On Literary Monsters . . .

Why read literature that explores the inner world of monsters – people who are brutal or whose behaviour is monstrous?

I have been thinking about this a lot in the last week as various studies encounter sexual violence, domestic violence, racism and misogyny, psychological battering, grooming . . . and I feel my instinctual repulsion met with my need to justify, both for my own comfort and to explain to other readers, why we should go through this ugliness.

The careful exploration in literature of a subjective psyche affords a complex understanding of how the flaws of a person enmesh with the flaws of the world they inhabit. There is humanity to be gained from the truth of the material—and Joyce (like Faulkner, Proust and others) will not let us look away.

My co-facilitator on our recent study of William Faulkner’s Sanctuary, Geoff Brown, offered our group his own reflection on our work:

Hello fellow salonistas. I have been reflecting on the sessions we had.

It becomes increasingly clear to me how challenging this text is – not just in the common passive sense of difficult to understand, but also actively challenging in the ways in which it confronts the reader. One of its most forceful confrontations is aimed at our reluctance to recognise and discuss the unacceptable. Horace has spent his life denying the existence of bad things, and the novel dramatises his final inability to sustain that level of dissociation. What Faulkner’s text does is steer the reader into a comparable dilemma: when we ask ourselves questions such as ‘why did he need to put that in?’, we are echoing Horace’s implicit question: ‘why do bad things have to happen?’ Or perhaps we are unconsciously siding with Narcissa – who wears white to pretend to herself that the dirt of the world does not attach to her. But debating awkward questions is at the heart of what the Lit Salon does.

This issue is bound up with Sanctuary’s long reputation. The novel addresses (and I would argue criticises) issues of behaviour and thinking which permeate society, but which society would prefer not to consider itself responsible for. This prompted – and continues to prompt – outraged denial, taking the standard defensive mode of alleging that there must be something degenerate about the author, or alternatively something defective about the work in question (cf. long-standing suggestions that Shakespeare’s ‘difficult’ later plays derived from problems with his sex life).

During most of the weeks of our study, I have been reminded of D.H. Lawrence’s famous dictum: “Never trust the teller. Trust the tale.” What that has always meant for me is that any work deserves to be judged on its own merits alone. Of course that must mean that any of us can decide that Sanctuary is flawed, or unacceptable by comparison with Faulkner’s oeuvre as a whole.

I think there is little doubt that this novel has an insidious quality which gets under one’s skin. It has been a tough project, but like many of the best salon experiences, it has been a ground-breaking one. If you are asking yourselves whether it was worth the trouble, let me offer you the consolation of considering yourselves as pioneers who have traversed hostile territory and reached the other side. It has been tremendously helpful for me to read it with you and I thank you warmly for your participation.

Geoff

And we have received responses from other Salon participants, set out below with their permission.

This is something George Saunders witnessed first-hand while reporting from Trump Tour 2016 for the New Yorker, and attending rallies for the future president in California, Arizona, and Wisconsin, where he spoke to supporters and generally tried to understand what makes them tick and why they’re so damn angry. I ask, in light of the election and everything about it, whether such a thing still matters in the age of Trump—does empathy still matter like it did? “Yeah, I’ve given that a lot of thought,” he replies. “I’m just trying to deepen understanding of what empathy actually is. Because, in my lazy version of it, it means being groovy with everything, and liking everybody. I don’t think that’s quite it. For me, it seems urgent to me that we resist this crap. How do we best do that?”

Saunders says that while covering the rallies, he noticed that whenever people on either side got “strident and emotional,” the conversation shut down. “So, my thing is, if we really wanted to restore our country to what it was, or even better, to get it to what it should be, empathy is a really great tool,” he explains. “It doesn’t mean you’re gonna agree, and I think we liberals have a tendency to think that empathy equals enabling. And I think that’s actually false. That’s not at all what compassion and empathy means. It’s much more akin to a kind of wide-open awareness, which to me is always a powerful thing.”

Alex Mills

On a personal level I feel conflicted between a ‘no platforming’ desire (if I have this book on my shelf, does it mean I am complicit in condoning a male hegemony which sees nothing wrong in predators grooming teenagers for sex, casual antisemitism which is insufficiently repudiated, an objectification of the homosexual as ‘other’….) and alternatively, the wish to take the text in the context of the time and understand the limitations that puts on both the writer and the text.

