“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Richard Wright, a fellow Harlem Renaissance writer and critic of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God wrote that her work was not political enough, saying:

“Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears. . . The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought.”

Wow.  That’s crushing.

But in the 1970s, the novel, half bildungsroman and half romance, was reclaimed by Alice Walker and a generation of feminists who insisted that the personal is political.  While not a book about politics and race, it can be proposed that Janie’s emancipation involves politics and race.  Zadie Smith writes in the forward:

“It is about the discovery of self in and through another.  It suggests that even the dark and terrible banality of racism can recede to a vanishing point when you understand, and are understood by, another human being.”

The world of the American South at the turn of the century, particularly Eatonville, Georgia, the first all-Black incorporated town in America, offers a place where Hurston can pay homage to the humour and inventiveness of local language, placing great value on how people express themselves, the folk experience.  In Janie’s telling of her own self-discovery and self-determination, we can find imbedded a sexual awakening, folkloric themes and vernacular speech—a rhetoric of authenticity—and the arguments of early feminists. In her quest, Janie experiences different husbands and different communities—travels “to the horizon and back”—in order to tell her own story as a spiritual journey from wealth to power to love.

SALON DETAILS 

Hurston’s focus on the Black community, her centring of Black cultural experience and characters may be seen as resistance to the narratives of Black people reacting to racism. Hurston’s narrative shows the effects of racial inequality, but the story concentrates on Black relationships, work, story-telling, intimacy and cultural experience. This is a celebration that opens the reader’s understanding beyond social protest writing. There are aspects of the writing that the reader has to situate in the time setting: the use of dialect, for example, can be seen as challenging or authentic to the cultural world of the novel.

Few novels of the time centred around a woman speaking for herself in an attempt to understand her own life.  Our discussion will include consideration of desire and love in a society that is bent on the stifling of women and reflections on how the concerns of this story have descended into our contemporary age: what does it mean to be a self-determinate being in our age?

“I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be.”

― Toni Morrison, A Mercy

Morrison has commented that she wrote A Mercy  to explore a time before slavery was identified with race. This may help readers to consider race more as ‘an interplay with other social determiners, such as gender and class. Moreover, we must resist the trigger reaction that interprets “race” to reference black-white relations, given that in colonial America another different people lived here who were subjected to biological mayhem as well as painstakingly plotted genocide” (Tally & Stave, intro to Critical Approaches: Toni Morrison’s A Mercy) .

Please notice as you read the differing perspectives and narrative styles that tell the story. Notice also how the land—the specific geographical settings—impact character and tellings. Notice how you read different paradigms: for example, what is ownership to one character is different to another….

SALON DETAILS 

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

‘Nabokov helps us remember that we can only respect what we can notice, and that it is often very hard for us to notice that other people are suffering. He also reminds us of the main reason why it is so hard: we all spend a lot of time inventing people rather than noticing them, reshaping real people into characters in stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, stories about how beautiful and rare we are.’

—Richard Rorty’s introduction to Pale Fire (Everyman’s Library edition)

Pale Fire is a great work of 20th Century literature, and a deeply humane novel. It’s a personal text borne out of Nabokov’s own suffering: a meditation on love and loss; a contemplation of his physical and linguistic exile. Although the story’s humanity is often hidden by elaborate linguistic games, its tenderness is forever present.

The book centres around a 999-line poem by a mid-century American campus poet that tells an elaborate tale of grief with wonderful pathos. Supplementary to the poem is a long, apparently deluded commentary by a manic editor, who appears to have taken possession of the poem. The annotations appear to be the tormented confessions of one man’s theft of another poetic life that create a sly and puzzling a work of literature.

As with Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Nabokov’s novel is a ‘poioumenon’: a work of art that tells the story of its own making; a novel concerned with the process of its own writing; a book that brings itself into existence.

Salon Details

• Facilitated by Basil Lawrence
• Monday evenings 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
• Ten meeting study: September 14, 21 & 28; October 12, 19 & 26; November 9, 16, 23 & 30
• Recommended edition: Unfortunately, there’s no annotated Pale Fire, but the Library of America edition — with notes — is the next best thing: Novels 1955 – 1962 by Vladimir Nabokov edited by Brian Boyd (New York: The Library of America, 2014) ISBN: 978-1883011192.
• If you’re tempted to splash out on a first edition – reasons for which will become apparent during the salon – only buy the 1962 US edition (G P Putnam’s Sons) and not the UK’s Weidenfeld & Nicolson of the same year.
• Really important: some versions of the novel only contain the poem, which won’t do for our purposes. Salonistas need to take care to buy a copy containing the foreword, poem, commentary and index. At a push, the Penguin Modern Classics edition will do. (Page numbers won’t matter too much because the book includes the poem’s line numbers, and the commentary is grouped according to line number.) Pale Fire: Penguin Modern Classics by Vladimir Nabokov (London: Penguin, 2000) ISBN: 978-0141185262.
• £200 for ten meeting study includes background materials, opening notes and select pages from the 1962 G P Putnam’s Sons edition.

