Literary Musings

FOR two hours, I was entranced: literary greats introduced their choice of the best of the Bookers—with the shortlisted books brought to life by actors Chiwetel Ejiofor, Fiona Shaw, Geoffrey Streatfeild and Meera Syal.

And this celebration of narrative form reaches beyond literature nerds to remind us all why we need art. In this strange moment when national leadership seems bent towards its most narrow and xenophobic interests, when political leaders act and speak without a sense of integrity nor service to a wider community, books remind us of our common humanity – and that the struggles are not new.

The ceremony had advocates for each of the Booker’s five decades. Watching Lemn Sissay playfully express his passion for the weave of time, memory and the nature of evidence in Moon Tiger and then hearing the graceful and generous words of Penelope Lively herself almost ended the event for me: I leaned towards the exit, wanting to grab her book and shut myself away with it.

For the rest of the article, please visit the Camden New Journal website : http://camdennewjournal.com/article/booker-prize-page-against-the-machine

Toby will offer a short (three-week) course on The English Patient in October…check the website for details….

Thoughts on Art & Anger

“What is the way to use anger to fuel something other than hurt, to direct it away from hatred, vengefulness, self-righteousness, and make it serve creation and compassion?”

— Ursule Le Guin

Wandering through the Women House exhibit in Paris, I was thinking about the struggle to find creative expression when anger is the driving force. Anger is such a satisfying emotion—with all its heat and fury, the sense of being wronged…but the danger of this emotional fire is how it blinds. Once you hold a sense of victimhood, it is powerful to turn the hurt on to others—particular or groups, this rage is so easily targeted. Without reflection, anger can build itself a bastion of self-righteousness—and it is hard to accept the perspective or experience of others that may crumble that fortress.  The exhibit in Paris considered how domestic space has been a prison—or shelter—for women historically. What I saw in the artists responding to the notions of space and gender across the 20^th & 21^st ct was certainly anger—but also an attempt to re-work equations of power and enclosure. The creations that used humour and play remained effective and thought-provoking—those that held anger as the primary expression gave me a glimpse of the history of the feminist struggle—but did not hold as thoughtful works after their time of creation.

Right now is a time of anger: as governments appear to be acting in bad faith, as leaders show their zeal for power and wealth over human progress and the needs of struggling populations.  I can hold my anger closely and feel empowered—but it short-circuits. When I am connecting with others—when instead of anger, shared work and understanding is encouraged, this is where true change may happen. Anger can provide the energy of a jolt towards action; but for real change, we need to harness that anger towards an energy that creates. Art does all this: inspires reflection, voices anger, makes me unpack my understanding of myself in the world, my (often unbalanced) understanding of others.

James Baldwin once said, ‘The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.’

In this time of darkness, I celebrate the light that art brings to us.

The Arrogance of Ignorance

There is a danger of becoming de-sensitized to the outrageousness of the Trump family’s actions. They spring from the realm of reality TV (mis-behavior and moral poverty are the coin of that realm), but sadly—devastatingly—DT & his progeny now affect the lives of millions in their dance of greed and self-aggrandizement.

Recently I was left breathless by Ivanka Trump’s use of Toni Morrison’s work in her recently published book. In a chapter on time management, Ivanka lifts these powerful words from Beloved, Morrison’s book on the lives of a community of ex-slaves who move through the psychological and physical devastation of slavery to claim human dignity in the face of unimaginable oppression.

“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

Having read and taught Beloved throughout my 30 year-teaching career, I approach each study  with reverence: Morrison has crafted an exquisite and painful work of art in response to the tragedy of slavery and the ongoing racism that is its foundation.

I think this is a MUST-READ book. Immersing oneself in it sparks that magic generated by great works of art: through the creative act of reading we are inspired to informed empathy. Beloved brings the reader into an understanding—not total, but potential—of the psychological devastation of slavery and the dehumanization that is the history of racism.

Everyone should read this book.

Ivanka Trump has not read this book.

If she had, she would not have been able to cherry-pick Morrison’s quote in order to describe being a slave to one’s schedule. Ivanka Trump writes:

“Are you a slave to your time or the master of it?” and “Despite your best intentions, it’s easy to be reactive and get caught up in returning calls, attending meetings, answering e-mails.”

