Coming Salons

Nicole describes the Ulysses Salon on Bookstoker

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Spend the Winter tackling Ulysses with Toby Brothers and The London Literary Salon

By Nicole Hubbard (published on Bookstoker)

After a chance conversation with a friend about life after 50, she casually mentioned that each year she had taken on a new project outside her comfort zone. Reading Ulysses was last year’s challenge and with considerable generosity, she unearthed a niggling desire of mine to read Joyce’s great modernist work and offered to put me in touch with The London Literary Salon and its director Toby Brothers. Later that dark early January night, I booked the last place on the course. What follows was simply the perfect way to spend 20 Tuesday evenings of those dark winter months…sitting on the tube to Kentish Town, Ulysses in hand (Penguin Student Edition with notes was recommended) reading and re-reading the travails, poetry, exchanges, wanderings, musings, loves and longing of Leopold and Molly Bloom and staying the course with Stephen Daedalus as he fumbles his way to full artistic expression.

In the first six short weeks, we had encountered new languages and labyrinthine sentences; the criss-crossing of the beach and Dublin streets and immersed ourselves in the newspaper room and the pub as the chatter and 3D surround-sound of Bloom’s external and internal world is revealed.  Anti-Semitism, Christian cant, class difference, and a lengthy listing of Ireland’s cultural forebears are exposed and critiqued before we encounter Molly in bed. How does it work? How does one gather 10 diverse readers to joyfully engage with the struggle of a highly complex 900 page early 20th century novel. Book Club format or seminar? Daytime or evening?

Its success lies in the focused, light touch of Toby who facilitates each session, drawing us individually into the discussion, gently and with warm encouragement. Welcomed into her home, we are invited to have a cup of tea or glass of wine before settling quickly into a sofa and chairs around a low table. Books are stacked in precarious columns by the fireplace; Toby sits Ulysses in hand, each page lovingly ruffled and marked with miniature post-it notes as an aide-memoir to themes or extended references.

After pacey introductions, we are invited to share our thoughts, struggles and response to the first chapter. Always hard in a new group, participants declare whether they are newcomers or old-timers (to either The London Literary Salon or Ulysses) and invited to share what inspired them to join; most of us have a degree in English or wish we did. All are committed; one is even reading and discussing Ulysses for a second time.

Close analysis and attention to the rhythm and nuance of language build as we are each asked to read. In the act of listening, much is deduced about the reader and the text, and so the two are interwoven. Our discoveries become personal and collective: One reader understands religious symbolism and the Catholic liturgy; another, with therapeutic training is able to offer insight into Bloom’s projection of love and Stephen’s thwarted desires. A woman to my right is musical and not only decodes but sings the Irish songs giving a richer sonic context to the scene. Toby teases out our thoughts and refocuses our gaze on the text “I’m going to pull us back to Bloom…” At the end, we have all slowed down in a form of literary mindfulness, but are energised as we are given suggestions of other critics to read and our next 50 pages.

It takes us just under six months to explore the creative process and journey through 24 hours of a Dublin day. We finish just in time to celebrate the annual Bloomsday – the day on which the novel is set – with other wild Joyceans in London or Dublin.

Check out more of Nicole’s reviews (and other delicious offerings on Bookstoker

Thanks loads to Nicole for this– the best descriptions of our work together come from participants…we start the big U again January 2020….

 

‘Subversive, queer and terrifyingly relevant: Moby Dick is the novel for our times”

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In this week’s Guardian, Philip Hoare celebrates Moby Dick on the occasion of Herman Melville’s 200th year birthday– and offers six reasons why this is the novel for our times.

Mark & I have completed two studies of this incredible and uncanny book this past year–and will offer one more study starting in September.

Here is Hoare on why everyone should read this book:

“The book features gay marriage, hits out at slavery and imperialism and predicts the climate crisis – 200 years after the birth of its author, Herman Melville, it has never been more important.

Thursday marks the 200th birthday of Herman Melville – the author of the greatest unread novel in the English language. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen eyes glaze over when I ask people if they have conquered Moby-Dick. It is the Mount Everest of literature: huge and apparently insurmountable, its snowy peak as elusive as the tail of the great white whale himself.