To register for the study, please use the secure PayPal payment button below to pay £200. Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Basil Lawrence (BA Hons English Literature, MA Creative Writing) is the author of two novels including At the Edge of the Desert to be published by Penguin in 2021. He’s run a series of short story discussions with Jungian psychoanalysts at Waterstones, Piccadilly; and chaired an examination of Antoine Watteau’s Fête Galante in a Wooded Landscape at the Wallace Collection. He studied at the Nabokov Museum’s International Summer School under Profs Julian Connolly and Alexander Dolinin in the old Nabokov family home in Saint Petersburg.

When not working, he enjoys reading and discovering London on foot.

Leonidas at Thermopylae by Jacques Louis David, 1814

Why do we want to know about what happened in the past? How sure can we be about what happened? And, how sure do we need to be?

The first great historian in the Western intellectual tradition, Herodotus sets out, he tells us, to relate not only what has happened in the past, but to give us an explanation of why. In the case of his Histories, Herodotus enquires into the long history of enmity between the Persian empire and the city-states of the Greek mainland, starting in the 560s BCE and culminating in a massive Persian invasion of mainland Greece by the great King Xerxes in 480 BCE. Herodotus has a capacious sense of causation, and his history blends politics, morality, personal anecdote, geography, ethnographic research and comparative religion—all in the voice of a charming, open-minded and most-entertaining raconteur.

The invasion by Xerxes, and a prior attempt by his predecessor Darius ten years earlier, was a momentous event in Greek history. It threatened the freedom of the Greek city-states and helped to forge a united Greek identity. Herodotus is our primary source for stories of the famous battle of Marathon, the heroic defense of Thermopylae by Leonidas and the 300 Spartans, and the great naval battles at Artemisium and Salamis. The Greco-Persian Wars described by Herodotus set in motion the forces that led to the long Peloponnesian Wars waged between Athens and Sparta later in the 5th century. We read Herodotus for the events he relates for us, and even more for the fundamental questions he raises about how we understand the forces that shape our world.

This six-meeting study will be read-as-we-go: we’ll read roughly one-sixth of The Histories each week.

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Mark Cwik
• Tuesday evenings 7:00 pm – 9:15 pm
  
• Six-meeting study, 15 September to 20 October 2020
  
• Online discussions using Zoom meeting interface. Zoom is free for participants, instructions will be sent upon registration.
  
• Recommended edition:
  
  • The Histories, by Herodotus; translated by Tom Holland, with introduction and notes by Paul Cartledge; Penguin Classics (2014); ISBN: 978-0140455397
• £150 for six-week study, includes notes and questions for preparation.
  

TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £150.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR: Mark Cwik has been organizing and leading great books discussion groups for adults for over twenty years in London, Chicago and Toronto. He specializes in literature from the ancient, mythic and religious world. He was trained as a discussion facilitator while at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago and has been a passionate advocate for great books education since attending St. John’s College, Santa Fe and the University of Chicago Basic Program in Liberal Education.

“I’ve been coming to Mark’s discussion groups for about 15 years . . . Mark is amazing in his ability to keep the group functioning smoothly. He asks questions that get to the heart of the piece and he keeps the group focused on those questions. You don’t feel that he’s trying to steer us to any conclusion; he’s in it with us to figure out what the author is saying. He makes everyone feel welcome and their opinions are respectfully heard. He’s always prepared and totally dedicated to advancing our understanding of the great books.” — group participant.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

HENRY JAMES: The Europeans and Daisy Miller

The Europeans – ‘flimsy’ [William James]… ‘performance rather than actual feelings’ [contemporary critic] or ‘a masterpiece of major quality’ [F. R. Leavis]?

Daisy Miller – ‘an assault on American womanhood’ [contemporary critic] or ‘Heroine of Fiction’ [William Dean Howells]?

