Salon Review by Salonista

By far the most thrilling reading experiences of my life have centred in Kentish Town, in a cosy sitting room in the home of Toby Brothers, the gifted director of the London Literary Salons. Each of the books we read was rich and challenging, but the thrill came from the distinctive style that Toby has evolved for guiding readers through a given text.

Labrynth Tielman

Deeply engaged with and knowledgable about literature, Toby is highly developed as an agile guide, a careful instructor, and perhaps most important, a sensitive and infinitely patient facilitator to the small group of ‘students’ in her charge. She can unite participants of wildly varying levels of education, experience and interests, and help each to bring him or herself to bear upon the study of great works of literature. The thrill comes from the sense of discovery, adventure, and sheer good fun we get from our mutual exploration of a given writer.

 

A lifelong bookworm, I knew there were some works I just wouldn’t get the full meat of on my own – ranging from a slim and perhaps deceptively straightforward-seeming book like ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ to novels like ‘Invisible Man’ with its deep racial themes, to Shakespeare’s plays, up the granddaddy of all English-major holy grails, Ulysses, by James Joyce. Toby and the London Literary Salon have been invaluable to fully tucking into these and many more. For each, I came away with meat andpotatoes — a careful read bolstered by a side plate of critical insight and nuance unobtrusively provided by Toby.

 

But even better was the unexpected and satisfying savour of the personal and often marvellous insights that Toby draws out of fellow salon participants.

Incidentally, many friendships have bloomed during salon studies and their associated adventures, such as travelling to Dublin for the annual, often raucous celebration of Ulysses and its creator.

 

The American novelist John Williams, author deplored the notion that literature is something to be picked apart, as if it were a puzzle – to be studied rather than experienced. ‘My God, to read without joy is stupid,’ he said. The  London Literary Salon will help readers to experience great books with joy.

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

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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

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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.

Wide Sargasso Sea, Fury and Magic in November…

COMING SALONS
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THIS WEEK THE SOUND AND THE FURY STARTING TUESDAY 01.10 (four week study–only two places available) “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.”

NEXT WEEK: WIDE SARGASSO SEA ONE meeting study; 5:30-10 PM Friday 11th October
“You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world…”

As I am preparing the wide Sargasso Sea study, I am immersed in Antoinette’s exotic and crumbling world of colonial Caribbean. Race relations are shifting under the strain of an anxious imperialism, the certainty of Western dominance fails in this world of blended cultures and desires. Bronte’s shadow falls on this work, but Rhys is not simply telling the back story of the Madwoman in the Attic. Wide Sargasso Sea explores passion that slips from love to hatred, the danger of roles and masks–acting and being; the imprint of place on a struggling identity, the roots of madness….all in a short work that weaves narrative voices and perspective, leaving stories open and motifs that point to resolution and answers without any finality. The lyric text will frame our discussion: the work provokes and we will gather all perspectives to illuminate this Gothic, postmodern novel.

Coming up:

Sign Up: Sound and the Fury starts this week; To the Lighthouse, Poetry & Magic Mountain

making choicesTime to Choose!!!

The Salons are starting this week; have you registered? The Salons thrive with your recommendation–please pass on the Salon news to those interested in the world of words and ideas…

starting Tuesday Sept. 24th 8-10 PM room for 3 more participants…

“They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.”  ― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

October 2nd & 9th; 12-1:30 

1st Session: Wislawa Szymborska: “The Acrobat”, “Nothing Ever Happens Twice” and “Commemoration”

2nd Session: Robert Frost: “Birches” –for details, see the ‘Event’ page

Alone. Or even less than alone,
less, because defective, for he lacks
lacks wings, lacks them very much,
a lack which forces him
to bashful soarings on unfeathered
by now just bare attention….

from The Acrobat by Wislawa Szymborska

Friday October 11th; room for 3 more participants….

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester,  the madwoman in the attic, is the subject of Rhys’ sensual writing. Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë’s legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean.

Starts Wednesday, October 16th meeting from 8-10 PM (please email me if you are interested in an afternoon TTL Salon)

“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”  from To the Lighthouse 

  • Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (15 weeks, afternoon & evening Salons)

Starting end of October; evening studies on Wednesdays, afternoons Tuesdays 12:30-2:30; registration page to be posted this week…

Wide Sargasso Sea & Jane Eyre

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre has always held readers’ imagination as Bronte presents her heroine as fiercely independent in a world where there is no place for a free-thinking female. Jane Eyre, the plain, orphaned child becomes sharpened through her struggles in the hands of tyrannical mother-substitutes, malignant boarding schools, demeaning poverty and an egotistical, impenetrable employer. But what continues to intrigue readers and audiences, as the multiple film version attest to, is not just Jane’s indomitable spirit but the other strange scenes and lives crammed into this 19th century novel of social criticism and Byronic heroes.