Curiously, having just completed a Salon on the Book of Job, I am very aware that The Bible poses very similar issues. Some people find the text highly offensive because it appears to condone rape, sexual exploitation, rank homophobia, domestic violence, child abuse, antisemitism, xenophobia and ethnic cleansing. However, some of the poetry is sublime and the narrative, epic.

So, do I read the text in the manner that it was originally intended, or do I read it with contemporary eyes?

Nicky von Fraunhofer (also a Salon facilitator)

When literature reflects real life (even if it’s not our personal experience) and we choose to engage with it, it allows us the possibility to reflect on the realities of others from a safe distance and widen our comprehension of humanity in all its fallibility. This starts with literature like Grimm’s Fairy Tales (cf. Bettelheim on The Uses of Enchantment) and moves through to work like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (the dramatisation of which is terrifying). I think this is important.

Harriet Griffey

I come back to Quaker principles: even in the most horrible people who have done the most hideous things, there is some spark of goodness, buried however deep. People can sometimes be redeemed from evil. Understanding how people become evil gives us a better chance at stopping it happening.

P.S.

My problem with this mode of analysis is that there is plenty of empirical evidence that psychopaths are *not* born like most people; it often seems to me that literature has obscured our ability to both help and deal with them.

S.

We always imagine we could never be that thing we abhor – Nazis, child molesters, etc. Then, as James Baldwin writes, “we read.” Psychopaths, when they exist, were born like me. What do we do with that? The things I hold in greatest contempt fill ME with momentary violence, quickly followed by sorrow…for all of us.

Lisa Lomba

What Joyce and Proust achieve is excavation of thought, language and buried subconscious ideas which is why I feel no revulsion in reading them but discomfort balanced with revelation.  They shed light on dark places.  De Sade starts off ‘120 days of Sodom’ as if writing a novel but soon it descends into lists of acts he wants to perpetrate, it is obscene, his excited imaginings are so intense that he does not even bother filling it in, just the lists are enough to pleasure himself.  I did not get very far with Masoch’s ‘Venus in Furs’, again no attempt at understanding, just written for pleasure.

So it is all about the balance, precise, clean excavation is very different from orgasmic salivation.

The balance between the drive to understand rather than enjoy is the crucial thing. It is why I could not finish de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom.

Georgia Kaufmann

Yes indeed Toby and I like to think of the good and loving examples there are too like George killing Lenny as he imagines the rabbits on a farm rather than letting him be murdered by the men pursuing him in Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck. Or in A Tale of Two Cities when Sydney Carton dies in the place of his look-alike saying ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before.’

Further proof that we all have everything in us! Literature helps us to understand ourselves and develop compassion for those who find themselves in wretched circumstances.

Fear seems to be the motor for ugly action; thinking of the fear of miscegenation in Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom!

In the end, I am glad to have a group that can thoughtfully explore these issues and hold the ambiguities alongside the brilliance of the prose and accept the paradox.

Laura Stahnke

I would welcome further reflections on this.

TB

Reflections on the Beloved Salon

We so appreciate feedback about the Salon experience! Thanks to Ethan for this…

Beloved Literary Salon  June 2020

By Ethan Brooks

The silver lining in a sudden need to avoid unnecessary contact with other people is that there has been a collective realization of just how much can be accomplished while sitting at home. This means many have been pushed to conduct much more of their lives online – which can frustrate to no end – but in so doing, an accessibility inherent to the internet becomes a boon to those who must now cater to a world relegated to the web. The London Literary Salon is such an experience which, in transitioning to a virtual space, became available to many more, including myself. For that, I feel lucky. And any sense of intimacy lost through the computer screen was, I thought, more than made up for by the passion and care shown for Toni Morrison’s Beloved as we were guided through it – sentiments mirrored by all as we fell further into the novel – and the enthusiasm of my peers in sharing their own thoughts and feelings on the text.  These expressions evoking always a sense of respect for the work as a whole and for the painful histories out of which it has been crafted. I think there should be no other way to approach this story, for while the themes that can be drawn from it may be manifold, the subject matters of racism and of slavery demand your attention, and the brutality and hatefulness of these things are felt, whether subtlety or viscerally, on each page of Beloved. The confrontation in reading this work is difficult – although made less so when among an inclusive group such as in the literary salon and with the exploration of this literature being facilitated by one with experience – and will not end with the story of Beloved; but it is a confrontation which is necessary, now more than ever, because it has been made excruciatingly clear, over and over, that the roots of racism and of white supremacy run deep in the U.S., and are painfully felt. In Beloved, it is this pain which is exposed, and in being better understood, it is assuaged. As a final word, this understanding gained through the text is achieved to a greater degree for being part of a group wherein thoughts and feelings towards the text are allowed to flow freely.

