The wonderful Hélène Larisch– Paris Salonista and organiser for the Tout en Parlant association –offers this fabulous concert to raise money to support the great work of providing cultural offerings and connections for people with limited sight.
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I would recommend courses led by Toby to anyone who wants to look at a text in detail in a study group
I was certainly surprised at how much I was thrown off balance by these two astounding writers…I look forward to returning for more
We all came to the group with different backgrounds and interests but Mark has skillfully guided us through a stimulating programme of Greek literature.
I always leave the meetings with a much broader understanding of what we are reading than when I arrived
Everyone feels they get heard and therefore that each of us has a contribution to make
In all of the courses I have attended I have felt a bond within the group, and this contributes significantly to the quality of the discussions
Lovely, intimate groups with in-depth discussions, lots of learning, and friendships are made for life there
I’ve read things I’d never dared read before. I’ve made new friends and met really interesting people.
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James Joyce’s The Dead This longer short story is a rich feast through which one may taste the world of
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James Joyce’s The Dead
This longer short story is a rich feast through which one may taste the world of Joyce. Nothing – NOTHING – in Joyce is casual. Each image, reference, description carries symbolic resonance. Career Joyce scholars may try to align all the references – but I like W. Tindall’s attitude: “The text is not a system of mathematical equations but a flexible relationship of possibilities. . .” Bearing this in mind, we will dig at some of these references to give a sense of the richness in the writing.
Pay attention to the title even as it sits in contrast with the opening scene of the story itself – how is the image of death and the Dead brought up throughout the work? This story also holds to Joyce’s fascination with epiphanies – that moment of sudden and intense illumination when a profound truth is, or may be, revealed. Joyce describes the epiphany as ‘the most delicate and evanescent of moments’ that offer ‘a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in memorable phase of the mind itself’. For Joyce, these moments did not occur at the height of the heroic or dramatic gesture, but in the ordinary acts of life. What are the moments in ‘The Dead’ that fit this description? More importantly, what is revealed?
This study would be particularly useful for those in the coming Ulysses 2021 study as a way to warm up your Joyce muscles.
SALON DETAILS:
- One-meeting intensive study: 3 hours January 5th 2021
- Facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
- Virtual Meeting on Zoom 16:00-19:00 GMT
- Cost £50 includes notes and critical resources *reduced cost available for first-time participants*
- RECOMMENDED EDITION: Dubliners by James Joyce (Penguin Modern Classics, Feb. 2000) ISBN-13 : 978-0141182452TO REGISTER, please use the Paypal button below to pay £50.00
“Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.”
― James Joyce, The Dead
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Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to
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Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
-Marcel Proust
Who hasn’t gazed at this mountain of Modernism and felt daunted or wondered what could possibly take any writer 3,000+ words and six or seven volumes to say? In our study, we will enter into the Proustian universe through the first volume: this will give readers a glimpse of the breadth and purpose of this carefully constructed universe that Proust uses to reflect on the workings of the mind, memory, imagination and the role of art. Harold Bloom cites ISOLT as the greatest literary work of comic jealousy. Proust uses social critique, abundant detail, lyric descriptions and philosophical query to portray a sensitive young mind engaging with the world and human relationships. The narrator’s incredible vision and unique voice develop over the course of the volumes. By studying this first volume, you will have the tools to complete the epic on your own if you are inspired– or continue with the Salon study if this is working for you. Could there be a better moment in history to go in search of Lost Time?
This will be the fifth troop I have led through this massive work – even though this means 2.5 years of reading together, most have stayed the course and have found the work immensely satisfying. I would say simply that my time in Proust has changed the way I understand my relationship to the world of art and experience.
Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: “This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession, we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”
***THIS SALON IS NOW FULL– Contact us if you are interested in a future Proust cycle**
Salon Details and Registration
- Nine weeks : January 11th- March 8th 2021 12:30-2:30
- ZOOM Virtual Study
- Facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
- Cost £205 includes loads of notes and critical resources
- RECOMMENDED EDITION: In Search of Lost Time: Volume I, The Way By Swann’s, by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis; Penguin Modern Classics; ISBN 978-0141180311
- For volumes II through VI: Vintage Classics editions, translated by Moncrief/Kilmartin/Enright ISBN-13: 978-0099362319
To register for the Salon study, please use the Paypal button below to pay £205: Please ensure that the email that is connected to your Paypal account is the same email that you use for correspondence.