Whether as an entrée for those who have found the Henry James of the mature novels hard to digest, or as a lighter course for existing consumers, this salon focuses on two shorter works by James. Both published in 1878, The Europeans is a relatively rare example of James’ offering a view of American manners by European visitors, while Daisy Miller is an often overlooked gem about an American ingenue getting out of her depth in Italy.

This three-week salon will offer an opportunity to consider some of the issues which feature more extensively and thematically in James’ full-length novels: the collision of ideas of freedom and convention, sexual repression and liberation, innocence and corruption, deceit and honesty, and naivety and sophistication.

SALON DETAILS

• Co-facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers and Geoff Brown

• Three meetings: Tuesday afternoons 22, 29 September and 6 October  2-4 PM

• Virtual Meeting on Zoom

• Cost £80.00 includes opening notes and resources

• Recommended editions Oxford World Classics Series (ISBN-10: 0199639884 for Daisy Miller, ISBN-10: 019955563X for The Europeans: A Sketch)

To register, please use the Paypal button below to pay £80 for this three- meeting study. Upon receipt of payment, I will send you the opening notes, resources and preparation suggestions.

“Well,” said Winterbourne, “when you deal with natives you must go by the custom of the place. Flirting is a purely American custom; it doesn’t exist here. So when you show yourself in public with Mr. Giovanelli, and without your mother—” “Gracious!”
― Henry James, Daisy Miller

How does one introduce a play that is already dizzy on its own superlatives? For this Salon, we come to study Hamlet afresh, not worrying about whether we see it as Shakespeare’s greatest play ever or whether we stand breathless at the language – but finding within the play that that has so riveted audiences and readers for centuries.  In addition, we have Shakespearean actor Jane Wymark as co-facilitator: Jane offers deep insights: having played Ophelia to Derek Jacobi’s Hamlet for over 200 performances, she has Hamlet in her bones. We welcome to this Salon those who have never read or seen the play along with those who have memorized entire soliloquies – we will need both perspectives to carefully negotiate our way through the “constantly shifting register not only of action but of language” (Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language, 2000).

What is Hamlet about? Themes include the most precise questions of loyalty, revenge and allegiance, what it means to be human, the role of fate and self-will, the truth of madness- the essences of human experience. The language must stand up to the weight of these themes – we will closely examine the words and structures to decide if it does and if so, how. Hamlet as a character is utterly compelling: the sinuous dance of his mind, his outrage at human frailty, his exquisite language infused by his agony at a world too small and mean for his spirit inspires the reader.

As with any other Salon dealing with a dramatic work, we will read aloud — sections of the text and I will suggest viewing various filmed adaptations. For those who are keen to stretch themselves, Jane is offering one-on-one coaching sessions to prepare a passage for the final meeting.  We will include in our discussions reflections on various productions and how this play speaks to this strange time we are living; we shall also consider diversity in casting and setting of the play over time. For those interested in reading Ulysses  in 2021, this would be a useful preparatory work. 

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by   Toby Brothers and Jane Wymark
• Tuesday early eves  5-7 PM BST  
• Six meetings over six weeks from September 22nd to October 27th    
• Meetings conducted virtually via ZOOM
• There are many editions; to simplify for this study please use the Arden Shakespeare– loads of notes and opportunities to read around the text and understand the differences in editions  ASIN: B015QL4M8S
• £165 includes background notes and materials and optional presentation coaching with Jane Wymark

To register, please use the Paypal button below to pay £165 for this six- meeting study. Upon receipt of payment, I will send you the opening notes, resources and preparation suggestions.

Reflections from our previous study:

“Toby, thank you for such an engrossing salon, and so well-choreographed. Hamlet feels like a play that’s a companion through life, and at this turbulent time it has meant so much to me to share it with you and the group. Thank you. You get it, and that makes such a difference.”

Vintage International 1990
Marc J. Cohen

“Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both:—touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am’s private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone’s to take in any any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement. But let flesh touch with flesh, and watch the fall of all the eggshell shibboleth of caste and color too.
”
― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom! is said to be Faulkner’s most difficult but most brilliant work. Absalom presents the story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, “who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.”

Described as ‘hard-core Faulkner’, one review says: “The words and writing are critically acclaimed since your parents were in school. The examples of how a war can raze an entire culture’s edifice of identity are compelling, each person’s doom and curse being common among her kin and her countrymen: ghosts and sex and violence and cruelty, gut wrenching drama to challenge any soap opera or miniseries or movie. There are themes and studies aplenty within the nightmare realm of Faulkner’s masterpiece.”