‘The Plot Against America’ comes back to haunt me

Sue Fox is a Salon member who has added her good mind and passionate reading  to studies on Invisible Man, Hamlet, Faulkner– just to name a few….this article first appeared in the on-line magazine JewThink. Thanks to Sue for letting us publish here as well.

I can vividly remember reading Philip Roth’s novel when it was published in 2004 and being completely gobsmacked that Charles Lindbergh was the American President. We were on holiday in Portugal in the same place we’d gone back to every year since who knows when, for a week of walking, Scrabble and reading. I can still hear myself saying to dearly beloved   ‘When was Lindbergh the President? ‘He wasn’t,’ came the reply from a sun lounger…’But it says here …. blah blah blah…’ So taken was this naive reader by Roth’s imagination that for a while I was disorientated. I seriously questioned my memory/history/cognitive abilities.

Reliving the novel through the medium of TV in the American film adaptation currently on Sky Atlantic, Roth’s The Plot Against America is terrifying. I keep asking myself what I would have done if I was raising a young Jewish family in Newark in 1941? Would I, like Bess Levin, who is not from a Jewish ghetto like her husband, Herman, have put our names on the list to emigrate to Canada? Would I have been captivated by the oily, insincere, ridiculous but, some think charismatic, Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (played by John Turturro), and seen Lindbergh as anti-war rather than antisemitic? Would I be persuaded by Bengelsdorf’s nonsense about his Just Folks programme being a fine opportunity for young Jews to assimilate with good Christian American folks in Kentucky and middle America. Assimilate in farm states where most of the natives had never seen a Jew before? Could I have bought into the Rabbi’s vision of a kind of utopian Habonim Kibbutz but with pigs? Even more worryingly, when this utopian dream turns into the ‘Homestead project – basically a way of relocating Jewish families to these same redneck wilderness towns – what would I have done? Canada being less and less possible, antisemitic attacks becoming a daily news item, Ribbentrop invited to a White House dinner – do I pile the family into the car and hit the highway?

Bess is a fighter, her husband, Herman is weak, gullible and basically a good man who believes in Roosevelt. His heart is in the right place, but his brain refuses to see what is happening to the country he loves. As a father, his power gradually collapses so that the two Levin sons, Philip and Sandy, see – like we all have to do one day – that parents don’t have the answers, they can’t protect their children from everything, they are not all powerful. They are only – as Bruno Bettelheim the distinguished child psychotherapist wrote, ‘Good Enough Parents’.   

The most chilling of many moments in the TV adaptation was the White House dinner when the oleaginous rabbi and his fiancée, Evelyn (Bess’s gullible sister), mingle with the great and the good, the Daughters of the American Revolution and their husbands. In their formal, swanky attire, they reminded me of the song, ‘We’re a Couple of Swells’. Of course, Bengelsdorf and Evelyn were not a couple of swells, they were two token Jews – visibly snubbed by President Lindbergh.

In 2004, Roth’s book struck me as a brilliant read and not much else. Yes, it worried me, but it didn’t ruin a holiday, keep me up at night or make me think I needed to run for the hills. Today, with the whole world going to hell in a handcart, everything is up for grabs. No, I don’t see Nazis around every corner, and I have always called out when confronted, however unintentionally, by someone saying an unpleasant and unjustified comment about Jews. And yes, I do agree when the Jew in question – usually someone prominent – does something shameful and embarrassing, etc., etc. No need to name names. We all have our own list. But and there is always a but, I get nervous around North West London Jewish bakeries on Friday mornings, when the queue is long. Which is why I tend to go on Thursday night. Yes, I’m a coward.