Having grown up loving whales as a boy – in the era of the Save the Whale campaigns of the 1970s – I was underwhelmed when I watched John Huston’s grandiose 1956 film, Moby Dick. Perhaps it was because I saw it on a tiny black-and-white TV, but the whole story seemed impenetrable to me. And there weren’t enough whales. I would have been even less keen had I known that the whale footage Huston did include had been specially shot off Madeira, where they were still being hunted. For the Hemingwayesque director, there was none of that final-credit nonsense: “No animals were harmed in the making of this film.” Because they very much were.

Forty years later, I saw my first whales in the wild, off Provincetown, a former whaling port on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was there, in New England, that I finally finished the book. What had seemed to be a heroic tale of the high seas proved to be something much darker and more sublime. I realised its secret. Not only is it very funny and very subversive, but it maps out the modern world as if Melville had lived his life in the future and was only waiting for us to catch up. I fell in love with Melville as much as I had fallen in love with the whales. My own five-year-long voyage searching for these magnificent creatures produced my own book, Leviathan or, The Whale and a subsequent film, The Hunt for Moby-Dick. But even now, having read it a dozen times, I’m still not sure I can tell you what Moby-Dick is all about. Yes, it’s the tale of Captain Ahab, who sails his ship, the Pequod, in search of a white whale that had bitten off his leg. But it’s also a wildly digressive attempt to comprehend the animals themselves. And despite the author’s rather unhelpful conclusion, after 650 pages, about the whale, “I know him not, and never will”, here are some very good reasons why you need to read his crazily wonderful book.

Enjoy the rest of the article:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/30/subversive-queer-and-terrifyingly-relevant-six-reasons-why-moby-dick-is-the-novel-for-our-times

 

Proposed Salons from Toby– Weekly studies, Retreats

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Late Summer-Autumn 2019 thru Spring 2020

Having just returned from another magical St Ives weekend immersed in Virginia Woolf, I am inspired anew by the rare luxury of being in a beautiful place with a group of wonderful minds encountering a work of literature intensely together.

I leave these weekends gasping: they are full on (even as we build in down-time)—the intense engagement with the book fills and expands the mind. There is the added stimulus of the place and the experience of the group: joining together, coming to know each other, pushing against each other, clarifying one’s own thoughts and perspectives as they rub up against others…each retreat feels larger than the actual time—and we are so fully awake.

Here are some participant reflections from this past weekend:

“Thank you Toby for this caring, well organised, managed tour de force VW weekend…”

“Toby you are incredible!   it was a wonderful two days which felt like a week….  such a great bunch of women and  so interesting.   friendships made, insights gained…. lighthouse reached…. perfect……   hope you get some proper down time.   thank you thank you!”

Below you will find some of the coming courses– both travelling and in London…always happy to hear feedback on the offerings and what is of interest. Most of the following should be posted and available for registration in the next week.

Fall London Regular

  • Monday 5-7 Moby Dick 9 weeks Sept.16- Nov.25
  • Tuesday evenings short courses TS Eliot: “The Wasteland” followed by “Four Quartets”
  • Wednesdays 1:15-3:15 Finnegan Wake
  • Wednesdays 5-7, 7:30-9:30 Proust– Volume II Budding Groove (On-going study)
  • Thursdays 12-2 PM Proust  Volume IV pt. 2 (On-going study, Salon Full)

Fall travel studies

  • Sept 20-22 Camber Sands Beloved  (Private group study)
  • Nov 22-24  Rye Henry James — Portrait of A Lady
  • October 18-21 St Ives Retreat: Between the Acts
  • November 15-18 Javier Marías – Infatuations

Spring London Regular

  • Continued Proust studies Wednes. Eves & Thursday mid-day
  • Continued Finnegans Wake Weds. 13:15-15:15
  • Ulysses 2020 January -June Tuesday mid-day & evenings

Spring 2020 Travel Salons

  • April St Ives Woolf Immersion (dates to be determined)
  • May 3-11   Homer’s Odyssey Greece (posted)
  • May 17-24  Umbria yoga & Henry James/Silent Duchess trip
  • September 2020 Iliad in Greece  (dates to be determined)

August 2018 reflections

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August Reflections 2018

In the midst of summer’s heat, thoughts soften and grow fluid. One of the gifts of these long, slower days is mind-wandering time. Swimming thoughts seep into all parts of my day and connections—between people, the land, words—happen with greater ease. I think back on the incredible discussions of the year and start to feel hungry for more. I hope wherever you are: good reading and inspiring landscapes bathe your mind.