Absalom, Absalom! includes characters and shadows from The Sound and the Fury but delves more deeply into the surrounding world and Southern inheritance that S&F traces. The multiple voices and perspectives each clamor to have their story told, to get to the heart of how they understood the fecund and exhausted world and their role in it. Faulkner orchestrates shifting sympathies and the reader is struck with how deeply immersed we become with the characters and the unfolding mystery at the heart of the work. Racism and its imbedded structure in Southern history at first seem to be the background against which the drama of the story is played out; but ultimately slavery and its de-humanization of all involved becomes the project of the book to explore—although from an unusual and intimate angle.

This book will offer the Salon much to discuss in its gorgeous language and complex subjects: racial identification, pride, identity, impact of history on family, the drive of revenge, the struggle to claim selfhood in a broken world. . .

 SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
• Seven- meeting study  starting 5th October   (No meeting 19 October nor 9 November)
• VIRTUAL meetings– on ZOOM
• Recommended edition: Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner, Vintage Classics  edition (1995); ISBN-: 978-0099475118
• Cost £170 includes notes and critical resources

Clytemnestra, by John Collier, 1882

Antigone, Medea, Clytemnestra, Phaedra, Electra, Hecuba—it’s remarkable that some of the most memorable female characters in drama might first have appeared on stage before an audience of only men (with the roles played by men, as well). We are not sure whether women were even allowed to attend theatre performances in 5th century Athens. We do know, at least, that these fascinating characters were created in a place and time where women had little place in public life.

It’s all the more fascinating, then, that the playwrights who brought them to life gave a voice to such noble, clever, passionate—and above all, strong—women who were keenly aware of the contraints placed on them by the society in which they lived. Whether in doing so the writers were portraying what they desired, or what they feared, is much less clear.

In the six weeks of this study we’ll read six of the finest Classical-age Greek dramas, from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides–the latter, especially, showed a keen interest in the lives of women: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Antigone and Electra, and three plays by Euripides, the Medea, Hippolytus and Bacchae.

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Mark Cwik
• Monday evenings 7:00 pm – 9:15 pm
• Six-meeting study, 05 October to 16 November 2020 (no meeting 26 October)
• Online discussions using Zoom meeting interface. Zoom is free for participants, instructions will be sent upon registration.
• Recommended edition:
  • The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; edited by Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm; ISBN-13: 978-0812983098
• £150 for six-week study, includes notes and questions for preparation.
  

TO REGISTER for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £150.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR: Mark Cwik has been organizing and leading discussions of great literature for over twenty years in London, Chicago and Toronto. He specializes in works from the ancient, mythic and religious world. He was trained as a discussion facilitator while at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago and has been a passionate advocate for great books education since attending St. John’s College, Santa Fe and the University of Chicago Basic Program in Liberal Education.

“I’ve been coming to Mark’s discussion groups for about 15 years . . . Mark is amazing in his ability to keep the group functioning smoothly. He asks questions that get to the heart of the piece and he keeps the group focused on those questions. You don’t feel that he’s trying to steer us to any conclusion; he’s in it with us to figure out what the author is saying. He makes everyone feel welcome and their opinions are respectfully heard. He’s always prepared and totally dedicated to advancing our understanding of the great books.” — group participant.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

Salon Weekend Retreats

Building on the success of our London-based studies, we are excited to offer travel studies that place participants in locales that reflect and contextualize the literature. Journeying together to beautiful sites, the London Lit Salon retreat offers a more intensive immersion in the book while opening the mind to a part of the world illuminated through the beauty of the language.

A Portrait of  A Lady by Henry James

The book is a painted portrait or even a kaleidoscope.  We watch and guess what Isabel will do. But like a portrait, she is (perhaps) caught in a frame and frozen by the artistry –or the terms of her world.

Previous studies have included considerations of gender roles, the negotiated space between self and other, the corruption or freedom offered by privilege, the challenge of looking at nationalities in generalizations (and the tempting ease to do so), the ways in which humans reveal themselves…these Salon discussions are full of wonder: the meeting of the gathered minds and the provoking text is a powerful thing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson seems to echo in the lines and characters of Henry James, Isabel in particular: “You think of me the child of my circumstances: I make my circumstance…I—this thought which is called I, –is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but it is the power of me.” –from Emerson’s essay The Transcendentalist 

Our study of PoAL may include a consideration of this quote in light of Isabel’s life and choices: how much do we make ourselves? How does the world impose itself on the individual in the act of self-creation?