In 1941, my mother and sister – who was then aged seven – accepted a family decision to evacuate to America from Manchester in order to escape the bombs, shortages and horrors of the war. Like my father, who was in the Home Guard, husbands were not able to evacuate. So, my mother joined the exodus of lucky mothers who left for Canada and the US where their lives would inevitably change.

Mine went to stay with wealthy relatives in California. They were family they had never met who provided papers and sponsorship. This great act of kindness was based on another act of kindness by my maternal grandfather (he died before I was born). Grandpa had left Rostov on Don in Russia at the turn of the century because of the antisemitic attacks. The California relatives – his first cousins – left later and were stuck for months in Constantinople in one room. The jewellery sewn into blankets when they left Russia just about kept them alive. My grandfather sent them money to continue their journey to New York. Eventually, they all settled in California. The cousins, who had owned a big factory in Rostov on Don – fulfilled their American Dream and were very successful, as well as philanthropic, within the local, the Jewish and the Black community.

In 1941, when my mother and sister crossed the Atlantic in convoy from Liverpool on board The Baltrova, they spent seventeen days in life jackets which they never took off, vomiting into buckets. One convoy boat was torpedoed. My mother and sister must have been terrified. They finally arrived in Boston where the unknown cousins met them for the first time at the incredibly grand Statler Hotel.

As it turned out, my mother loved her time in the San Fernando Valley in her house with the picket fence on Pickford Street. It was a Jewish neighbourhood. She could pick oranges from the trees. At least that’s how I imagine it. She never really talked about it much – she just looked sad. I always wanted to go to the place where my mother had been happy. She had to leave eventually, return to North Manchester early in 1944 and start again in the winter, with rationing, ruin and learning that her beloved father was dead. I found immigration papers allowing my mother and sister to enter America anytime during the following year (1945).  But she never went back. Neither did my sister.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve worked and had holidays in America. I also loved being in the US until one day, I stopped loving it. When the current incumbent  tarnished the office with his horrible orange face. There’s no way I want to go back – not in this new New World.

Would I have had the courage to go in 1941? I honestly have no idea of my answer. In the year when we can’t go anywhere, and there’s no one left to sponsor anyone when Israel is definitely not the Promised Land, and there is no longer an American Dream, I feel blessed not to have to make a choice – yet. I may need more than my mother’s courage.

Philip Roth seems too prescient to ignore.

Sue Fox is a freelance journalist who has been interviewing famous people for the Sunday Times, Times Magazine, and many magazines since she was 18.  She has also been associate producer on TV documentaries and a film archive.

Rejoice in Joyce: Toby’s article in the Camden New Journal

Toby wrote an article for the Camden New Journal advocating for (what else?) the joy of Big Reads:

Full article may be found here: http://camdennewjournal.com/article/review-book-club-take-time-to-rejoice-in-joyce

“Does it help to know that others before us have felt this despair? Dante’s infernal vision arose from his spiritual sickness at the political and ecclesiastical corruption infecting his beloved Florence, his revered Church. He climbed out of the layers of Hell, punishing those who had rent the fabric of his world – and creating a beatific vision from the depths of despair.

From Homer through Joyce into Ellison and Morrison, we find analysis of the xenophobia – the fear of the stranger articulated as racism, anti-semitism, anti-immigrant, homophobia – that has reduced our common humanity. To read is to enter into the experience of another and recognise yourself.

A few final suggestions. Read with a wide-awake mind. Many of us have developed a habit of reading before falling asleep – not the most attentive state of mind. Choose a time each day and give yourself an hour. Stay with the book for at least a week, some works take 50 to 100 pages to warm up and the book will teach you to read it as you enter its particular realm or way of seeing the world.

Why Read Ulysses??