Did she just—wait, no way. Deploying Morrison’s quote, Ivanka compares the loss of one’s humanity, dignity and family in a life-long system of enforced servitude to the distraction of answering emails. Yup- that is what she did.

If she had read the book and understood it, she would know that Morrison is referring to characters who have had their children torn from them, their backs lacerated, their genitals abused, their labor appropriated, their husbands lynched and burned. She is not talking about time management. To relocate this history of racial abuse in the context of time management is grotesque and inappropriate beyond belief.

Ironically, this misuse of Morrison’s words points up a fundamental flaw: if you have no curiosity or empathy towards anyone beyond your immediate family border, you neither recognize nor respect the humanity of others. A good education that includes deep reading of great literature widens our very narrow perspective of who we are in the world, who we are in relation to others. Greed and hunger for power obliterate any understanding of how the actions of individuals affect others and the world around them—the consequences of acting without moral sense are devastating. Ivanka Trump’s appropriation of a carefully wrought phrase that illuminates the threat to the soul in the face of institutionalized racism exemplifies the dangerous arrogance of ignorance.

With thanks to GB, ADM & IR for helping turn this rant into something readable…

If you would like to comment & are struggling with the mathematically inept captcha– please send your comments directly to Toby @ litsalon@gmail.com to post.

“Wonder. Go on & wonder.”—W. Faulkner

The obsessive need to read the papers & gather sound bites—to wake up and consult the latest news, search and find the best commentary on the latest act of aggression, bombing, bad governance—that is one place where I recognize my own struggle for answers in times of chaos.

In a moment of cognitive dissonance, I recognise that for most of the hardest quandaries, there is not a clear right answer, no matter what the self-satisfied politicians want to believe.  Appalled at any bombing or impetuous towards war, I know that standing by and watching Syrian children die from chemical weapons wielded by their own government is inconceivable.

Unfortunately, we seem to have less and less patience for the complexity of things. Simple answers are so appealing. And so deadly. In a recent essay using the writings of the poet Wislawa Szymborska, Maria Popova draws thoughtful connections between the capacity of wonder and the danger of certainty:

The entire essay can be found at the Brainpickings archive: http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=d1933e19f4&e=8657d3f69d

“In a sentiment of chilling prescience today, as we witness tyrants drunk on certainty drain the world of its essential inspiration, Szymborska considers the destructive counterpoint to this generative not-knowing:

All sorts of torturers, dictators, fanatics, and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few loudly shouted slogans also enjoy their jobs, and they too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well, yes, but they “know.” They know, and whatever they know is enough for them once and for all. They don’t want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish their arguments’ force. And any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life. In the most extreme cases, cases well known from ancient and modern history, it even poses a lethal threat to society.

 This is why I value that little phrase “I don’t know” so highly. It’s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself “I don’t know,” the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself “I don’t know”, she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families, and would have ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying “I don’t know,” and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

“Such surrender to not-knowing, Szymborska argues as she steps out into the cosmic perspective, is the seedbed of our capacity for astonishment, which in turn gives meaning to our existence:

The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we’ve just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don’t know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we’ve got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.

But “astonishing” is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We’re astonished, after all, by things that deviate from some well-known and universally acknowledged norm, from an obviousness we’ve grown accustomed to. Now the point is, there is no such obvious world. Our astonishment exists per se and isn’t based on comparison with something else.

Granted, in daily speech, where we don’t stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like “the ordinary world,” “ordinary life,” “the ordinary course of events” … But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.

“Twenty years before she received the Nobel Prize, Szymborska explored how our contracting compulsion for knowing can lead us astray in her sublime 1976 poem “Utopia,” found in her Map: Collected and Last Poems (public library):

UTOPIA

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here

with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,

sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:

the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned

and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.

Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.

Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,

and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches

turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave

and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

Every reading of Invisible Man drives the reader to the heart of racial awareness: through our narrator, we examine what it means not to be seen as an individual; what happens to one’s dignity when your education, ambitions, human relationships and self-determination are (overtly or sub-consciously) considered available for the taking by those who imagine themselves to have power over you. The constant challenge of reading people’s motives towards you—determining whether they see you as fully human as they see themselves—wears you out.