Salon Details and Registration

• Weekend Meeting : October 9th-11th 2020
• Meeting in Rye–The Mermaid Inn and (as weather permits) garden at Henry James House
• Facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
• Cost £165 includes notes and critical resources; rooms at the Mermaid range from £90 per night to £125
• RECOMMENDED EDITION: Norton Critical Edition Oct. 2017; ISBN-10: 0393938530

AUGUST 2020: This Salon is now FULL

To register for the Salon study, please use the Paypal button below to pay £165: (Please pay for the  room directly to The Mermaid Inn once your registration has been confirmed):

About the Mermaid Inn–

This famous and historic Inn is a real find– it is usually booked out but we were able to secure three singles for GBP 90 each per night including breakfast, and 10 double-for-single rooms for GBP 125 each per night for a total of 13 rooms (out of 31 total rooms in the hotel).  There are two lounges for meetings offered at no cost.  WJ’s historic house is 1 minute walk away.

See images and further details here: https://www.mermaidinn.com/about-the-hotel/

 

From J. Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

“The question (could a novel be art) were…framed in terms of technique, but the ideal was no longer just to promote the novel’s ability to communicate more and more details about more and more things, but also to have an aesthetic shape or effect that would be intended by the author and felt by the reader as consciously graceful, beautiful or ‘right.’  Foremost proponent of these ideas was Henry James…” p. 134

“Everything that Isabel has learned about love and marriage growing up in the United States turns out to be wrong—in Europe, marriage is a pure commodity relationship, and it is the fate girls to be bought, sold, and dominated. Their only choices are to accept their fate knowingly or undergo it without understanding it. ..In Pofa Lady James does what he intended to do…uses intense psychological analysis and careful depiction of settings to fill the spots where the vulgar might have been. “ p. 135

“H. James …recognized that, as vital and satisfying as the English novel was, English novels were missing something that French novels possessed—psychological refinement and depth. …HJ wanted to write…important novels about the progress of the inner life, in which the climax might be only a silent recognition by the protagonist that she has made a commitment fatal to her happiness. Readers had to be educated to understand the weight of such subterranean drama…” p.136

“Millions of things came back to her. Atoms danced apart and massed themselves. But how did they compose what people called a life? She clenched her hands and felt the hard little coins she was holding. Perhaps there’s ‘I’ at the middle of it, she thought; a knot; a centre; and again she saw herself sitting at her table drawing on the blotting paper, digging little holes from which spokes radiated. Out and out they went; thing followed thing, scene obliterated scene.”

–Virginia Woolf, The Years

Each study in St Ives is magical. The light, the smell and sound of the sea gilds the intensive study with a unique sense of stepping into another world. This study of The Years, the last novel published by Virginia Woolf while she was still alive, expands our time in Cornwall to five days as requested by past participants. We will meet Wednesday evening for our first exploration with six more meetings spread over the coming days to allow time for enjoyment of the natural and cultural gems offered in this beautiful place. This will be the Salon’s first study of The Years; this study will have the exploratory energy that a first Salon study offers.

IN LIGHT OF THE CURRENT PANDEMIC, the dates for this study are shifted: October 14th-18th 2020 …there  are three spaces available.

The Years is described as a family saga–and is often considered more accessible than other works by Woolf. With the experience of many studies of To The Lighthouse, Between the Acts, The Waves and Mrs Dalloway, I have come to relish the subtle profundity beneath the language experimentation and interior explorations that Woolf offers. The Years engages history– the personal history of a family, the mantel of history of a people, the sense of a denigrated future in the shadow of historical myths and mistakes–and considers how various characters negotiate this troubled inheritance. Woolf moves deftly between the individual and the larger cultural landscapes–illuminating how one person can exist in their vulnerable selfhood amidst the waves of the world around them.

To understand this book, you will want to read with a wide awake mind and then re-read once you have played on the surface of plot and character. Notice how the descriptions along the edges—the fragments, the other stories invoked, the changing weather passages—all comment on and expand the central narrative. We will also consider essays from her work, The Pargiters — the theoretical framework that Woolf wrote alongside The Years but then excluded from the text. This has become available in Mitchell Leaska’s edition: “The Pargiters is interesting in its own right for the insight it offers into Woolf’s politics, which she expresses more bluntly in the novel-essay than she ever had before.” (R. Higney, Modernism Lab)

SALON DETAILS: 

• Five-day Meeting in St Ives — approximately 14 hours of study
• Meeting St Ives Cornwall; facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
• Cost £325 includes notes and critical resources (transport and housing not included)
• RECOMMENDED EDITION: The Years by Virginia Woolf (Vintage Classics Woolf Series) Paperback – 6 Oct 2016 ISBN-10: 1784872237
• If possible, please also purchase The Pargiters–  this book is difficult to find and tends to be pricey– if you can not find an affordable edition, please contact us— I have a few editions for purchase or loan.

