Past Salons – Long Works

Angle of Repose

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Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose

angle-of-repose-cover

 “What interests me in all these papers is not Susan Burling Ward, the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West they spend their lives in. What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them.”

                                                                                                                                 ―Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

When we are faced with the need to make changes in our lives, either by chance or by choice, where and how do we find equilibrium amid the flux? Can we achieve a new place of rest or do we always remain poised in precarious balance among irreconcilable forces?

In this beautiful novel set in the American West, Wallace Stegner explores the challenge—and the art—of making changes, through the dual stories of Lyman Ward and his grandmother Susan Burling Ward. At 58 years-old, confined to a wheelchair by a debilitating bone disease, and dependent on others for his most basic needs, retired historian Lyman Ward looks back to the lives of his grandparents in an attempt to make sense of the profound changes he is experiencing in his marriage and family, his own identity and the culture of the late 1960s. A century earlier, his grandmother Susan Burling, a talented writer and artist, had left an East Coast life of refinement and gentility to follow her mining-engineer husband Oliver Ward as he set out to make a name for himself in the newly-opened American West.

Through Susan’s letters, drawings and published writings, Lyman pieces together the story of his grandparents’ life and marriage. It is a tension of opposites, each with differing expectations. Susan Ward, especially, struggles to adapt herself to the dust, dirt and lack of culture of the cities and towns of the West.  Throughout her married life she defines herself through her east coast roots, debating Oliver\’s worthiness as a husband and provider, and assessing what she has given up in exchange for a life of adventure and uncertainty.

Yet, by the time Lyman knows his grandparents late in their lives, they seem to have found some point of “repose,” a place where the tensions have eased, or at least balanced themselves out. Stegner’s searching and insightful novel offers us a profound meditation on relationships, marriage, and the ways that time, place, and human interaction impose themselves and shape our characters, identities, dreams and desires.

SALON DETAILS

  • Five meeting study
  • Recommended edition: Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner, introduction by Jackson Benson; Penguin Classics edition (30 Mar. 2006); ISBN-13: 978-0141188003

Antigone

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Sophocles’ Antigone

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“A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.”

― Sophocles, Antigone

 Across time, this play from the height of the culture of Ancient Greece has engaged our questions around the desires of the individual against the coherence of the community. Although modern audiences tend to sympathise fully with Antigone, it is important to remember,as Bernard Knox explains in his introduction to our edition, that “…before (Creon) is driven by the consequences of Antigone’s defiance to reveal his true and deepest motives, he represents a viewpoint few Greeks would have challenged: that in times of crisis, the supreme loyalty of the citizen is to the state…” This essential query of the needs of the individual or the bonds of the family up against the rule of law or state structure is relevant in our contemporary experience as we try to find room for individual conscience in a world increasingly dictated by faceless agency.  As with all Salon studies, our approach is both thematic and language-based as we work to discover meaning and relevance together.

SALON DETAILS

  • One-meeting intensive study
  • Recommended edition:The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles,introduction by Bernard Knox; Penguin Books. ISBN-13: 978-0140444254

Here are some further thoughts on the work situated in a modern context:

Like all great Greek tragedies, Antigone presents us with existential questions similar to those addressed by Socrates and Jesus. In the choral ode to man, human existence is characterized as wondrous, riddle-like, uncanny. Human beings are natural and rational at once, bound by necessity yet gifted with freedom, mortal yet capable of transcending the mere necessities of life and survival, the doers of good and evil, makers and breakers of laws and city walls. Although the story of Antigone addresses these universal and timeless contradictions and perplexi- ties of humankind, it simultaneously tells the story of a singular individual: Antigone, a woman who defies King Creon’s edict without any fear, doubts, or regrets. This courageous woman, the fruit of incest, has fascinated philosophers in the nineteenth century, inspired playwrights in the twentieth century, and intrigued feminist thinkers and activists for decades.
— http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/62070.pdf   from the introduction to Feminist Readings of Antigone (© 2010 State University of New York Press, Albany)

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

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Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

smart-grand-central

“Perhaps I am his hope. But then she is his present. And if she is his present, I am not his present.
Therefore, I am not, and I wonder why no-one has noticed I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me.
For I am utterly collapsed. I lounge with glazed eyes, or weep tears of sheer weakness.