Proust’s writing requires a wide awake mind as the reader is drawn into dissecting the world as it is experienced and the way our minds decorate and create memories, values and paradigms of understanding. This sounds so dry; the wonder is how deeply sensual Proust’s work is—he is most concerned with the experience of intimacy and how this dance between two beings is fractured and re-imagined through the lens of perception.
Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealized experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that molds our consciousness.
Proust also uses his curious and attentive narrator to uncover the ombre—the part of the self that hides in the shade or shadow. As we come to know the characters in the narrator’s world, each turns out to have aspects that reveal a savagery or laziness or discrepancy that was not what appeared on the surface. Of course, as soon as Proust reflects this to the reader, we recognize this truth of human nature: all carry a shadow, an untoward or simply unmanageable part of the self that we struggle to contain. In Proust’s world, these aspects are equally a part of the coherent self. This has me thinking a great deal about how carefully we construct the social self—and how we temper what simmers beneath the surface.
For further reflection, I offer you this keen reader’s reasons to study Proust:
Can Proust Really Change Your Life? Let’s Find Out
September 28, 2009 by Dennis Abrams
You know you’ve been meaning to. You’re pretty sure that you’ve got a dusty copy of Swann’s Way sitting around somewhere. You’ve probably even read the book’s famous opening line, “For a long time I would go to bed early,” and thought to yourself, well, not now, maybe some other time.
Join us, (there is safety in numbers) and see what you’ve been missing all these years.
Should you need further encouragement, here are ten reasons why you should join in and make Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time your next big literary project.
- You’ll finally be reading the work of one of the great prose stylists of all time. Long, sensuous sentences that cast a spell like no others: Glorious descriptions of nature, art, music, and fashion, full of witty conversation and aphorisms galore.
- You will be constantly putting the book down to underline another memorable passage, all the while asking yourself, “How does he know that?”
- You’ll be surprised to learn that Proust is surprisingly funny. Yes, In Search of Lost Time is a literary masterpiece, it’s long, and it’s French, it can’t possibly be funny. But it is. Truly.
- You should do it because it’s there. At 3,000 pages and over 1.25 million words, it’s the Mt. Everest of literature, but you can reach its peak without an oxygen mask or the assistance of a Sherpa. By way of comparison, it took David Chase 86 episodes and six seasons to tell the story of The Sopranos and the Harry Potter saga is 4,224 pages long and contains over one million words. Given that, Proust doesn’t seem nearly as daunting.
- You’ll learn nearly all there is to know about love, jealousy, obsession, memory, and time. It will, if you let it, change your life: it is one of those rare books that provides an entirely new way of perceiving and understanding the world.
- You’ll have the thrill of accomplishment. Think of the sense of pride you’ll have in having read, comprehended, and enjoyed In Search of Lost Time.
- You’ll meet lots of fascinating people from all levels of French society. Harold Bloom wrote that “Proust’s greatest strength, amid so many others, is his characterization: no twentieth-century novelist can match his roster of vivid personalities.” Of course, Harold’s not always right, but this time he is.
- You’ll impress your friends. Consider the following piece of dialogue. Them: “Did you catch last night’s episode of Lost?” You: “No, sorry, I was so enthralled reading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time that I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the television.” Game, Set and Match (Of course, you should say it nicely).
- You’ll be able to relax knowing that for the next few months at least, you will not have to worry about what you’re going to be reading next.
- And finally, and most importantly, reading In Search of Lost Time means that at last you’ll be reading the greatest novel ever written. Virginia Woolf said, “My greatest adventure was undoubtedly Proust. What is there left to write after that?” Who are you to argue with Virginia Woolf?