Than there is the writing: to grapple with the words and linguistic pyrotechnics of James Joyce—to enter into his exploration of the body, mind and street-life, to sit in awe of his allusions, musicality, interweaving structures and thematic developments is to expand the possibilities of the written word. Then to do this with a diverse group of other curious readers who are also struggling and discovering allows each reader to enrich their own understanding many fold. We laugh, we express our frustrations, we query meaning and purpose, we discover great depth in the language and vision of the writer.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/06/james-joyces-ulysses

Coming Ulysses study: Eight week-Virtual Salon will get you two-thirds through this amazing work with all the support and back ground you need and a lively group of minds to bring pleasure to the journey…

Why read Ulysses?

By far the most thrilling reading experiences of my life have centred in Kentish Town, in a cosy sitting room in the home of Toby Brothers, the gifted director of the London Literary Salons. Each of the books we read was rich and challenging, but the thrill came from the distinctive style that Toby has evolved for guiding readers through a given text.

Deeply engaged with and knowledgeable about literature, Toby is highly developed as an agile guide, a careful instructor, and perhaps most important, a sensitive and infinitely patient facilitator to the small group of ‘students’ in her charge. She can unite participants of wildly varying levels of education, experience and interests, and help each to bring him or herself to bear upon the study of great works of literature. The thrill comes from the sense of discovery, adventure, and sheer good fun we get from our mutual exploration of a given writer.

A lifelong bookworm, I knew there were some works I just wouldn’t get the full meat of on my own – ranging from a slim and perhaps deceptively straightforward-seeming book like ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ to novels like ‘Invisible Man’ with its deep racial themes, to Shakespeare’s plays, up the granddaddy of all English-major holy grails, Ulysses, by James Joyce. Toby and the London Literary Salon have been invaluable to fully tucking into these and many more. For each, I came away with meat and potatoes — a careful read bolstered by a side plate of critical insight and nuance unobtrusively provided by Toby.

But even better was the unexpected and satisfying savour of the personal and often marvellous insights that Toby draws out of fellow salon participants.Incidentally, many friendships have bloomed during salon studies and their associated adventures, such as travelling to Dublin for the annual, often raucous celebration of Ulysses and its creator.

The American novelist John Williams, author deplored the notion that literature is something to be picked apart, as if it were a puzzle – to be studied rather than experienced. ‘My God, to read without joy is stupid,’ he said. The  London Literary Salon will help readers to experience great books with joy.

Who’s Zoomin Who? Salon Goes VIRTUAL– Mind-food for the Socially Isolated

Feedback on Zooming the Salon—Virtual Reality March 2020

Proust Tour Four Zooms 19.3.20

“Thanks Toby, I wish everyone stuck at home had such an uplifting and entertaining group to spend time with each week. Looking forward to next time—”

(CD, Finnegans Wake)

“Thanks for yesterday, it seemed to go quite well, and I’m sure we’ll settle into it. There is something of ‘The Decameron’ about it, as we sit in our (virtual) ivory tower and talk about high culture while the world outside slowly winds down…It is certainly going to important to us if we are more and more confined to home.”

(JC—Proust tour 4)

Thanks so much for setting up last evening, I thought it worked brilliantly.
The only comment I have is that it is may be more difficult to have quite the same level of enthusiastic discussion we have had previously. I know I am guilty sometimes of jumping in and this form of interaction needs some space around it.
I love Proust so much. So here we are, looking at ourselves, where we’re all sitting, how we’ve set ourselves up, talking about the book while at the same time another dialogue is running through our heads!  Of course, the man’s a genius!
Just beginning to start on next part and know it’s going to make me cry. I’m very close to my 16-year-old grandson in Brighton and will miss him dreadfully over the next however many months. However, I have devised myself a schedule including exercise, meditation, watching movies, texting and calling family and friends and of course the wonderful on line Salon!

(EW, Prost Tour 4)

Thanks again for last night.  I really enjoyed it. It was interesting how we all settled into it quite quickly and it seemed to get up and running well pretty fast.  Yay!  I’m so grateful we can keep on with our work.  As John said, it’s so important to us, and I think it’s going to keep us sane in our cork-lined rooms…  I realised it must be quite intense for you though!  Hope you enjoyed it too.

Thanks again for thinking of it and getting it all organised.  You’re a star.