 

Below you will virtually meet new facilitator Basil in his thoughts On Reading—his Nabokov studies are filling up so register now if you are interested. Mark is offering two courses in South London—his Great Ideas study is a wonderful way to fill in some gaps in the wisdom writings from the ancient and contemporary giants of the mind. The Magic Mountain study currently has four spaces remaining in both the afternoon and evening studies: we commence this big work on the 11th of September with what I know already to be a wonderfully lively gathering of minds.

 

To celebrate the use of Hygge Pygge Café this fall, we will offer a brief (and free!) one-night poetry study: we will have a poem or two ready to read and consider. The opening up of this distilled form of expression through discussion helps support our individual encounter with the complexity of the writing, allowing us access to the sharp beauty offered there. No preparation needed; the only cost is the purchase of a libation and/or meal or desert- we are meeting on September 12th at 37 Chalk Farm Road in the heart of Camden Town.

 

In the next newsletter I will offer details on the May 2019 Odyssey trip to Greece, Mark’s Iliad study & the October English Patient short study…other exciting news to come! In recent conversations with founding Salonistas from Paris, we were reflecting on the use of creative writing responses to the longer studies in the Salon. I am looking to re-integrate this optional writing to our work together: I find a bit of writing after an in-depth study helps ground the reading and our responses. As always, questions, ideas and requests most gratefully received.

See you in the pages….

On Reading from new facilitator Basil Lawrence

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On Reading

       from Basil Lawrence, Salon facilitator

 

I arrange my shelves by publication date in an attempt to understand how each book relates to its neighbours. The spines remind me that Moby Dick, Bleak House and Madame Bovary appeared in that order in the 1850s. That The Trial, The Great Gatsby and Mrs Dalloway all debuted in 1925. Because in addition to reading books individually, I need them to remind me of their bigger story. That literature lives.

 

Even without doing the maths, I know that I won’t have enough time to get through everything I’d like to. So I keep my head down and get on with the greats. Sure, I suffer relapses. I stop altogether or am tempted by a hyped novel, but more often than not this leaves me dissatisfied and incomplete . . . and reminding myself not to waste time.

 

Reading, for me, is a preparation for the next ascent. And I climb because the views are breath-taking! I’ve not yet tackled War and Peace; I’m training with the The Red and the Black and Les Misérables.

 

Frustratingly, there are books I’d love to read, but that I haven’t feel confident enough to open . . . perhaps because I’m uncertain of how to start, or because I feel daunted by their weight. If I had an obol for every time I’d attempted to settle down with The Odyssey before I met Toby, I’d have enough money to buy myself a copy of The Iliad. Which is why I value the Salon: without it I wouldn’t have found my way into the poem; without her I’d have missed a friend.

 

Books are quiet, thoughtful companions, that scare easily. I value them because during especially difficult times of my life, my capacity to engage with stories is often the first things to vanish. And that’s not unlike losing a friend, or a lover. So when I’m able to, I read. I read. I read.

 

Welcome to Basil Lawrence– facilitator for fall Nabokov studies

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It is my great pleasure to introduce Basil to the Salon community. Basil is a skilled facilitator with a deep appreciation for the power of language. For all who have been asking for a Nabokov study, here is your chance!

From Basil:
“Intro
I met Toby when we worked together at the Society of Analytical Psychology where I’ve been fortunate to attend her poetry and literary seminars. As an extroverted introvert, I’m drawn to the solitary pleasures of reading but I love exploring texts within a group. Everyone’s contribution expands my understanding of the work, and myself and my fellow companions.