To register for the Salon study, please use the Paypal button below to pay £325: (Please pay for the  room directly to No4St Ives once your registration has been confirmed):

*Apologies– it appears that this Paypal button is only working for those with a Paypal account– I am working with Paypal to fix this issue– in the meantime, if you wish to register and don’t have nor want a PP account, please Contact Us directly.

‘A brilliant fantasia of all Time’s problems, age and youth, change and permanence, truth and illusion’ The Times Literary Supplement

The Years is the story of the Pargiter family – their intimacies and estrangements, anxieties and triumphs – mapped out against the bustling rhythms of London’s streets during the first decades of the twentieth century, as their Victorian upbringing gives way to a new world, where the rules of etiquette have shifted from the drawing room to the air-raid shelter. Virginia Woolf’s penultimate novel is a celebration of the resilience of the individual amid time, change, life, death and renewal.

Virginia Woolf:  “If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without doubt stands upon this memory.  It is of lying in bed, half-asleep, haf awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives.  It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one two, behind a yellow blind […}.  If I were a painter I should paint these impressions in pale yellow, silver, and green.  There was the pale yellow blind; the green sea; and the silver of the passion flowers.”

“Here is the past and all its inhabitants miraculously sealed as in a magic tank.”

“The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surace of a deep river.  Then one sees through the surface to the depths.  The past sometimes presses so close that you can feel nothing else.”

—“Sketch of the Past,” begun in June 1939.

St IVES:  Virginia Woolf spent much of her childhood in St. Ives.  The London Literary Salon invites you to join us in St Ives to explore this lovely coastal town and have it serve as a prism through which we will explore Woolf’s perspectives on landscape, domesticity, historical inheritance and identity in her novel The Years. We have already completed four magical weekends with Woolf’s writings in the environment that inspired it– this is an incredible experience!

You will have the opportunity to  visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks, and there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse.

We may also look at Talland House, now privately owned, her childhood summer home.  For several months of the year the elegant house overlooking St Ives Bay would be the Stephens’ family home until 1895 when Virginia’s mother Julia Stephen died.  Although the complete family never returned to St Ives following their mother’s death, her children travellled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.

Accommodation:  We are working with No4 St Ives which is just steps from Talland House and has an elevated position overloooking St Ives Bay.  It is a 5 minute walk from the beach and St Ives Town Centre.

Approximate cost: 

 Rooms at No4 St Ives range from £110-£140 per night– if the room is shared, the cost is halved; breakfast included. Some of us plan to stay Sunday night as well to be able to enjoy an extra day in this beautiful site. The entire cost is to be paid upfront. If for some reason you are unable to attend, we will work to find someone to replace you & reimburse you for the room but can not guarantee that is possible. The Salon cost may be applied to a later study. 

Train cost is approx.  £70  each way(cheaper if bought earlier) 

Salon cost is  £325: We will meet around 14 hours over the five days. The first meeting starts at 5:45 Wednesday evening; the last meeting is scheduled for 9:30-11:30 Sunday morning. On previous trips, many have stayed in St Ives through Sunday evening to have time for further exploration and reflection. Please discuss this option with Sue and Mike from No4 St Ives if you are interested. 

We will enjoy dinner out on Wednesday and Saturday…other costs will include the optional boat trip & visit to the St Ives gallery. 

Getting there:  The train from London takes just over five hours, with one change at St Erth for the branch line to St Ives.

This event and other in-depth explorations of  Virginia Woolf and her works can be found on the website of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

Part of the challenge when reading Woolf is to understand it is not the action that matters but the impression of thoughts; it is by attending to the pattern and signification of thoughts and impressions that we will uncover meaning, innovation. As one of the primary modernist writers, Woolf plays with language; testing its ability to truly reflect human experience by recording the life of the mind not just action. Her narrative form reflects one of the characteristics of Modernist writing in its shifting centre of narrative perspective reflecting a questioning of ultimate and moral authority that characterized the time with the dissolution of Imperialism and absolute values.

Writing from the edge of the violent shift from Victorian to Modernist era, the loss of an old world in the violent destruction of war and massive social change, Woolf’s ambivalence is demonstrated in her work. She struggles against the boundaries and structures of the Victorian era while holding a great longing and nostalgia for the noble traditions of the time.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner

There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text—book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying—but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the only way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.