(RB, Proust Tour 4)

 

Positive Statements:

— It’s a wonderful way of continuing to be connected in these hard times

— in some ways, it makes it easier to concentrate on what one person is saying

— I love the individualities of our background scenery (Paul’s Bridge gets my prize this week, closely followed by Michelle’s lamp and those great shadows)

Mookses and Gripes:

— I do miss the ‘group-ness’ of people gathered together in one room

— I wonder if there is a way of presenting the page of text on screen? (We can argue about which text, later on, of course)

— And/or if we can figure out ways of sharing photos etc on the screen, as illustration (there MUST be a way!)

(RE, Finnegans Wake)

 

Thank you so much for letting me re-join the Wake.  It was very grounding to be able to join all of you in Toby’s virtual salon.  I was so inspired, I am attempting to set up a book group with my London expat friends who are now scattered to the four winds.  It will be a lighter read than FW, however.

(MM, Finnegans Wake)

 

I’ve not done anything like Zoom before, and it will take a few goes before I get used to it. However, I definitely think it is a good thing to do and thanks for setting it up.

During the session, while people were talking, I kept wondering what we imagine we see, when we stare at the computer? We have an illusion of eye-contact, but the other person’s face is a faulty mirror; we can cue into body language in a reciprocal way, when we are a dyad, but not a group. In the session, we become a group who is blind to everything except the mis-cued image on the screen. How very Proustian!

(NvF Proust Tour 4)

That was wonderful – really worked well and such an interested group  – it worked perfectly – gt to listen to everyone and plenty of time to talk and think.    Very special afternoon in this very odd way of life.      Looking forward so much to more…….   Let me know if you want more takers as I have a few  friends who might be interested…….

(SF– Faulkner, Yellow Wallpaper)

Yes, it was hard for me to not imagine everyone else was together somehow in Toby’s living room!

I think we can manage the decibel level better if we all wear headphones with little mics.. then you can speak at a natural level..  even using the cheap sets that come free with your mobile.Otherwise  utterly  marvellous to concentrate on something this crazy. As regards meetings, given the semi lock-down  I would certainly give serious consideration to continuing the work on the book for now.

(MD, Finnegans Wake)

 

“Thanks for the session tonight. It was really great to be able to do it. I found it easier then I thought I would!”

 

Commenting on Virginia Woolf’s The Pargiters–Feminism in Fiction

“But Virginia Woolf wanted us to take a closer look than this at masculine power and control; to analyse with greater precision some tacit manifestations of sexual polarization and to examine their effects on young women in England in 1880. So we are moved into the Pargiter drawing room to find healthy young women sighing in boredom, peeping out of windows at unknown young men, fussing with tea kettles, sexually frustrated, and helplessly caged. But why? Why are these healthy young women not out free to explore, free to engage in some important work, free to earn their own livings and enjoy independence? Virginia Woolf’s answer is simple: the privilege of a university education was denied them; ad without that education, the professions were closed to them; and without a profession, there was no opportunity whereby a healthy young woman might earn her living and have the money and thus the independence to make choices, express vigorous opinions, contribute in significant ways to the society in which she presently found herself trapped. The only choice open to girls of the Pargiter social class—where well-to-do fathers looked after their material needs—was to become models of virtue; to repress any attraction to members of the opposite sex, until the day when a man slipped “a wedding ring on her finger, to canalize all her passion, for the rest of their married lives, solely upon him.” But sexual repression to this degree, Virginia Woolf wishes us to see, runs counter to the flow of nature, causes rivalry among sisters over an available male, forces them to conceal from one another thoughts which ought to be communicated, makes them lie, affects them mentally through onslaughts of guilt, and in the end creates such distortions in their human development as to make their behaviour as unnatural as their lives are manacled.”

From the Introduction by Mitchell Leaska to The Pargiters by Virginia Woolf–

We will be exploring this collection of essays on the construction of The Years– revealing Virginia Woolf as craftswoman, feminist and activist….

The Years Salon– Five days in St Ives April 1st-5th 2020

Nuala’s Wake

In honour of Nuala Flynn 1954-2019

A group of Salonista have been pursuing- dancing in– traversing Finnegans Wake since September 2017. Nuala Flynn joined us part way in– and brought with her a passion for dream scapes, Brigid, the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Rites of Tara, the mysteries and traditions of the old world– and her bubbling energy and compassion spread outwards, infusing our Wakian world.

