Proposed Salons from Toby– Weekly studies, Retreats

May 20, 2019

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 18-21St 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)

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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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august 2019

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18aug2:30 pm7:30 pmBeloved by Toni Morrison in Fairfax, Virginia2:30 pm - 7:30 pm Fairfax, Virginia (US)Type Of Study:LiteratureFrequency:One Off Event

Event Details

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

Toni Morrison, writer, professor and essayist on issues including race, gender and forces of life, won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Beloved is regarded by many as Morrison’s best work, and once you have spent some time in the text, it is easy to understand why. Morrison works to help the reader grasp the psychological devastation wreaked by the institution of slavery by close observation of a community of ex-slaves creating lives in Ohio in the second half of the 19th century.

This text is meaty and evocative, and also quite difficult to read alone. The work also offers endless possibilities in terms of discussion of the formation of self, claiming of self, mother/child relationships, the fury of love, the permeable boundaries between the living and the not living, as well as the more predictable (but no less provocative) issues of race, gender and role of history.

But what you need to know– along with the history and context which will be provided as part of the Salon–is that the writing is so gorgeous. Morrison tackles the most painful aspects of human experience with an honesty and lyricism that will leave you breathless. If this is your first reading of the book, try not to read around too much: many reviews and commentary give away the central traumatic event that Morrison reveals carefully and purposefully in her own time. I think Morrison is very purposeful in the way she tells this story—we will discuss the framing and the narrative progression and her purpose there.

SALON DETAILS

FAIRFAX: One- Meeting Salon Intensive Sunday August 18th 2:30-7:30 PM We will have an optional pot-luck meal to finish the study.
Meeting in Fairfax VA (address supplied upon registration)
Facilitated by Salon Director Toby Brothers
Cost $40.00 includes notes and critical resources *reduced cost for first-time participants*
RECOMMENDED EDITION: VINTAGE New ed. ISBN-10: 0099760118

TO REGISTER, please use the Paypal button below to pay $40.00:

This sounds like warning but is meant simply to prepare you: the book has some graphic scenes- not, I think, gratuitously, but disturbing nevertheless. There are also some incredibly beautiful passages- and some that weave the violence with beautiful prose. It is also a work that (purposefully, I think) disorients the reader in the beginning. This is one of the ways in which the Salon is useful; we usually start with a lot of questions about what is going on …and why Morrison seems to make the read so difficult for the reader. Your persistence is needed- but I promise you, you will be rewarded.If this is your first reading of the text, please know that you will read the first chapter and probably feel quite disoriented (just for starters, notice the chapters aren’t numbered- why would Morrison choose not to number the chapters? What effect does this have on your reading?) I have a few suggestions to help you get your bearings: you might want to keep a list of characters (who they are, what you know about them, how they are connected to each other). I also encourage you to write down dates- the novel opens in the year 1873 (third line, first paragraph) – see if you notice when the time changes and make a note of it.

I am an advocate of active reading- your engagement with the text will be strengthened with a close interaction. One of the ways to do this is to write notes directly in the book- question marks in the margin where you don’t understand, exclamation points where you do, highlighting or underlining a passage that strikes you- making note of a passage that is opaque but intriguing, finding connections both within the text and to your own experience. We will talk more about this- mostly find what works for you to help illuminate the text.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

28aug7:00 pm9:30 pmFlannery O'Connor One-night study: The Displaced Person *STUDY FULL*7:00 pm - 9:30 pm Kentish Town, LondonType Of Study:LiteratureFrequency:One Off EventDuration:One day

Event Details

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place… Nothing outside you can give you any place… In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”

― Flannery O’Connor , Wise Blood

The London Literary Salon had a unique opportunity earlier this summer to view the only full-length documentary on Flannery O’Connor with producer and director Bridget Kurt. The ensuing discussion was full of questions around Flannery O’Connor’s aesthetic vision: how much does her Catholicism impact her writing? And how does the contemporary reader situate themselves in a framework of faith that we may not share? How does a reader’s immersion in a vision that is framed by a particular faith widen our perspective? O’Conner famously wrote that ‘the topical is poison’ in fiction. She was more interested in exploring the inconsistencies in human souls– the grotesque corners of violence, prejudice and ignorance. She argues that her stories also offer glimpses of grace that are afforded to all people: probing this proposal in her work makes for an energised discussion.

” The Displaced Person” directly engages racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia. This is a longer short story– at 50 pages, this will give us a broader canvas to consider and discuss O’Connor’s writing and vision.

Salon Details

Facilitated by Toby Brothers
Wednesday evening 7-9:30 pm
One meeting Intensive August 28th 2019
Recommended edition: The Complete Stories collection by Flannery O’Connor, Faber & Faber; Main edition (2 April 2009) ; ISBN-10: 9780571245789 (Though the story can also be found on-line)

£35 for Salon Intensive includes background materials and opening notes

STUDY FULL ** Please contact us if you are interested in a similar study in the future**

To register for the study, please use the secure Paypal payment button below to pay £35. Opening notes will be sent shortly after registration.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

Flannery O’Connor is considered to be the master of the American Gothic short story form. Most readers experience discomfort reading her raw and frequently violent stories. Often set in mid-twentieth century southern United States, her stories do not flinch from portraying human hypocrisy, racism, greed and cruelty. Ironically, she is often claimed as a Catholic writer– her faith in some ways integral to her vision. O’Connor was invested in questioning the bizarre nature of humans– and how anxiously the strangeness at the centre of our being is poorly shielded by custom, charity and convention.

Writer Josh Jones (http://www.openculture.com/2019/02/why-should-we-read-flannery-oconnor-an-animated-video-makes-the-case.html) continues this inquiry:

By use of what she called “a reasonable use of the unreasonable” she shows murder, contempt, and deception as shockingly ordinary states of affairs, belying the polite fictions of civility and social niceness. Perhaps no setting could better illuminate the contrasts than the piously violent segregated mid-century American South. O’Connor’s “mastery of the grotesque,” notes the TED-Ed video by Iseult Gillespie, “and her explorations of the insularity and superstitions of the South led her to be classified as a ‘Southern Gothic’ writer.”

The label may fit superficially, but “her work pushed beyond the purely ridiculous and frightening characteristics associated with the genre to reveal the variety and nuance of human character.” O’Connor herself suggested that what set her apart were “the assumptions… of the central Christian mysteries.” Though we need not read her work this way, she grants, there is “none other by which it could have been written.” We might say that her committed belief in the idea of universal human depravity gave her unique insight into the meaninglessness of class and race distinctions. Few writers have taken the idea as seriously, or approached it with more wicked playfulness.