Since I feel this can’t-read-enough anxiety daily, I am trying a new approach: it is not the amount I read but the depth of consideration in what I do read. Cliche? Perhaps…but any given moment or struggle offers a newly carved truth if I am attending to it. I can say over and over to myself ‘we are all doing the best we can’ but is only when I feel it in my bones, hold the words like some delicacy that I must think about to savour, that the truth leaks out beneath the saying.
The recent weeks have included two galvanizing studies of Moby Dick in Paris, the on-going challenge and glory of the six month Ulysses study and the start of a new program: Poetry Salons at the Fields Beneath Cafe adjacent to Kentish Town West. Coming up (and time to sign up):
The Sound and The Fury Salon Intensive 6-10:30 PM cost is 45 pounds; evening includes a pot-luck meal. Participant in recent Paris S&F study had this feedback: “Our study of this book has re-made me as a reader and student of human nature…”. Reading Faulkner will infuse your mind–but sign up today to get the notes and start reading. recommended edition: Norton Critical
Friday April 19th;
four remaining spaces
Between the Acts Salon Intensive
5:30-10 PM cost is 45 pounds; evening includes a pot-luck meal.
Virginia Woolf on how to read: “[F]ew people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite.” from The Second Common Reader
Weekly brief Poetry Studies at The Fields Beneath Cafe Mondays 3-4 PM register by contacting me; cost is the purchase of a coffee or tasty treat and sliding scale donation to the London Literary Salon (4-8 pounds suggested).
Moby Dick The recent Salon Intensive in Paris on Moby Dick was amazing and exhaustive– and we only had six hours. I am considering proposing a Moby Dick study in London–interested? We would go for 5ive weekly meetings– it is a matter of blood and sweat to complete the work in less time. Please email me with schedule prefernces (Thursday afternoons? Wednesday or Thursday evenings?) and if there is enough interest, I will announce the study in the next newsletter…The Arcola Theatre is offering this performance until May 4th:
http://www.camdenreview.com/reviews/theatre/2013/apr/ahab-spring-%E2%80%93-moby-dick-arcola-theatre
See you in the pages…