The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing—even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man—thanks, James Joyce.

Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader—a broader thinker—even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skillfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvelous work was immense.”

—Ulysses Salon participant
See more participant feedback here…

SALON DETAILS

A) DAYTIME: Tuesdays 12-2 PM
B) EVENINGS : Tuesdays 5:00-7:00 PM  **This study will be VIRTUAL**

• Both afternoon and evening studies start January 12th and finish June 20th (combined Sunday evening) 2021 ; there will be a few special Sunday evening meetings for both afternoon & evening groups to address the longer chapters.
• We will meet for 21 meetings; there will be a few breaks around school half-terms
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition; (Penguin Modern Classics), ISBN-10: 0141184434. (There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.)
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582
• The total cost for the 20-meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £420

TO REGISTER, Please use the Paypal button below to pay for the study; upon receipt of payment, you will receive opening notes and loads of resources to start the study.

For the daytime study on Tuesdays :

For the early evening  study on Tuesdays :

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner

After wandering through these rich pages with many wonderful readers, I am keen to offer a study of Ulysses for those who have already passed through once (or more) and are ready to dig deeper. The reading schedule will be the same, but we will approach with an understanding of the structure already in mind. This will allow us to flesh out the themes from the start of the work and engage more thoroughly the historical, social and aesthetic structures that Joyce inhabits and overturns. Hopefully this will also give seasoned readers the opportunity to feel grounded in the text and discover motifs, connections and explorations that they may have missed in the madness of the first reading.

If you have not previously read Ulysses, please join either the afternoon study or the early evening study.

“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skillfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvelous work was immense.”

—Ulysses Salon participant
See more participant feedback here…

SALON DETAILS

• Studies start January 12th and finish June 20th (Sunday combined meeting) ; there will be a few special Sunday evening meetings for both afternoon & evening groups to address the longer chapters.
• We will meet for 21 meetings; there will be a few breaks around school half-terms
• Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
  • Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition; (Penguin Modern Classics), ISBN-10: 0141184434. (There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.)
  • The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582
• The total cost for the 21-meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £420

TO REGISTER, Please use the Paypal button below to pay for the study; upon receipt of payment, you will receive opening notes and loads of resources to start the study.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

Drawing on the success of the LLS, we are excited to expand the studies by offering retreats that place participants in locales that reflect and expand the literature. By taking participants to beautiful places, the LLS retreat offers a more intensive immersion in the book while opening the mind to a part of the world illuminated through the beauty of the language.

The Greek Odyssey study for May 2020 will use Homer’s epic poem to consider closely the guest-host relationship, the defining struggle of humans against overwhelming nature, the struggle to know ourselves in foreign spaces, our understanding of the heroic and the role of myth and epic in lived experience. Actor Jane Wymark and Poet Caroline Donnelly will be assisting Salon Director Toby Brothers in this week-long study, sharing their insights into the spoken word, metre and translation.  In an era where the epic poem is in eclipse, the novel and film having taken over as the preferred vehicles for  complex narratives, we will explore aspects of the Odyssey as a work in the oral tradition.

We have found the perfect site to host this study providing the ideal combination of a local space run by someone who understands our mission & can provide us room & board that has some cultural and adventure offerings — and is easy to access. We will be staying at Rosy’s Village on the stunning Island of Agistri. The study is scheduled for the 3rd (arrival) to the 10th (departure) of May 2020.

** UPDATE: This Salon is now full. If you are interested, please contact us to be added to the waiting list– or to be on the list for the May 2021 Odyssey

SALON DETAILS

• Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Jane Wymark and Caroline Donnelly
• May 2nd-9th 2021; program will run approx. five to six hours per day (one day open) leaving time for other activities (optional kayaking adventure and trip to The Pidavros theatre or Temple of Aphasia
• Preparatory meeting Monday April 26th 7:00-9:30 in London (via ZOOM)
• Recommended editions: The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles AND the Emily Wilson translation  (more details below)
• £475 for the Salon study includes preparatory meetings, background materials and opening notes

Room and half board (two meals per day) will be paid directly to Rosy’s; after you register, you will receive details on payment.

Room Prices for seven night stay: (including Breakfast & Dinner)

• 574 euro  Single  (approx. £510)
• 413 euro    Double      (approx. £365)
• 392 eruo  triple/family room

Other costs: Flights (Right now can be found for £120-200 r/t British Air), ferry to Agistri (usually 14 euro each way but may be 30 euro for arrival if the group chooses private water taxi), one meal a day and extra trips. For flight purchase, please make sure you can be in Piraeus by 3 PM for May 3rd to make the ferry.  We will not be meeting on the 10th so you have choices about your return; ferry are frequent (one hour travel from Agistri to Piraeus).

To register and pay for the study or if you would like further information, please contact us . Opening notes will be sent after registration; please read at least one of the translations before arriving on Agistri.

Primary texts edition recommended:

• The Odyssey translated by Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics, various editions) Nov. 1997 ISBN-13:978-0140268867
• The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson (W.W. Norton & Co., Nov. 2018) ISBN-13: 978-0393356250

Participant reflections May 2019:

“And it was such stirring stuff! It transformed The Odyssey from ever so slightly a form of homework, the better to get to grips with Ulysses, into an unexpectedly powerful, truly immersive and poetic experience – a fascinating study in its own right.”

“The facilitators were great, particularly Jane, who is wonderful, for the readings. That was memorable, for me.

About the epic…      

The Salon has certainly been a place to re-discover- or discover for the first time- the works that form the cornerstones of Western literary tradition. The Odyssey is a root for our understanding of ourselves as well as the words and ways of the ancients. How does it continue to shape our idea of the heroic? What do the dilemmas that Odysseus faces offer to us today? Can we still appreciate the lyric and narrative quality alongside a violent story filled with the suffering and death of nameless servants, slave girls and soldiers?

Many artists have used The Odyssey as an inspiration for their work as Joyce does with Ulysses and the Coen brothers did for their film(winning an Oscar for the best screenplay adaptation from Homer’s original)…the epic struggle to return home and exploration of the guest/relationship remain relevant across time.

David Denby, in his work Great Books, describes his engagement with The Odyssey as an essential exploration of the formation of the self for the reader as well as for Telemachus and Odysseus: “Even at the beginning of the literary tradition of the West, the self has masks, and remakes itself as a fiction and not as a guiltless fiction either. . .

The Odyssey is an after-the-war poem, a plea for relief and gratification, and it turns, at times, into a sensual, even carnal celebration.”

Further reading : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10833515/Alice-Oswald-how-to-read-Homer.html

And here, from Jane, a brief summary of some of the contemporary novels inspired by the Homeric epics….

“All of these books contain major spoilers of the plots of both The Iliadand The Odysseyand so are to be avoided if you’d rather approach the Homeric Epics completely innocent. On the other hand, without some background knowledge of the Greek Pantheon you will soon be at sea so you might consider sacrificing surprise for context…”

Silence of the Girls

Pat Barker

 ‘An important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only at The Iliadbut at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present, an invitation to listen for voices silenced by history and power.’

Emily Wilson

Pat Barker is the author of the much respected award-winning Regenerationtrilogy set during the First World War and is thus very well qualified to retell the story of TheIliadin a style that displays its mythic universality. The first time that Achilles says ‘OK’ it lands as a shocking anachronism, but as you read on you realise that Barker is deliberately showing that the Trojan War has similarities to all wars in all times. Her central character, Briseis, is mentioned no more than a dozen times in Homer: she is an enslaved woman regarded simply as plunder.

The Song of Achilles

Circe

Madeline Miller

 The Song of Achilleswas Miller’s first book and was a major bestseller, published in 23 languages. It retells the story of the siege of Troy from the point of view of Patroclus, whose death Achilles avenged by the killing of the Trojan hero Hector and defiling the corpse by dragging it around the city walls behind his chariot. The book was less popular in some quarters: the NYT described it as having ‘the head of a young adult novel, the body of The Iliadand the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland’ and there’s some truth in that criticism, despite its irritating snobbish tone. It’s certainly a very engaging read and Miller’s second book, Circe, is even more so. Circe is a nymph and witch whose island home Odysseus and his men land up on. The book manages to weave in an enormous amount of Greek myth and legend in palatable form.

A Thousand Ships

Natalie Haynes

 ‘This subversive reseeing of the classics is a many-layered delight’.

Elizabeth Lowry

This is the most recent of the current crop of Homeric retellings. It is written in short chapters and covers the stories of many of the female characters, most of whom get fairly short shrift in Homer. Some are given more than one chapter – especially Penelope and the group Haynes calls The Trojan Women. Penelope’s chapters are written as letters to the absent Odysseus, a device taken from Ovid’s Heroides, but the dry witty tone echoes The Penelopiad written by the great Margaret Attwood fifteen years ago which is definitely worth a read.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.