24.08.12
First set of Salons starting week of September 10th
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
–Wallace Stevens
MANY THANKS to all who voted either by poll or email—I am hoping to squeeze in many of the requested studies in the coming months. The first two studies are described here; these are open for registration on the website: litsalon.co.uk. I have also included the tentative schedule for coming studies- please mark your calendars now …I will provide details for these in the coming weeks.
*TO REGISTER please visit the ‘Events’ section; email me if you have any questions*
*The Salons depend on word of mouth for the continued infusion of new participants and widening perspectives…if you have enjoyed a Salon study, please recommend to a fellow reader.
· The Bear by W. Faulkner (rec. ed: Go Down Moses, Vintage) cost £30
Thursday Sept. 13th Short Story intensive—one three-hour meeting 7-10 PM
· The Aeneid by Virgil trans. by Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics, 2006) cost £75
Tuesdays either 1-3 PM or 8-10 PM; meet for five weeks 11.09- 09.10
Upcoming Salons planned…registration and details to follow
· Howard’s End by E. M. Forster September 20th & 27th—Two Meeting Intensive 7-10 PM
· The Sound and the Fury by W. Faulkner Mondays (choice: 1-3 or 8-10 PM) five week study starting September 24th
· Paradise Lost by John Milton Tuesdays (1-3 or 8-10 PM) five week study starting October 16th
· Four Quartets, Bleak House, The Iliad and The Passion of New Eve are in the process of being scheduled.
As always, I welcome feedback on the proposed studies, schedule requests and recommendations for future studies. Also check out recent posts on the website: comments on London theatre productions, responses to news about reading groups and modern novels, reflections on the use of discussion-based learning…all open for your comments.
I heard Howard Jacobson speak recently on Ulysses as the greatest Jewish novel of the 20th century. Ulysses shows us, Jacobson convincingly argued, ‘the healing power of creative exile into oneself…the dignity of the average damaged person.’ Leopold Bloom’s relationship with Molly is the relationship between the Jews and God: it goes on mostly in Bloom’s head while Molly herself is mostly upstairs and unavailable; it is built on the expectation of discomfort, and it is revolves on the deeply held belief that ‘it requires great potency to deserve great punishment’. His insightful, impassioned analysis of Bloom invoked how a complex character in literature may offer the reader insight into human psyche: one’s own pains and triumphs as reflected in another. So I was disappointed to read his rather simplistic rant against readers and reading groups in the Guardian this weekend.
I agree- emphatically- with his disgust at the limited response of readers who say, “I don’t like this book because I don’t sympathise with the main character.” Liking or sympathising with a character is not the point; understanding our own response, recognizing when a character has discomforted or engaged us gets the reader much further down the road to critical and engaged reading. But I disagree with his generalization that it is destruction of art to use reading to find ourselves–in fact, the discomfort or challenge offered by an authentic portrayal of human experience does help the reader ‘find themselves’–perhaps clarifying our own values in contrast, reflecting back to us our own narrow thinking, helping us expand our perspective by locating ourselves on a spectrum of human consciousness. This is certainly not the only purpose of a great read–and it would be solipsistic to limit the power of reading to simply understanding the self. But Jacobson’s cranky rejection of reading groups as ‘lacking the strong stomach’ necessary to understand and respond to difficult or unsympathetic characters reflects his own limited perspective. My experience with readers in the Salons demonstrates a variety of readers who, with courage and curiosity, explore the difficult aspects of human nature as reflected in the characters we study. My weekend reading partner also pointed out the great irony in a writer who is disgusted by readers who seek to find themselves in books as he is publishing a book about himself as a writer. Hmmmm…
The novel is in danger, according to Howard Jacobson, the Man Booker prize-winning author of The Finkler Question. But, he said, the fault lies not with novelists, but with the lack of good readers.
Describing his experience of appearing at reading groups – “sometimes they are lovely, sometimes they aren’t, and sometimes they are just staggeringly rude” – Jacobson said that he felt a sense of “heartbreak” when he heard readers say, “I don’t like this book because I don’t sympathise with the main character.”
He added: “The language of sympathy and identity and what we call political correctness is killing the way we read.
“That’s like the end of civilisation. That is the end. In that little sentence is a misunderstanding so profound about the nature of art, education and why we are reading, that it makes you despair. Who ever told anyone that they read a book in order to find themselves?”
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Jacobson said that the reader needed a “strong stomach” and ought to be able to withstand the “expression of an ugly point of view” in a book. There was, he added, great danger in the “politically correct” pressure that urged “you can’t write about women like that, you can’t write about men like that, you’ve got to be careful what you say about gays, you’ve got to be careful what you say about Jews… But you have to be able to say of the novel that it has free rein – it can go anywhere.”
His latest book, Zoo Time, is a comic novel about what he called the “multiplying degradations” of being a writer. When he began it, immediately after finishing The Finkler Question, he was convinced the novel that went on to win the Booker would be a disaster.
Being a novelist, he said, is “the nicest way of spending your life but it’s full of indignities. These indignities were swarming after I’d finished The Finkler Question. I also felt that no one was going to read it: the subject matter was inimical to the taste of the times. I was over, I thought. So I thought, ‘I’ll go out in a blaze, I’ll write one more novel that makes fun of myself: make fun of my dreams, make fun of my fantasies.'”