In the midst of this provocative & sometimes discomforting reading, the film Get Out comes to London and some of the intrepid members of the Salon attend the film together. Without giving too much away, this film reveals the monsters lurking beneath the skin of the apparently well-meaning white liberals. The film also renders the sometimes (Sometimes) subtle forces of cultural appropriation as bodily and violent. Cultural appropriation does do violence—but the wounds are usually psychological: unseen by the ignorant eye. The party scene in the film  is particularly cringe-worthy: white viewers may see themselves reflected in the obvious awkwardness of a group of upper-class white people trying to make one black man at ease while downplaying the racial experience. It is deftly handled—particularly when you realise how much more is going on as the movie unveils motives. The movie also uses humour—the great Trickster skill—to bring us close to the fighting hero. Like Invisible Man, the isolated black character must use his wit and craft to survive the monsters. His ability to do so not only endears him to the audience but reveals the Brer Rabbit inventiveness that goes beyond entertaining into the press of survival.  Jordan Peele imbeds humour and satire in the very plot structure—he takes Faulkner’s fascination with the historically taboo blending of white & black families (miscegenation) and creates an outrageous Frankenstein. The objectification of black bodies isn’t simply racist in root—the white cultural elites desire the coolness & strength they perceive as natural to blackness— not just to imitate but to take as their own…

This film helps me make the ANCIENT connection between blinding greed (for money, power, youth) and racism.  Over-arching self-regard disables one’s humanity –and makes it easier to disregard the humanity of one’s fellow beings. I realise that this is an ancient –and all-too contemporary insight. 

The moment of learning often requires discomfort. As one who has inherited the privileges of whiteness, that discomfort should be part of my inheritance. In a work like Invisible Man, some of that discomfort for the reader may be in recognising their own blindness. Every time I read this book, I peel back another layer of prejudice and ignorance. Considering this book carefully with other readers helps me to understand the moment in the Oscars of confusion over the actual Best Picture award opened a double wound: the black artists of Moonlight at first feeling they were not recognised because of their blackness—then worrying that they were given the award as a salve to the accusations of racism in the Academy. There is no uncomplicated victory in the position of the oppressed (Thanks to KP for this insight).

The experience of reading deeply & empathically does not halt at the recognition of difference. Understanding racism—my own and the active and daily racism of our world—requires honouring difference and then reaching for connection. Significant art stretches our perspective to hold both—a greater understanding of the experience (history, struggles) of someone outside our own—and an opportunity to feel emotional resonance in the experience of another.  There is great danger in limiting our understanding of individual life (or art) to a racial, ethnic, sexual or religious category. These categorical limits encourage the growing nationalism that threatens our future.

A recent editorial in the New York Times argues that reading deeply ’disrupts the totalitarian narrative’—and why this is so crucial right now:

“All great art allows us this: a glimpse across the limits of our self. These occurrences aren’t merely amusing or disorientating or interesting experiments in “virtual reality.” They are moments of genuine expansion. They are at the heart of our humanity. Our future depends on them. We couldn’t have gotten here without them.”

Books are central to our resistance to a too narrow vision of the world.

Some great resources around the film:

“Get Out: why racism really is terrifying” — http://theconversation.com/get-out-why-racism-really-is-terrifying-74870

https://www.buzzfeed.com/erinchack/things-you-may-have-missed-in-get-out?utm_term=.ejb9AepA0#.tbvn1YD1X
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-horror-of-smug-liberals.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad

“Interesting piece on the movie especially liked reference to blind man being representative of whites who claim not to see color.  Very Invisible Man like…”

An ingenious movie takes bloody issue with the idea of a postracial America.

Daunted by Dante? Useless at Ulysses? Fear not: as Dan Carrier discovers, Toby Brothers of the London Literary Salon is there to hold your hand.

Published:

15 December, 2016  in The Camden New Journal 

IT will have been a six-month journey through around 265,000 of some of the most famous and trickiest words ever written, and will culminate in a trip from Kentish Town to Dublin on June 16 to celebrate what has become known as Bloom Day – the date that James Joyce set his celebrated Ulysses novel.

The people heading over the Irish Sea to raise a Guinness in honour of the great Modernist author are members of the London Literary Salon, led by literature expert Toby Brothers, who hosts groups to gently walk together through the greatest novels ever written – and help people understand some of the trickier, most rewarding works of literature that all too often gather dust on bookshelves instead of becoming well-thumbed and appreciated.

