, memory from the strange angle of remove that characterises the perspective of the invalid. Mann’s work is also deeply political; placed before WWI but written between WWI and WWII, MM engages questions of Nationalism and nostalgia with the shadow of future events shifting the weight of the ironic stance that Mann employs.

 

For the first third study, please read through “Encyclopedia” (pg. 299 in the Woods ed.)

For the second third- please read through the chapter entitled “Snow” (pg. 590 in the Woods ed.)

We will need some time to encounter the richness and length of this work: the study will extend over three meetings: following dates will be in May and June. The cost for each five hour meeting (critical resources, session notes and historical/cultural background readings included) is 45 euro.

RECOMMENDED EDITION EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY trans. by John e. Woods

To register, please use the paypal button below to sign up for this study. Email me at lit salon@gmail.com if you have any questions. Upon receipt of registration, we will send you the opening notes and details. Welcome to this immersion in the language and philosophy of one the 20th century’s greatest thinkers.




Words for Focus

These galloping lives– the commitments & details, the lists and demands on our time can eat away at our lives until our daily rhythm is defined by bits and pieces–not passions and purpose. I speak from my own experience– and am recognising my daily struggle to stay present and aware. In the moments of the Salon, my attention is drawn deep into language and meaning– and then into the words of others who are also responding to the ideas and art before us. It is a wonderfully rich and sharp time together; when I am able to take the gift of this awareness, the ability to pay attention and shut out the noise of the thousand clamouring things that need to be done–my relationships and movement through life is simply better. Each member of the Salon community offers insights and a way of seeing that broadens my own–I emerge from our work together with a cleansed and renewed perspective. Two studies are in the process of finishing our 15 week study of Mann’s Magic Mountain just now: while at moments the climb has been hard, the gift of our work together is a clarity on the work of living in the knowledge of our mortality, a deeper understanding of the struggle between the realm of ideas and the urges of passion, some stirring meditations on the embrace of suffocating snow and studies on the sublimity of music…

Again I am living the lesson that to read a few books deeply is more satisfying than trying to read it all. Wishing you all renewed attention and reading time…

behind-time-by-Tielman

COMING SALONS in Paris
April 4th– Short Story Intensive: Alice Munro and Eudora Welty
April 5th–The Magic Mountain– first third
April 6th–The Magic Mountain second third

COMING SALONS IN London
20 MARCH LIT IN PIT— Salon special in collaboration with Wendy Meakin and Pitfield– an evening of food, wine and The Wasteland

April 1st or April 2nd: 10 week study of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick begins

April 28th: Five week study of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! begins (Mondays 8-10 PM)

April 24th: ONe meeting study of Eliot’s poem “Four Quartets”

Paris Salons Feb 22nd & 23rd– Mann and Woolf–two spaces remaining

Paris Salons Update Feb 9th

There are two studies on offer for the weekend of Feb. 22-23— just two places available in each so register today:


*Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf -Saturday Feb 22nd 5:30-10 PM


*The Magic Mountain–first third Sunday Feb 23rd 3-8 PM


mann_magic

I am hoping to offer the following sections of Magic Mountain on dates convenient to participants; but if you start the study and cannot make the next installment, I will work to keep you in the read with extensive notes and resources. I may offer each third more than once if necessary.
The next Salon weekends are currently scheduled for:

April 11th-13th weekend
 : Magic Mountain Sections 1 & 2, Short Stories Friday night Special and possibly Beloved or Heart of Darkness
May 16th-18th weekend Magic Mountain sections 2 & 3; The Oresteia (one section)
Works to study: Fridays Short Story special, The Oresteia, Invisible Man, Magic Mountain, Middlemarch
FEEDBACK on dates, possible works to study most welcome!!!

Paris Salons February 22-23: Virginia Woolf, dip into Thomas Mann

Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

–Walt Whitman

I don’t know; why not a bit of Walt Whitman to set a new tone–to keep me from apologising and explaining how life interrupts, how much I have missed our work together, how I hope to go on with the Paris Salons and how I hope each of you is facing forward and strong into this New Year of possibilities… I will let Walt say it for me. He does this so well.

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There are two studies on offer for the weekend of Feb. 22-23:
Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf -Saturday Feb 22nd 5:30-10 PM
The Magic Mountain–first third Sunday Feb 23rd 3-8 PM
* I am hoping to offer the following sections of Magic Mountain on dates convenient to participants; but if you start the study and can not make the next instalment, I will work to keep you in the read with extensive notes and resources. I may offer each third more than once if necessary.

The next Salon weekends are currently scheduled for:
April 11th-13th weekend
May 16th-18th weekend

Possible Works to study: Fridays Short Story special, The Oresteia, Invisible Man, Magic Mountain, Middlemarch…

Upcoming Salons–register now & feed your mind!

