London Literary Salon Update
November 15, 2011
1. Updates
2. New Salons Starting NEXT WEEK(date change): Hamlet and Odyssey
3. Doodle Poll for upcoming Salons….
1. Updates
We are having lively discussions around fragmentation and identity, parenting, inheritance and the subjective nature of history in the current study of Midnight’s Children. I am recognizing again that no study of a complex work of literature is ever the same; though we visit some previous ideas, the particular combination of participants and the worlds they each bring to the study invigorates the understanding of the novel in new ways.
I have pushed out the start of Hamlet and The Odyssey a week as we are just under the minimum needed to run a strong Salon…so if you are interested, please let me know in the next few days…I am reminded of the importance of The Odyssey to all who live in the idea of a democratic world: how we find in the ancient tales the roots of our ideas around fairness and justice, fate and human responsibility.
I have shortened both these studies to just four weeks in recognition of the reduced time available just before the winter holidays…I am also announcing a Faulkner Salon intensive on December 11th…As I Lay Dying is one of his shorter, more accessible works and would be a good starting place for more Faulkner work in the New Year. Also coming up due to participant request…Between the Acts, The Passion of New Eve, Light in August…
Come join the conversation and help open minds…some great studies starting next week …and I welcome suggestions for the 2012 Salon season(use the Doodle Poll below). I am planning on a Ulysses study starting in the second week of January…six months and a read of a lifetime…let me know if you are interested. To sign up for any of the following, use the hyper link or visit the websitehttp://clone.checkyourtestsite.co.uk/ or email me… PLEASE sign up soon so I can confirm which Salons will be running and get the opening notes out to you to support your reading.
See you in the pages….
2. Upcoming Salons: Starting next week—still time to register and read…
• The Odyssey by Homer (recommended translation:Robert Fagles/Penguin Classics)
Starts: Tuesday, November 23th 2011 at 8:00 pm
Ends: Tuesday, December 13th 2011 at 10:00 pm
Four week study 65£
This study will help prepare for Ulysses in 2012…or is a richly satisfying work simply for its own huge cultural footprint in the development of epic literature.
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?
• Hamlet Poem Unlimited by William Shakespeare (recommended edition: Arden)
Starts: Wednesday, November 16th 2011 at 1:00 pm
Ends: Wednesday, December 7th 2011 at 3:00 pm
Four Week study daytime study 65£ Wednesdays 1-3 PM
Or Two night Evening study 45£
Friday December 2nd and Thursday December 8th 7-10 PM
How does one introduce a play that is already drunk on its own superlatives? For this Salon, I propose 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. I 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.
As with any other Salon dealing with a dramatic work, we will perform large parts of the text and view various filmed adaptations….and hopefully organize ourselves to go see a performance.
Register here 
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.” –As I Lay Dying
3. Doodle Poll to choose the next Salon intensive and weekly studies:
