Musings on the Short Stories for Paris Salon Intensive April 2014
Sometimes two random pieces connect in the mind by sheer accident—but the way they speak to each other becomes something more than coincidence. As I re-read ‘Boys and Girls’ today, I also read a piece on Laura Bates and her blog, Everyday Sexism (http://everydaysexism.com) and there was the clang. Alice Munro has a gift for exposing the strange customs of our realm—the realm I live in & have formed my identity and relationships in- without direct commentary but in a way that as reader, I stand back somewhat aghast at this odd, normalized world.
“Girls don’t slam doors like that.” “Girls keep their knees together when they sit down.” And worse still, when I asked some questions, “That’s none of girls’ business.” I continued to slam the doors and sit as awkwardly as possible, thinking that by such measures I kept myself free. –“Boys and Girls”
This short story concerns itself with how a girl learns to be a girl-and how awkward that learning is. The story was written fifty years ago and is set in a time before then—but still; there is something recognizable about the way we are socialized to a reduced form of ourselves (boys AND girls) to ‘right’ ways of behavior and an acceptance of inequities that stated openly, I would not accept. The blog Laura Bates started to simply hear (is that the right verb for electronic admissions?) examples of everyday sexism has hit an unexpected nerve and revealed a level of daily sexism that is astounding. And here is the meet for me: as a deep believer in the power of relationships to bridge divides (gender, nationality, age, race, beliefs…) I can not believe how far we have not come. Or how short a distance we have gone in our ability to reduce gender oppression knowing as much as we do.
I appreciate stories and narratives for this: whatever maybe bubbling and sawing away in my mind suddenly gains shape when carefully crafted as an objective portrayal. My own struggles and turmoil clarifies against the experience of another—and I gather words and examples to sift the chaos of feelings. This is only the start of the process of actively working for positive change—but then we come together in a group, we talk about the issues raised in the literature and our own lives—and we turn away with strength and company in the strangeness of life.
In November and December the Salons hummed along with two intensive studies on To the Lighthouse and the on-going surreal climb up Mann’s Magic Mountain. We will continue climbing –and descending the Mountain into 2014–many new Salons also coming up (see Events section for more info)
January:
14 .01 Black Voices in American Literature : Weaving history, diverse traditions and a collage of voices, we will explore the struggle and celebration of black experience through Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, works by James Baldwin and Harlem Renaissance artists. Study offered at City Lit; London’s largest adult university.
Intimidating, broad and beautiful—this is the Modernist work that tops the charts and requires a real commitment on the part of the reader. A Salon participant described the experience of reading Ulysses “has made me a better reader, writer and human being”. The book is full of humour, food, sex, urban life and language play—Joyce’s love letter to Dublin and his critique of his Irish nation provides deep perspective on our contemporary living.
20 week study, Thursdays 8-10 PM at the London Literary Salon in Kentish Town
12.01 “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot One meeting Salon Intensive 6-9:30 PM
The Wasteland is one of the most famous and most difficult poems written in English during the 20th c.; here is Mary Karr on how (and why) to approach the poem: “The boundary between 20th century verse in English and its 19th century predecessors –Romantic poetry and the genteel Victorian stuff after it—didn’t simply dissolve. It came down with an axe swoop, and the blade was T. S. Eliot’s “Waste Land”. William Carlos Williams said the poem “wiped out our world as if an atom bomb had been dropped upon it.” Its publication in 1922 killed off the last limping, rickets-ridden vestiges of the old era and raised the flag of Modernism…”
February:
02.02 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley One Meeting Salon Intensive 5-10 PM
There is renewed interest in Mary Shelly’s gothic? Feminist? Science fiction? classic. Recent productions have peeled back the layers of the block-headed, bolted monster and gets down to Mary Shelly’s original concern: what is the relationship between the created and the creator? Edward Mendelson offers: “Frankenstein is the story of childbirth as it would be if it had been invented by someone who wanted power more than love.” The form of the story also draws the reader into the entangled and unlimited relationship between the Creature and its creator as we move through narrators to get to the frozen final confrontation.
The Salon intensive is a five-hour gulp…we take in the whole book at once and the resulting discussion tends to be energetic. Frankenstein is not a big read- most versions are between 110-135 pages…but it is worth giving yourself sometime to read and consider closely the many layers contained in the work.
Starting in March:
26.03 Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (five week study, evening or afternoon options)
16.03 & 30.03 –Two meetings for Homer’s The Odyssey
Starting end of March—Eight week study of Moby Dick
Starting week of November 12th
Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain has been grouped with the two other giant Modernist classics Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past as the formative novels of the Modernist era. A first dip in to the text reveals an accessible, lilting narrative that once in, you find yourself considering time, society, passion, memory from the strange angle of remove that characterises the perspective of the invalid. Mann’s work is also deeply political; placed before WWI but written between WWI and WWII, MM engages questions of Nationalism and nostalgia with the shadow of future events shifting the weight of the ironic stance that Mann employs.
We will need some time to encounter the richness and length of this work: the study will extend over three five-week sessions ( a total of 15 weeks). Meetings start the first week of November; we will break for the holidays.