How I will miss her– her laughter, her energy, her sense of wonder and her deep knowledge inspired us all and will continue to inspire our group. We will hold her there. Members of our group have done some beautiful writing in honour of Nuala.

Selections from Finnegans Wake Chpt. 8 (arrangement by Caroline Donnelly)

 

O

Tell me all about

Anna Livia! I want to hear all

About Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia

Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinketoes!

Can’t hear with the waters of,

The chittering waters of,

Flittering bats, fieldmice,

Hawk, talk.

 

Ho! Are you not gone ahome?

What Thom Malone?

Can’t hear with hawk of bats,

All them liffeying waters of–

Ho, talk, save us!  My foos won’t moos.

I feel as old as yonder elm.

 

A tale told of Shaun and Shem?

All Livia’s daughter-sons,

Dark hawks hear us.

 

Night!  Night! My ho head halls,

I feel as heavy as yonder stone.

 

Tell me of John, or Shaun?

Who were Shaun and Shem

The living sons or daughters of?

 

Night now!

Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!

Night night!

Tellmetell of stem or stone,

Beside the rivering waters of,

Hitherandthithering waters of,

Night.

Sonnet for Nuala 

by Maureen Diffley

NUALA

(Fionnuala, … Anna Lufio)

 

The small fruit cake cools on the hob.

It smells of being done and funeral rites

to come. I sit hollow-eared, and freighted,

listening for the echo of your voice,

that chuckle of your unruly take on life.

You unpick the thread of words, dense

beyond belief, recirculating Tara

tales spun before and after time, like river run.

I see the grey-green glint in your eye, now gone,

now here, inside me, forever flashing

cosmic prayers to commodious pantheons.

O maieutic diviner of words and dreams,

the book will be read, the cake slowly eaten,

suffused with grace-notes of your swan-song.

 

Maureen 06/01/2010  – Nollaig na mBan – Women’s Christmas

Thoughts of Nuala  by Toby 

Husky voiced excitement – striving to get at the meaning—to connect the myths of the old world to the chaos of this one

An electric exuberance that spread out from her

Steely and capricious

Dancing in late and offering gems from the Rites of Tara

She had so much more to say—and we had to keep her to the instrument of time

She would have taken more time and given back all our time.

On 24th of December, the 10 minute glass broke—because there is mystery in the world.

If I had thought, I might have recognised the sign—the sign of her leaving—of her taking time – and laughing it to pieces.

 

Nicole describes the Ulysses Salon on Bookstoker

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….

 

Seven Ways to Get the Most out of Proust by Marcy Kahan

Marcy Kahan is a member of the 3rd Proust cycle in the LLS; she will be facilitating a course on Nabokov later this autumn…

Seven ways to get the most out of Proust

Feeling excited at the prospect of Radio 4’s Proust Marathon – the new 10-hour dramatisation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time? Playwright Marcy Kahan – a lifelong Proustian – urges you to channel your inner Marcel by doing some active preparation.

1. Go to bed early

Try to recall all the rooms in which you’ve ever slept, then narrow this down to your childhood bedroom. This is how the novel begins – with its middle-aged narrator, Marcel, trying to get to sleep.

Now it’s time to remember a moment in your life when a song, a taste, a smell, a texture suddenly summoned up a huge cascade of memory – recapturing an entire season in your life. Are you there yet? Congratulations. You and Marcel have embarked on the same enterprise.

There is no need to do this in French.

2. Fall disastrously in love

You must be keen to spend every waking and sleeping moment with the love-object. When your beloved is absent, you will torment yourself with what they might be doing and who they might be doing it with. Your need to control the beloved must be compulsive, tormenting and hugely time-consuming.

You will not be alone in your emotional and erotic obsession: in Proust’s novel the cosmopolitan Charles Swann is racked with jealousy over Odette, while young Marcel puts his life on hold as he tries to control Albertine.

You are allowed to eventually marry the love-object. Your marriage will astound your friends. This happens to one of the characters in the novel.

For the remaining five ways: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1hbtflHh7vyJTpNT2vRpFwz/seven-ways-to-get-the-most-out-of-proust

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