As a reader I’m particularly attracted to patterns and aesthetics, and I’m fascinated with how the right word in the right place creates a world that reflects us back to ourselves. I love words and well-crafted sentences, and over the years I’ve become increasingly drawn to the similarities between therapeutic interpretation and close reading. I’ve come to believe that great writing increases our understanding of what it means to be human, and what it means to be alone in a crowd. ”

Coming Studies Autumn 2018 –draft…

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Hard to believe we wandered through Ulysses, Proust, Invisible Man, Mad Woman’s voice, Finnegans Wake The Waves, Frankenstein in last few months…along with magical retreats in Camber Sands, Valencia, Kandersteg & Dublin. I am still basking in the glow of these incredible studies and the lively minds that joined together to illuminate the books. We are putting together the next newsletter announcing the coming studies– but here briefly is what we are considering…as always, contact us with feedback, requests, questions….

 

Fall 2018 Salons proposed

  • To the Lighthouse – two sets: Weekend Sept 28-30th (Monday 24th); Weekend October 5-7 (Oct 1st prep)
  • Proust Budding Grove  (Salon Full) : 20th– Dec. 6th Thursdays 12-2 PM
  • Finnegan’s Wake: Sept 19- 24 October
  • Camus The Stranger:  Short Intensive (details to follow)
  • Wordsworth’s Preludes (details to follow)
  • Magic Mountain: 13 week study starting Sept 12 – Dec. 12 – Tuesdays (day time/Eve)
  • A Heart So White — Valencia weekend study Nov. 16-18th

Other works?

  • Henry James
  • Marilynne Robinson 3-part study – Lila, Home
  • Moby Dick

Geoff’s Sanctuary/ Claire Denis

Mark—Iliad (November) &

Basel—Pale Fire

Faulkner series  @ City Lit Mondays 12:30-2:30

Midnight’s Children @ SAP

Salon Retreat studies 

  • To the Lighthouse (two weekends in fall 2018 are currently full) May 17th-19th 2019
  • Heart So White Valencia Spain Nov. 16-18 2018
  • The Odyssey in Greece– May 3rd- 10th  2019 with Carolynn Donnelly & Jane Wymark details to follow…
  • Reading the Body end of May 2019 details to follow…

Help Select Our Next Novel

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We have several proposed novels for a short study in mid-November, and we would like to ask your help choosing which to offer. Please take our quick survey to let us know what interests you. Alternatively, have a look at the proposed titles below and email us your thoughts at litsalon@gmail.com. We’ll keep the survey open until October 15. Thanks!

  • Anne Enright is an Irish novelist and short story writer whose novel The Gathering won the Man Booker Prize in 2007. This is a perceptive and psychological story of 9 siblings who come together for the funeral of their alcoholic brother who has committed suicide. No misery memoir, it is a wry exposure of complex family dynamics with a secret to be uncovered.
  • Novelist, short story writer and academic, Lorrie Moore has won several literary awards and her novel A Gate at the Stairs was shortlisted for the PEN Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize. This is a coming of age story about a young student who works as a nanny for a couple who are adopting a bi-racial child. Both comic and tragic, it is also about love and loneliness and the anxieties of the time, beautifully told.
  • Is this the perfect American novel? It has beautifully written form, content, plot, description, narrative, dialogue, characterisation and includes politics, class division, cultural observation, mystery, decadence, sex, murder, suicide, a surprise ending and last but not least, jazz.
  • Kate Chopin was a novelist and short story writer from Louisiana. The Awakening is the bold story of a wife and mother who falls in love with a younger man. Considered to be immoral and controversial at the time, it is a precursor of feminist writing, addressing emotional, psychological and sexual issues beyond the accepted gender role and mores of the time.

Reading the Body : Yoga And Literature

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I fight time. All the time.

I frequently negotiate in my mind how I can squeeze in one more activity/outing/date—and how I can get from one place to another without factoring in travel time. I underestimate how long it takes me to transition from swimming to getting on my bike and dashing to teach in Covent Garden—not once, but weekly. I think I have an uncommitted day coming and quickly lose it in an avalanche of projects. Hours set aside for writing and research collapse into answering emails, laundry and – I don’t know? Responding to Facebook messages, organising Scout’s social calendar, re-shelving books.

 

Last year, my friend & Salonista, Jackie, started running Yoga sessions in her home. I didn’t think I had any time, but I dipped in… in another lifetime, I had a yoga practice that I enjoyed; it was one of the parts of my life that was lost in the shuffle of changing continents.