Ulysses by James Joyce (20 week study-£300)
 starts 23.01.14 FOUR SPACES REMAINING
Ulysses sliders

“The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot (One-meeting Intensive-£35)
 meets 26.01.14 TWO SPACES REMAINING
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (One meeting Intensive-£45) 02.02.14 FOUR SPACES REMAINING

To register for any of the studies above, please follow the link to the events page on the website or email the Salon: gift your mind a workout for the New Year!
Salons in London coming in later Spring: Moby Dick, Middlemarch, Absalom, Absalom! and The Odyssey… Salons in Paris (February 22nd, April and May weekends) include Betweeb the Acts, more Moby Dick, Thomas mann’s Magic Mountain Absalom, Absalom! and short stories: details to come.

Open a book, open your mind

books-boots-drink-fire-fireplace-Favim.com-111366

In November and December the Salons hummed along with two intensive studies on To the Lighthouse and the on-going surreal climb up Mann’s Magic Mountain. We will continue climbing –and descending the Mountain into 2014–many new Salons also coming up (see Events section for more info)

January:

  • 14 .01 Black Voices in American Literature : Weaving history, diverse traditions and a collage of voices, we will explore the struggle and celebration of black experience through Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, works by James Baldwin and Harlem Renaissance artists. Study offered at City Lit; London’s largest adult university.

12 week study; Tuesday 6-7:30 PM CityLit Covent Garden

Intimidating, broad and beautiful—this is the Modernist work that tops the charts and requires a real commitment on the part of the reader. A Salon participant described the experience of reading Ulysses  “has made me a better reader, writer and human being”. The book is full of humour, food, sex, urban life and language play—Joyce’s love letter to Dublin and his critique of his Irish nation provides deep perspective on our contemporary living.

20 week study, Thursdays 8-10 PM at the London Literary Salon in Kentish Town

  • 12.01 “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot One meeting Salon Intensive 6-9:30 PM

The Wasteland is one of the most famous and most difficult poems written in English during the 20th c.; here is Mary Karr on how (and why) to approach the poem: “The boundary between 20th century verse in English and its 19th century predecessors –Romantic poetry and the genteel Victorian stuff after it—didn’t simply dissolve. It came down with an axe swoop, and the blade was T. S. Eliot’s “Waste Land”. William Carlos Williams said the poem “wiped out our world as if an atom bomb had been dropped upon it.” Its publication in 1922 killed off the last limping, rickets-ridden vestiges of the old era and raised the flag of Modernism…”

 

February:

  • 02.02 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley One Meeting Salon Intensive 5-10 PM

There is renewed interest in Mary Shelly’s gothic? Feminist? Science fiction? classic. Recent productions have peeled back the layers of the block-headed, bolted monster and gets down to Mary Shelly’s original concern: what is the relationship between the created and the creator? Edward Mendelson offers: “Frankenstein is the story of childbirth as it would be if it had been invented by someone who wanted power more than love.” The form of the story also draws the reader into the entangled and unlimited relationship between the Creature and its creator as we move through narrators to get to the frozen final confrontation.

The Salon intensive is a five-hour gulp…we take in the whole book at once and the resulting discussion tends to be energetic. Frankenstein is not a big read- most versions are between 110-135 pages…but it is worth giving yourself sometime to read and consider closely the many layers contained in the work.

Starting in March:

26.03  Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (five week study, evening or afternoon options)

16.03 & 30.03 –Two meetings for Homer’s The Odyssey

Starting end of March—Eight week study of Moby Dick 

 

Starting week of November 12th
Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain has been grouped with the two other giant Modernist classics Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past as the formative novels of the Modernist era. A first dip in to the text reveals an accessible, lilting narrative that once in, you find yourself considering time, society, passion, memory from the strange angle of remove that characterises the perspective of the invalid. Mann’s work is also deeply political; placed before WWI but written between WWI and WWII, MM engages questions of Nationalism and nostalgia with the shadow of future events shifting the weight of the ironic stance that Mann employs.

We will need some time to encounter the richness and length of this work: the study will extend over three five-week sessions ( a total of 15 weeks). Meetings start the first week of November; we will break for the holidays.
Day time meetings: 12:30-2:30 Tuesday afternoons    two spaces remaining
Evening meetings: 8-10 PM Wednesday evenings       full

Recommended Edition Everyman’s Library (2005) translation by John E. Woods (available at Owl Bookshop Kentish Town)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf One Day Salon Intensive London
In this exquisite work, Woolf seeks to break through the restraints of language to access the interior voice of passions, fears, unspeakable thoughts and human dynamics. By employing stream of consciousness narrative and the early stirrings of the modernist aesthetic, Woolf gives insights into the nature of relationships and the formation of self in relation to others that will be recognizable – and revealing to each reader.
Salon Intensive 5:30-10PM  November 29th

Moving towards the Magic Mountain by the Lighthouse; visiting Alice Munro along the way…

mann_magic

Upcoming Salons–Register now to get the opening notes and start reading…

Having survived the Wide Sargasso Sea, we are going to climb Mann’s Magic Mountain and go to The Lighthouse– visiting the peculiar and gorgeous realm of Alice Munro along the way…of course, some of us are still embroiled in the Sound and the Fury….