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"You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” —William Faulkner There is a strong
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“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner
There is a strong argument for studying this huge and intimidating text—book list chart-topper of 100 greatest books of all time, critics’ darling, most lauded/least read, the book that many literary academics dedicate their lives to studying—but you will only know for yourself by diving in. I believe the only way to study it is with a group of hungry, curious readers who all contribute to evoking meaning, through their questions as well as their insights.
The good news: reading Ulysses is fun. And I don’t mean in a frustrating, overly-analytical see-how-much-you-know-way. The language is amazing—even when I don’t understand it. Perhaps, especially when I don’t understand it, because meaning sneaks in through more than my critical faculty. Meaning slides in through sound, through the lushness of the language, through the filmy and substantial images, and suddenly I find myself transported from a walk on a beach to a contemplation of the origins of man—thanks, James Joyce.
Any time spent studying Joyce leaves one a better reader—a broader thinker—even if all the references, repetitions, epiphanies and allusions are not immediately understood.
“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skillfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvelous work was immense.”
—Ulysses Salon participant
See more participant feedback here…
SALON DETAILS
A) DAYTIME: Mondays 3:00-5:00 PM **This study will be VIRTUAL** 4/1/21 STUDY FULL
B) EVENINGS : Tuesdays 5:00-7:00 PM **This study will be VIRTUAL** 26/12/20: STUDY FULL
- Both afternoon and evening studies start January 11th/12th and finish June 20th (combined Sunday evening) 2021 ; there will be a few special Sunday evening meetings for both afternoon & evening groups to address the longer chapters.
- We will meet for 21 meetings; there will be a few breaks around school half-terms
- Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition; (Penguin Modern Classics), ISBN-10: 0141184434. (There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.)
- The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582
- The total cost for the 20-meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £420
TO REGISTER, Please use the Paypal button below to pay for the study; upon receipt of payment, you will receive opening notes and loads of resources to start the study.
For the daytime study on Mondays :
For the early evening study on Tuesdays *THIS SESSION IS NOW FULL*
If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.
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"You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” —William Faulkner After wandering through these
Event Details
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner
After wandering through these rich pages with many wonderful readers, I am keen to offer a study of Ulysses for those who have already passed through once (or more) and are ready to dig deeper. The reading schedule will be the same, but we will approach with an understanding of the structure already in mind. This will allow us to flesh out the themes from the start of the work and engage more thoroughly the historical, social and aesthetic structures that Joyce inhabits and overturns. Hopefully this will also give seasoned readers the opportunity to feel grounded in the text and discover motifs, connections and explorations that they may have missed in the madness of the first reading.
If you have not previously read Ulysses, please join either the afternoon study or the early evening study.
“Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section. I had no idea what the salon would be like and was very apprehensive about joining up. But Toby so skillfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvelous work was immense.”
—Ulysses Salon participant
See more participant feedback here…
SALON DETAILS
- Studies start January 12th and finish June 20th (Sunday combined meeting) ; there will be a few special Sunday evening meetings for both afternoon & evening groups to address the longer chapters.
- We will meet for 21 meetings; there will be a few breaks around school half-terms
- Please purchase these editions in preparation for our study:
- Ulysses, by James Joyce, Annotated Students’ Edition; (Penguin Modern Classics), ISBN-10: 0141184434. (There are many editions of Ulysses — I find this edition is most coherent and the notes and introduction by Declan Kieberd very helpful; as we will constantly be referencing particular passages, having the same edition will be extremely useful.)
- The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, by Harry Blamires, ISBN-10: 0415138582
- The total cost for the 21-meeting study, with all notes and resources materials, is £420
TO REGISTER, Please use the Paypal button below to pay for the study; upon receipt of payment, you will receive opening notes and loads of resources to start the study.
If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.
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She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always
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She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone;
she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.
–Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf’s writing hits emotion first—‘what happens’ takes second place to ‘what feels’. The language is packed with subtlety, nuance and evocative images as Woolf probes the depths of intimate relationships. Come join us for this exploration of a warm June day in London: madness, aesthetics, the nature of love and intimacy, war, relationships across and between genders, Imperialism—all are prodded in this delicate and lyric work.