I have continued with Jackie’s class for a variety of reasons—making time for it (there is a phrase that should be questioned: you can’t actually make time & it is dangerous to think you can..) on Saturday mornings.  Jackie is a gifted teacher of yoga. Her attentiveness to each body and mind in the room is impressive; she walks into the positions with us and gives us detailed proposals to use in manouevering our bodies for deep stretching and awareness.

The hour & 20 minutes I spend in her living room allow me to open my body and quiet my mind. I didn’t realise it was SO LOUD in there until the clamorings trail off. There are moments (I know, I know, it should be the whole time) when I am truly able to focus on my body’s movement and how each posture ripples across joints and muscles—pulling here, releasing there. I am in awe of the movement of the body—its strength & flexibility when I am really attending to its flow.  I f I arrive at class caught in the maelstrom of a bad moment, the practice settles me down. This can be healing—but it can also create an unexpected release: one time, Jackie placed her palm on my back in the midst of a posture and said quietly: ‘let it go’….I burst in to tears. In that moment, nothing had ever felt so relieving.

 

The time in the class also does what I often miss in social interactions. At parties or meeting friends at the pub, time feels sped up—encounters are glancing, skating on the surface—there is too much stimuli as you move from topic to topic, amongst various diverse people—I always feel the jagged fragments of unfinished conversations after the gathering.

At the yoga session, we speak briefly at the start—and then slip into the realm of movement and concentration. I can think about the interactions I had with friends at the start—and be more thoughtful in my responses after the class ends. I can hold their words and feel the weight of the thoughts and experiences of others—not just dash to the next anecdote or life challenge.  The experience of the yoga expands time –and I can relax my shoulders and taut spine into the moment, the fellowship.

 

Yoga practice dovetails with the deep awareness a good Salon session offers. So when Ann Moradian of Perspectives in Motion in Paris approached the London Literary Salon to collaborate again on a retreat bringing together the study of great literature and a deepening sense of self through movement workshops, this seemed like a perfect moment. We have organised the retreat—at a beautiful chateau on the shores of Lake Annecy—around human connection to ourselves and the natural world—a troubled and powerful relationship—and a crucial one.  The literature we will discuss uses The American Transcendentalists (Thoreau & Emerson) as a starting place for a philosophical view of our identities in nature; then we will turn to the contemporary writer Marilynne Robinson for a sustained meditation in her fictional work Housekeeping on grief, healing & radical re-imagining of our idea of home.

For more information and registration, please go to the listing for Reading the Body Retreat on the website.  ** Please note: the date for the Retreat has been changed to late June 2018**

NEW SALONS starting late August 2017

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Although summer rhythms are calling…time to slow down & meander through the sun-lit glades–here are some of the coming studies if you want to add to your summer reading….

The London Literary Salon staff are offering thematic studies–each course stands alone but participants can consider a series for a deeper exploration…this autumn, we are considering the question: Is there a great American novel? Towards answering, Mark will offer an eight-week study of Moby Dick, Toby will follow with Invisible Man and there will be two opportunities to study The Great Gatsby–either as intensive or  over a few weeks.

The Big Books (aka Doorstoppers) series will continue in 2018 with Ulysses on offer, as well as Magic Mountain, Midnight’s Children, Middlemarch & Tales of The Geisha. We will also offer a Shakespeare series starting in 2018.

The London Literary Salon is proud to be participating in the One book, Many Conversations global study of  George Orwell’s 1984, offering a free study in October of this work in reflection of the dangers of our current political times.

For those needing a less intensive commitment, Carol will continue with a short story series to include Faulkner, Lorrie Moore, D.H. Lawrence, Angela Carter…and will be offering the feminist classic The Awakening in November.

More to come….

Shorter studies/ End of summer Salon Openers:

Short Stories & Wisdom Traditions:

Novels:

Longer studies starting week of September 13th:

  • The Waves 7:30 Tuesdays four week-study starting September 19th (Toby)
  • Moby Dick Eight-week study starting September 13th (Mark)
  • Foray into Finnegans Wake A slow read experience Wednesday evenings starting September 13th (Toby)
  • The Mad Woman’s Vision: Creation & Destruction explored in the female voice; Tuesdays starting Sept. 19th @ CityLit (Toby)
  • Beloved four-week study 7-9 PM Mondays @ SAP in Hampstead starting Nov. 13 (Toby)
+ More

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