He added: “The signs were very, very bad for The Finkler Question. If ever I were not going to win the Man Booker prize, this was the time. I so wasn’t going to win the Man Booker prize that it actually can’t be that I won the Man Booker prize.”
Zoo Time, then, is about the failure of the novelist and the ruination of the publishing industry. It begins with its hero, a novelist called Guy Ableman, being arrested, after addressing a reading group in Chipping Norton, for shoplifting one of his own novels from the local Oxfam. In the second chapter, Ableman’s publisher shoots himself.
He put aside the draft of Zoo Time when he won the Booker, thinking, “How do you go on writing a book about literary failure when that happens? I put it away thinking that will be the final joke against me: great novel ruined by Booker prize.”
After a matter of months, though, he was prompted to take it up in “a state of retrospective despondency… It all came back to me, if possible even sharper than before, the misery of my life before winning the Man Booker prize.”
Recently I was asked by a parent group to explain the use of seminar discussions towards understanding literature and developing critical thinking skills. Welcome thoughts…
Critical Conversations: Whole group discussions as instrumental in developing critical thinking in response to literature
By Toby Brothers, Director London and Paris Literary Salons, Mentor Teacher, MA Modern Literature University College London
08.12
In our struggle to be innovative in education, new energy is sought in a rejection of traditional methods in the attempt to revolutionize pedagogical approach. This upheaval may have its role: in some cases the rejection illuminates the importance and significance of the technique being rejected.
The use of informed discussion around a shared reading experience dates back to the earliest traditions of literary study. In this case, what is traditional is also revealed to be highly effective as a teaching technique particularly for developing readers. Innovation in this area may be in structuring and assessment, developing participant accountability strategies and techniques for harnessing the energy released in the discussion for individual use. The development of pedagogical theories around the importance of discussion-based learning results in inspirational models; the Harkness Method and Collaborative Reasoning are two examples. From my work with primary school students to highly educated adult readers, I have found literary discussions to be instrumental learning moments for the following reasons:
1. Ideas offered in the discussion help each participant clarify their own response
2. The discussion environment melds social atmosphere to academic; for young learners moving from social education to more formal education, this platform develops that transition. Social relationships are directed towards academic understanding using conversations to increase focus and clarity. In authentic discussions, we take risks: discussing fears, considering alternative points of view, admitting confusion, sharing imaginative responses—the critical conversation around a challenging work of literature offers these opportunities.
3. Participants are challenged to move from a narrow, limited response (“I didn’t like the book”) to a more complex, multi-layered response…the critical conversation moves beyond the first response as the attention of the discussion is focused on understanding and development of themes, character, motifs, narrative perspective, irony, figurative language: an understanding of how these tools are used and how meaning is created becomes much more satisfying then the initial response.
4. Participants who are invested or intrigued by the book’s contents will speak up more readily in the beginning; their enthusiasm ignites the curiosity of the more reluctant reader acting as positive peer pressure towards learning. One student’s excitement becomes another student’s inspiration.
5. As a healthy discussion atmosphere is developed, students become more comfortable asking questions and admitting to areas that are poorly or incompletely understood. Students learn to use the group collective intelligence to augment their own understanding; this can be facilitated with structured partnered work in preparation for discussions.
6. A good discussion replicates the broadening potential of a strong work of literature: the narrowness of our own perspective is exposed in light of the ideas and experiences of others. Hearing a different response to a particular character or dilemma, the student reflects back on their own response, considers in light of a different opinion, modifies or develops or strengthens their position as a result. Any of these actions engage the mechanics of critical thinking: reflection, self-questioning, analysis, increased structure in theoretical formulation…
7. Critical conversations may require structures to make spoken and spontaneous thoughts tangible and developmental. Participant pre-writing and post-writing, with teacher guidance is one method to help students articulate their ideas and record the development of their responses as a result of the discussion.
Focused whole group discussion in response to the reading of a shared, challenging work of literature is the core methodology of higher education. Younger students can equally benefit from the challenge and intellectual support provided by the discussion experience. The young student who reads and discusses literature that challenges them creates a life-long reader who embraces difficult writing and complex ideas as worth the discipline of comprehension.
For the choices that interest you, mark preference for afternoon sessions, evening sessions, or one to two meeting intensives. There have been requests for more short intensives; while these offer an opportunity for a deep immersion, the struggle is to build a cohesive group in one or two meetings while covering the richness of the work. For some of the texts, I think this is particularly difficult therefore am scheduling two intensive meetings which would allow our work and momentum to move through the length of the work. For others, such as Paradise Lost, an intensive study is not ideal.
You can use the Doodle poll or simply contact me with your preferences in an email. Please complete this as soon as possible (by Monday August 27th noon at the latest) so I can announce the fall schedule with your input… the following will be scheduled (if there is interest) between the first week of September and mid-November. I am aiming for another Ulysseian spring so work in The Odyssey, Hamlet and The Portrait of the Artist are recommended if that is of interest.
*Descriptions for many of the following can be found by following the links to the website (please disregard the dates)*
The Aeneid by Virgil (Five two-hour meetings or two intensives)
Howard’s End by E. M. Forster (Five two-hour meetings or two intensives)
This article titled “Howard Jacobson attacks the dearth of ‘good readers'” was written by Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer, for theguardian.com on Friday 24th August 2012 17.25 UTC