“All people seem criminally irrelevant. I ignore everyone and everything, and, if crossed or interrupted
in my decay, hate. Nature is only the irking weather and flowers crude reminders of stale states of being.”

― Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Elizabeth Smart has been an enigma for readers and critics alike―but once you have dipped into her work, you will find her words crawl beneath your skin, reaching those spaces of loss and love that shape our humanity.  In our study, we will read aloud parts of her work and consider its experimental form and controversial content. Does literature that examines the wounds and torments of love with the same sensuous approach that golden romances employ show us something more than those softer works?

“Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate.

“Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour.

“Oh, canary, sing out in the thunderstorm, prove your yellow pride. Give me a reason for courage or a way to be brave. But nothing tangible comes to rescue my besieged sanity, and I cannot decipher the code of the eucalyptus thumping on my roof.

“I am unnerved by the opponents of God, and God is out of earshot. I must spin good ghosts out of my hope to oppose the hordes at my window. If those who look in see me condescend to barricade the door, they will know too much and crowd in to overcome me.

“The parchment philosopher has no traffic with the night, and no conception of the price of love. With smoky circles of thought he tries to combat the fog, and with anagrams to defeat anatomy. I posture in vain with his weapons, even though I am balmed with his nicotine herbs.

Moon, moon, rise in the sky to be a reminder of comfort and the hour when I was brave.”

― Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

SALON DETAILS

  • Two meeting study
  • Recommended edition: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, by Elizabeth Smart, foreword by Brigid Brophy; Flamingo/Harper Collins edition (1992); ISBN-: 978-0586090398

Frankenstein

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”     

― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

In the 200th anniversary year of Mary Shelley’s gothic novel we are able to peel back the layers of the block-headed, hideous monster and get down to Mary Shelley’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 story 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 book raises philosophical questions around ambition and creation: if we are able to scientifically create life, should we employ that knowledge? What are the responsibilities of the creator to the created?

I recommend the Norton Critical Edition as this edition includes Mary Shelley’s original 1818 edition with extensive commentary including a consideration of why the 1831 edition that Percy Bysshe Shelley heavily edited has been more popular but the earlier edition is the better- and bolder- work. Contained in that publication story is an artifact of the struggles women faced publishing.

SALON DETAILS

  • Three-meeting study
  • Recommended edition: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, Norton Critical Edition 2E (Norton Critical Editions 2012); ISBN-13: 978-0393927931

Richard III

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Shakespeare’s Richard III

Richard III is Shakespeare’s probing of unrepentant evil. In this play, the beauty of Shakespeare’s language combines with his psychological probing to develop one of the most complex and riveting portraits of human agony turned into action. As literary critic Marjorie Garber points out: “Shakespeare’s Richard III is arguably the first fully realized and psychologically conceived character in his plays.” As an audience, we are fascinated by how raw power is socially channeled into manipulation and revenge—perhaps we learn more from the study of misbehavior than we do studying those who behave in morally acceptable ways. Richard III is the ancestor to many of our popular villains: his masterful wielding of language offers a thinking villain who will ask us to reflect on our own structures of truth and moral behavior.

Some words…

I, that am rudely stamp’d and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them

As with the other Shakespearian plays, for this one evening intensive study we will read aloud significant passages, working to access the tone of performance that is so vital to understanding the plays. We will also view portions of various filmed productions.

Measure for Measure

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Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” –Matthew 7:1-2

This problem play, this dark comedy draws its title from this biblical quote and suggests the question at the heart of the play: is judging – one or several humans of another – possible at all? From what vantage point can one fallible human being judge another, mete out measure for measure?