SALON DETAILS
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Salon Director
- Four-meeting study starting January 14th running through February 4th Thursday late afternoon
- Virtual Meeting on Zoom
- Cost £115 includes notes and critical resources *reduced cost available for first-time participants*
- Recommended edition: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; Oxford World’s Classics edition; ISBN-13: 978-0199536009
Please use the Paypal button below to register by paying £115 for the four-meeting study- if you prefer to pay by direct bank transfer, please contact us for details. Upon payment, you will receive opening notes and further information. Please be sure the email associated with your payment is the same used for correspondence.
For First Time participants only- 20% reduction: £92
Mrs Dalloway makes an ideal study: her writing is challenging to read on one’s own, rich as it is in images, references and details that deliver a powerful emotional and intellectual impact. The study format encourages exploration by reading with a group of diverse and questing minds. Together we will work to understand Woolf’s incisive study of human personality—and use some of her contemporaries (Freud, Henri Bergson, Roger Fry) to help make sense of this new writing she creates. Here is Julia Briggs from her biographical study of Woolf through her works:
“Mrs. Dalloway is the story of a day in the lives of a man and woman who never meet—a society hostess who gives a party, and a shell-shocked soldier… What they have in common or why their stories are told in parallel, the reader must decide, for this is a modernist text, an open text, with no neat climax or final explanation, and what happens seems to shift as we read and reread. Woolf intended her experiment to bring the reader closer to everyday life, in all its confusion, mystery and uncertainly, rejecting the artificial structures and categories of Victorian fiction.”
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Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader
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Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. -Marcel Proust
After completing incredibly satisfying studies of Ulysses and Magic Mountain, we have turned to the next big mountain of Modernism, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. This is my fifth tour through the Search— each visit reveals new nuggets and gasping moments This fifth and sixth volume considers closely the seductive agony of jealousy. The two groups who have made it through the first two volumes in the last six months are lively and welcoming– we have room for two in the evening (the 5-7 PM group is full). If you have not read the first four volumes previously, please contact us to discuss.
Here is how one Salonista describes the pleasure and work of reading Proust: ” This is a velvet jewel of a book that demands the attention of a lover full of enchantment and obsession ,we need not get impatient as all good lovers perfect their art in taking their time.”
Reading Proust teaches the reader to observe how the world is experienced, to be aware that although humans are tempted to give greater weight to the perceptual universe, it is the entwining of memory, idealized experience (dreams) and relationships with what our senses perceive that molds our consciousness.
**5-7 PM Full; Two spaces 7:30-9:30** Please contact us if you have questions about starting The Search in the fifth volume
Salon Details
- Facilitated by Toby Brothers
- Wednesday afternoons 5-7 PM OR 7:30-9:30 PM
- 15 Meeting study from January 27th- May 26th; (No meetings October 14th)
- Recommended edition: Vintage Classics Moncrief/Kilmartin/Enright
- £345 for 15 meetings includes background materials, literary criticism, opening notes & discussion notes
- This is a VIRTUAL study–
Use the Paypal button below to register . The cost is £345 for the fifteen-week study–this will cover the entire volume. I will send along opening notes and critical resources once I have received your registration.
For WEDNESDAY evenings 7:30-9:30 pm:
If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.
I’d like to share with you part of Edmund White’s essay on this section from Andre Aciman’s collection The Proust Project:
“In these pages, Proust alludes to so many conflicting theories of homosexuality that they end up by casting doubt on one another — and on all such theories. In fact they suggest, finally, that only the conventions of a few cultures (but not all or even most cultures) determine the definition of normality; mere convention and nothing more absolute defines the status of homosexuality.
On the face of it nothing could seem further from the Proustian position. He starts out with the most extreme (and the most offensive) theory; that male homosexuals are inverts, i.e., women disguised as men. this whole initial disquisition on homosexuality is triggered by Marcel’s realization that Charlus’s face in repose is that of a woman since ‘he was one.’ This is the theory of ‘the soul of a woman enclosed in the body of a man’ first worked out by the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868.
Proust plays with the theories and homophobia of his time — and exposes societal hypocrisies in all forms.