There is room for another intensive study in the coming months: if you have a request, please contact us….

Coming Studies  for more information about each of the following, please visit the Events page

Alice Munro Short Stories One night study November 4th 7:30-10 PM
Munro’s award of the Nobel Prize for literature is the perfect excuse to offer a study based on two of her short stories. We will look closely at “Runaway” and “Boys and Girls” in this single meeting and consider her unique voice in probing the intimacy and peculiarities of the human heart. That’s Alice Munro in the picture below– reminding us of the need for laughter in the midst of our contemplations.

alice munro

Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Starting week of November 12th
Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain has been grouped with the two other giant Modernist classics Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past as the formative novels of the Modernist era. A first dip in to the text reveals an accessible, lilting narrative that once in, you find yourself considering time, society, passion, memory from the strange angle of remove that characterises the perspective of the invalid. Mann’s work is also deeply political; placed before WWI but written between WWI and WWII, MM engages questions of Nationalism and nostalgia with the shadow of future events shifting the weight of the ironic stance that Mann employs.

We will need some time to encounter the richness and length of this work: the study will extend over three five-week sessions ( a total of 15 weeks). Meetings start the first week of November; we will break for the holidays.
Day time meetings: 12:30-2:30 Tuesday afternoons    four spaces remaining
Evening meetings: 8-10 PM Wednesday evenings        five spaces remaining

Recommended Edition Everyman’s Library (2005) translation by John E. Woods (available at Owl Bookshop Kentish Town)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf One Day Salon Intensive London
In this exquisite work, Woolf seeks to break through the restraints of language to access the interior voice of passions, fears, unspeakable thoughts and human dynamics. By employing stream of consciousness narrative and the early stirrings of the modernist aesthetic, Woolf gives insights into the nature of relationships and the formation of self in relation to others that will be recognizable – and revealing to each reader.
Choice of two dates–each a one day intensive: November 10th or November 29th

‘Wonder–go on and wonder…’ –The Sound and the Fury

heath 1 Nov 03 028

There have been some wonderful moments in recent Salon conversations– after the struggle to organize, to find your way, to get through the reading, to be here, to be here on time, to be here on time and awake–when the heat and force of a new idea, of an insight gleaned from close attention to language and human behaviour pulls us all along into the depths where the buzz quiets and you can feel your mind focusing, sharpening, discovering….in the supportive company of other explorers.

There is currently an interesting thread on the ’10 best long reads’ at the Guardian website. The comments stir me towards defining what we want or expect out of a great work of literature and why a long work should somehow prove itself even more worthy of our attention. Of course, time being the precious commodity that it is, we want to know that devoting ourselves to months of reading on e book will payoff. But what is the payoff?

I am thinking about this particularly as I prepare the Thomas Mann study to start in November. This is a long book and will require a significant dedication of time– this book was referenced often in the comments as an example of a work worth the time–but daunting to readers. So of course, is Ulysses, a Salon cornerstone. The Magic Mountain is more lulling; it does not require the hard work immediately that Ulysses does– but for Mann to construct a scenario that allows his characters to explore the philosophies and strategies that we employ to make life of value, he must immerse the reader in the strange world of his characters– and this takes time.  Reading The Magic Mountain will let us stretch into the ideas around he humanist philosophy, our understanding of death, the guidance of the spirit, the submersion in eroticism, the desire for order and integrity in a listless world– the choice to be in the world in spite of the flaws and failures of the spirit. I hope you can join us….

In Wide Sargasso Sea last Friday, we probed the consequences of colonialism on the intimate relationships of those left undone by an exploding society in the aftermath of Caribbean slavery. Jean Rhys gives voice to the dislocation of those living in the shadow of a history of dehumanisation–both the oppressors and the oppressed. We entered into the lush and sensual world of the Windward Isles and understood how this exotic realm could torment a visitor whose cultural norms have overturned–or been revealed as corrupt.

The Sound and the Fury we are looking closely at how time traps human action. Quentin’s father, as he gives him he family heirloom of his grandfather’s watch, offers these words of despair: “Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”
This, for me, is the work of reading a book like S & F. I can think: ‘Well, yes, of course I struggle with time: I always want more time, I regret when I have wasted my time– I struggle to keep on top of time…’ but then here comes Faulkner who, through Quentin, makes me go beneath the obvious surface of temporality and think about how desperate we are in our spirit to feel we control our destiny–and that idea is enmeshed in the role of time. IN other words, as Sartre proposes (in his essay “Time in the work of Faulkner”), Quentin’s narration reflects an inconceivable present–he does not feel as though he has any future (literally and philosophically) and his tragedy–a pathos not a heroic one– is to conceive what is noble and possible in life (in love) but to be unable to affect this in his life. And so his narration is formed in a pedantic present– a present that can not happen but has already happened and can never be fresh and possible for him. So of course he must step out of this present.

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