Samuel Coleridge speaks to the controversy surrounding this play by saying that, “Measure for Measure is the single exception to the delightfulness of Shakespeare’s plays…although it is Shakespearian throughout. . . .” The play is of particular interest to scholars and critics interested in English history, the life of the court, religion and the presentation of women and sexuality in drama. With its passages of brilliant verse and psychological investigation, this is a play that requires our attention no matter how hard it may be to categorize.

Man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
…………
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep. . .

Measure for Measure, 2.2.120-125

Isabella’s accusation—as she is being asked to give her body for her brother’s life—queries the ‘power divine’ that cloaks the figures of authority in our world including the playwright (the author whose creation employs authority). The power to judge brings man close to the gods; the playwright also enacts that power as he or she offers characters of good or evil, actions that evoke our approbation or condemnation.

As with the other Shakespearian plays, for this one-meeting intensive study we will read aloud significant passages, working to access the tone of performance that is so vital to understanding the plays. We will also view portions of filmed productions.

King Lear

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Shakespeare’s King Lear

King Lear. Photograph: Tristram Kenton (Guardian)

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our teeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurour and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man!”

― William Shakespeare, King Lear

King Lear is regarded by many as Shakespeare’s greatest tragic work,looking at the nature of love and loyalty in its rawest manifestations. The goals of the Salon are to acquaint or re-acquaint you with the language of Shakespeare, consider the dynamic between theater and literature, and to develop an appreciation for Shakespeare’s ability to speak of the human condition in ways that ring like a choral bell across four centuries. This Salon will provide the opportunity for performance and presentation. The work is meant to be understood first and foremost as theater, and we will do our best to honour Shakespeare’s intention in the Salon. I will suggest clips from film versions of the work to help bring the words to life, and use Issac Assimov’s meaty background information to help us understand the historical context and allusions of the play.

Part of the beauty of this play is found in the honest exploration of parent-child relationships. This fundamental unit is based on a love so elemental as to be almost inarticulate- at the same time, the parent-child relationship can be fraught with power struggles, issues of entitlement, betrayals that run as deeply as the love, and the disorganizing pressures of the outer world. Shakespeare offers a study of a variety of these relationships, from the absolute filial loyalty of Cordelia (which traps her in its inarticulateness) to the twisted love (which one might read as love’s opposite) of her sisters- and others- Kent’s love of Lear, Edmond and Edgar of their father- that help give the reader a field of inquiry for this most essential human experience.

King Lear brings us to the depths of human suffering- to madness, torture, betrayal and death- but not in a way that distances us from the experience. The language allows us to continue to be within the emotions of the characters, even as the events become almost hyperbolic in their tragedy. Frank Kermode describes the universal nature of the tragedy in Lear:

“In King Lear we are no longer concerned with an ethical problem that, however agonizing, can be reduced to an issue of law or equity and discussed forensically. For King Lear is about suffering represented as a condition of the world as we inherit it or make it for ourselves. Suffering is the consequence of a human tendency to evil, as inflicted on the good by the bad; it can reduce humanity to a bestial condition, under an apparently indifferent heaven. It falls, insistently and without apparent regard for the justice they so often ask for, so often say they believe in, on the innocent; but nobody escapes.”

– Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language, pg. 184

SALON DETAILS

  • Four-week study
  • Recommended edition: King Lear, by W. Shakespeare, Arden Shakespeare edition (1997); ISBN-13: 978-190343659

Hamlet

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Shakespeare’s Hamlet

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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. 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 view various filmed adaptations

SALON DETAILS

  • Two meeting study
  • Any standard edition of Hamlet with line numbers

The Sagas of Icelanders

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The Sagas of Icelanders

“With law shall our land be settled, and with lawlessness wasted.”

– Njal’s Saga

As grandly epic as Homer, rich in tragedy as Sophocles, compellingly human as Shakespeare, and psychologically keen as Chekhov—the sagas of Icelanders are the crowning achievement of medieval Scandinavian narrative and rank among the world’s greatest literary treasures. They describe a world of a millennium ago that nevertheless rings familiar with perennial human struggles.