The hidden, voiceless character of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, who even in her silence greatly impacts Jane’s story, has caught the attention of critics and other writers. Jean Rhys, an early Modernist writer, chose to explore Bertha Rochester’s history in her brief but crystalline work, Wide Sargasso Sea. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë’s legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean. One of our Paris Salon participants says this about Rhys: “I think these words from a Guardian critic sum her up pretty well: ‘She is loved not just for a talent that seems as spontaneous and individual in its personality as physical beauty, but for a special kind of courage.’ I would also add honesty, which brings Nualo O’Faolain to mind.”

These two works, taken together in this Salon intensive, will offer interesting commentaries on the positioning of the female as a space for madness and rebellion.

Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea

“Everything must be for the ‘reactionary 19th century romance,’ ” Rhys angrily wrote a friend. “That unfortunate death of a Creole! I’m fighting mad to write her story” (Rhys, Jean Letters 1931-66, 157)

Although this work was conceived in the shadow of Jane Eyre, the scope of Rhys’ vision would be limited by simply seeing the work as a feminist response to Bronte’s iconic novel.  Rhys brings to the surface the voice and agonies of Bertha Mason, the Madwoman in the Attic, considering how she may have arrived in that debilitated state and addresses the mysterious character of Edward Rochester as well as the complex, liminal Creole world that creates her. You do not need to have read Jane Eyre to find this work (and our study of it) fulfilling but if you have not, there are many film versions that would fill in that background story.

Our study will develop ideas and understanding about post-colonial theories and lived experiences. Using close consideration of the literature, we will study how  Jean Rhys uses the intimate realm of her characters to play out the engagement and oppression of imperial forces—even as these forces seem out-dated and exhausted. We will also consider how the characters push against forces of control to claim their unique identity and attempts to create a world that honours diversity of culture, character and perspective.

“Justice. I’ve heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

The Mad Woman’s Vision

The Mad Woman’s Vision: Creation and Destruction from Frankenstein to Housekeeping

The female realm is traditionally imaged as domestic and nurturing; narrative space gives room for a very different perspective. The constriction of female experience as defined by patriarchal institutions may produce anxiety, rebellion and madness. From the 17th -20th century, we find the majority of those institutionalised for mental illness are women. As Elaine Showalter perceptively asks; does this reflect the implicit view of madness as one of the wrongs of women or madness unveiling itself before scientific rationality? Or does the confining role of women in earlier times result in the kind of behaviours that the medical establishment sought to pathologise?
Using works by Mary Shelley, Jean Rhys and Marilynne Robinson, we will explore how female artists explored the limits and extremes of selfhood interrogating definitions of sanity and madness. From my experience with these works, I believe we will find the uncanny interwoven with the empathic. This course will develop ideas and understanding around the domestic and traditional constructs of gender and how this impacts female identity.

There is renewed interest in Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein. The recent National Theatre production  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? 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. We will discuss, among other themes, the question of adult male friendship and how Victor’s tragedy is one of arrogance and solitude. The philosophical questions the book raises continue to be absolutely pertinent to our time.

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea offers a modernist retelling of a cultural icon. Jane Eyre has always held readers’ imagination: Charlotte Bronte presents her heroine as fiercely independent in a world where there is no place for a free-thinking female. The hidden, voiceless character of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, who even in her silence greatly impacts Jane’s story, has caught the attention of critics and other writers. Jean Rhys, an early Modernist writer, chose to explore Bertha Rochester’s history in her brief but crystalline work, Wide Sargasso Sea. The text is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë’s legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean.

In Marilynne Robinson’s haunting first work, Housekeeping, each line is carefully crafted and ice-sharp. Through Ruth’s narration we learn more about the impermanence of things- people, places, home- and watch her struggle to adulthood with the awareness that nothing stays in place. There is a freedom found here- and this book reveals profound possibilities in a spare world.

“There is so little to remember of anyone – an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.”

― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

SALON DETAILS

  • Three-meeting study
  • Recommended editions:
    • Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley: The 1818 Text, Contexts, Criticism; Norton Critical Editions (Jan 2012); ISBN-13: 978-0393927931
    • Wide Sargasso Sea (Annotated Edition), by Jean Rhys; Penguin Modern Classics; ISBN-13: 978-0141182858
    • Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson; Faber & Faber (2005); ISBN-13: 978-0571230082
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