Originally from California, Toby has settled in Kentish Town and came to NW5 via Paris. It was there she first set up a literary salon after moving across the Atlantic more than 10 years ago.

“The literary salon draws on the tradition of a regular meeting of a committed group of people for the exchange and exploration of ideas,” she writes on the salon’s website.

“It uses the study of a great work of literature as a springboard to consider the wonder of the human experience – in all its raw and dynamic forms. The discussion resembles a seminar-style study, but the emphasis is on what each participant brings to the conversation. Together we work to develop meaning in response to the language that resonates with our lives.”

As well as a six-month study of Ulysses, she also runs workshops ranging across Ralph Ellison to Shakespeare, Dante, Woolf, the Iliad and beyond: classic to contemporary, the salons provide a place for people to read together and discuss why such texts have become cornerstones of the written world.

“It is about looking at how to understand literature,” Toby says. “It is about the way an artist illuminates or understands a particular experience and looks at it objectively. I suppose meeting like this is talking about those aspects of humanity that are most perplexing and challenging.”

Ulysses was first published as a serial from 1918 to 1920, and then in its complete form in 1922. Its “hero” is Leopold Bloom, and we track him as he goes about his daily business in Dublin one summer’s day.

“What Joyce does in Ulysses is show all the different ways the English language can be used,” she says.

“It is a virtuoso performance. Joyce is playing all the instruments.”

She says that the ability to read and digest a book of the size and complexity of Ulysses should not be underestimated – nor the corrosive effect on modern life the loss of such a basic skill is having on every thing from public discourse to the way we make decisions about governance.

With a world where people speak all too often through using 140 characters on social media, or are bombarded with catchy headlines that purport to speak the “truth” without detailed analysis, having your tools sharpened by reading books like Ulysses isn’t just about enjoying a great story.

“We are really in trouble collectively if we do not work on our attention spans,” she says.

“I feel Trump’s rise in America is down to this collective loss. If you cannot take the time to think carefully and critically, think deeply about your relationship with others, you are living in a dangerous place.

“Reading helps you to be able to talk with greater confidence, have a broader working vocabulary to express yourself. It helps you become more aware of the power of the words you use.”

And tackling books that are seen as tricky also encourages inquisitiveness, says Toby.

“You need to be comfortable asking questions. You need to be able to say: I do not understand. That is fundamental to a learning process,” she adds.

Joyce’s prose moves between styles, asking the reader to follow carefully – and that is one of the reasons it is so often a book that is discarded before the reader can get beyond the opening few pages.

For those starting the book this January, the salon works by gently easing the reader into the book. They start slowly, taking on 15 pages of text at a time with notes to help untangle what is going on, a “road map to untangle Joyce,” as Toby puts it.

“Talking about literature turns people’s minds on, it makes you more curious about the world around you and gives you the confidence to learn more, explore more,” she says.

“What Joyce asks us is to think about the everyday struggle we face to be human in a difficult world.”

…And Why the Salon Matters

This is a tough moment for those who value human rights, cross-cultural communication, global partnership and progressive political movement. Like many, I was devastated to learn of Trump’s election. There are many reasons for rejection of Trump for any public office—but the foremost and defining feature of Trump’s rhetoric is divisiveness and bigotry. It represents the least generous and most dangerous qualities of the human psyche.

The Salon has always offered a space for a diversity of opinions and experiences. Discussions about various forms of belief, values, heritages and political persuasions have flourished—and I am so deeply appreciative of that. The works we study often present outdated attitudes—about men and women, people of color, Jewish people, Muslim people, gay and transgender people. The Salon gives us a place to consider these representations, their origins, the possibility that well-meaning people could cling to them, the distance between then and now.

It is so tempting, especially in this moment of chaos and public uncertainty—to cling fiercely to one’s own views, to live in our self-made bubble. But I know that growth comes when my ideas are challenged, when, through respectful discussions, I am forced to truly attend to new perspectives—and I learn again that I may be wrong. That learning expands my mind.

I look back on many recent Salon discussions—from Proust to Dante, Eliot to Rushdie and Joyce, Woolf, Rhys—and embrace anew the opportunity offered in communal consideration of great art to embrace difference and deepen compassion. I truly celebrate the experience in the Salon of divergent ideas that respectfully encounter each other—all of us learning from each other.

—Toby