The forty-plus narratives of adventure and conflict that comprise the sagas are set in Iceland’s 9th- and 10th-century Age of Settlement, when a handful of families fled the oppressive kingship of Norway to set up new lives on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. It was in Iceland the era of a unique commonwealth of free chieftains with no king, clerical hierarchy, or armies, ruled by Viking traditions of honour and blood vengeance. Written down anonymously several hundred years later, the sagas look back on a pioneer generation struggling to forge and maintain a self-governing community in a harsh environment at the edge of the known world.

With economy of style and astute insight into character, the sagas portray poets, warriors, statesmen, farmers, and outlaws —strong and determined men and women who strive for power, wealth, fame, respect, and love in a frontier society that wavers between the rule of law and vengeance. In this six-meeting study we will start with a reading of two shorter tales—the Saga of the Confederates and the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi—that will introduce us to the unique Icelandic literary style. We’ll follow that with two full-length sagas that are among the finest examples of the Icelandic family sagas, Egil’s Saga and the Saga of Burnt Njal.

SALON DETAILS

  • Six-meeting study
  • Recommended edition:
    • The Sagas of Icelanders, introduction by Robert Kellogg, preface by Jane Smiley; Penguin Classics, 2001;
      ISBN-13: 978-0141000039
    • Njal’s Saga, edited and translated by Robert Cook; Penguin Classics, 2002; ISBN-13: 978-0140447699

Midnight’s Children

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Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

MidsKids cover

On the surface, Midnight’s Children recounts, directly and symbolically, the birth of India as a modern nation, shrugging off the last vestiges of colonialism in a mad burst of independence. But India is not one story, one people. The billowing of beliefs, languages, ethnic loyalties that occurred after the stroke of midnight on August 15th, 1947, is reflected in the experience of Rushdie’s main character, a boy named Saleem Sinai who is born at the same moment as the independent India. Rushdie weaves magic and history in a racing, mad narrative that addresses issues of identity, communalism and the imaginary homeland we all carry within ourselves.

Our study of the text will include background information on the history of India as well as various belief systems and how these are manifested in modern India. The group will do reflective writing on how place and culture define self as well as our journeys away from and into our inheritance.

Rushdie explores the nature of history and its intimate relation, memory in Midnight’s Children. Rushdie is interested in how history is a story told- and as a story is shaped by the teller. He explains how he plays with these ideas in the charcter of Saleem in his essay, ‘Errata’: or, Unreliable Narration in Midnight’s Children:

“When I began the novel (as I’ve written elsewhere) my purpose was somewhat Proustian. Time and migration had placed a double filter between me and my subject, and I hoped that if I could only imagine vividly enough it might be possible to see beyond those filters, to write as if the years had not passed, as if I had never left India for the West. But as I worked I found that what interested me was the process of filtration itself. So my subject changed, was no longer a search for lost time, had become the way in which we remake the past to suit our present purposes, using memory as our tool. Saleem’s greatest desire is for what he calls meaning, and near the end of his broken life he sets out to write himself, in the hope that by doing so he may achieve the significance that the events of his adulthood have drained from him. He is no dispassionate, disinterested chronicler. He wants so to shape his material that the reader will be forced to concede his central role. He is cutting up history to suit himself, just as he did when he cut up newspapers to compose his earlier text, the anonymous note to Commander Sabarmati. The small errors in the text can be read as clues, as indications that Saleem is capable of distortions both great and small. he is an interested party in the events he narrates…History is always ambiguous. Facts are hard to establish, and capable of being given many meanings. Reality is built on our prejudices, misconceptions and ignorance as well as on our perceptiveness and knowledge. The reading of Saleem’s unreliable narration might be, I believed a useful analogy for the way in which we all, every day, attempt to ‘read’ the world.” (1983)

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