Day time meetings: 12:30-2:30 Tuesday afternoons two spaces remaining
Evening meetings: 8-10 PM Wednesday evenings full
Recommended Edition Everyman’s Library (2005) translation by John E. Woods (available at Owl Bookshop Kentish Town)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf One Day Salon Intensive London
In this exquisite work, Woolf seeks to break through the restraints of language to access the interior voice of passions, fears, unspeakable thoughts and human dynamics. By employing stream of consciousness narrative and the early stirrings of the modernist aesthetic, Woolf gives insights into the nature of relationships and the formation of self in relation to others that will be recognizable – and revealing to each reader.
Salon Intensive 5:30-10PM November 29th
Having survived the Wide Sargasso Sea, we are going to climb Mann’s Magic Mountain and go to The Lighthouse– visiting the peculiar and gorgeous realm of Alice Munro along the way…of course, some of us are still embroiled in the Sound and the Fury….
There is room for another intensive study in the coming months: if you have a request, please contact us….
Coming Studies for more information about each of the following, please visit the Events page
Alice Munro Short Stories One night study November 4th 7:30-10 PM
Munro’s award of the Nobel Prize for literature is the perfect excuse to offer a study based on two of her short stories. We will look closely at “Runaway” and “Boys and Girls” in this single meeting and consider her unique voice in probing the intimacy and peculiarities of the human heart. That’s Alice Munro in the picture below– reminding us of the need for laughter in the midst of our contemplations.
Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Starting week of November 12th
Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain has been grouped with the two other giant Modernist classics Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past as the formative novels of the Modernist era. A first dip in to the text reveals an accessible, lilting narrative that once in, you find yourself considering time, society, passion, memory from the strange angle of remove that characterises the perspective of the invalid. Mann’s work is also deeply political; placed before WWI but written between WWI and WWII, MM engages questions of Nationalism and nostalgia with the shadow of future events shifting the weight of the ironic stance that Mann employs.
We will need some time to encounter the richness and length of this work: the study will extend over three five-week sessions ( a total of 15 weeks). Meetings start the first week of November; we will break for the holidays.
Day time meetings: 12:30-2:30 Tuesday afternoons four spaces remaining
Evening meetings: 8-10 PM Wednesday evenings five spaces remaining
Recommended Edition Everyman’s Library (2005) translation by John E. Woods (available at Owl Bookshop Kentish Town)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf One Day Salon Intensive London
In this exquisite work, Woolf seeks to break through the restraints of language to access the interior voice of passions, fears, unspeakable thoughts and human dynamics. By employing stream of consciousness narrative and the early stirrings of the modernist aesthetic, Woolf gives insights into the nature of relationships and the formation of self in relation to others that will be recognizable – and revealing to each reader.
Choice of two dates–each a one day intensive: November 10th or November 29th
Everybody knows what a house does, how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and presents what is outside in a new way. This is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story does for me, and what I want my stories to do for other people. (from “What is Real?”)
In this one-evening short story intensive, we will first consider Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” and then move into Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.” The connections between the two pieces may not be obvious at first, but I think in our discussions we will find how they reflect and address each other while walking very different roads.
“Why I Live at the P.O.” is deeply connected to the place and time period in which it is set. As readers, we are positioned so close to Sister, the narrator, that it may take some time for us to realize we are being persuaded. Her point of view in the story she relays is strongly inflected and makes her narration unreliable, but there is much to be gained even from this dented perspective. The humor is rich and compelling, but there is also strong commentary and more subtle insights on females and familial relationships: the jealousies and tensions, sharp hurts and unspoken wounds. Notice how quickly the mood swings from teasing to rupture: what is suggested here?
Below is selection from a review of Munro; please do not worry if you do not have time to read through this material before we meet…these resources will be equally illuminating in the Salon aftermath.
“The Germans must have a term for it. Doppelgedanken, perhaps: the sensation, when reading, that your own mind is giving birth to the words as they appear on the page. Such is the ego that in these rare instances you wonder, “How could the author have known what I was thinking?” Of course, what has happened isn’t this at all, though it’s no less astonishing. Rather, you’ve been drawn so deftly into another world that you’re breathing with someone else’s rhythms, seeing someone else’s visions as your own.
“One of the pleasures of reading Alice Munro derives from her ability to impart this sensation. It’s the sort of gift that requires enormous modesty on the part of the writer, who must shun pyrotechnics for something less flashy: an empathy so pitch-perfect as to be nearly undetectable. But it’s most arresting in the hands of a writer who isn’t too modest — one possessed of a fearless, at times, fearsome, ambition.”
I suggest that Munro explores juxtaposed worlds in her fiction…that she uses her characters to probe the relationships between psychological spaces and the outside world. Her female characters all have a fine double awareness of community values and of what else goes on outside those limits. They are fascinated by dark holes and unscripted spaces with their scandalous discreditable stories of transgression and desire. The romantic fantasies, the glimpses of interior lives and the rumors and gossip these engender are part of this recognition of other worlds.
Always amazed how Munro effortlessly uses metaphors of place and event to reveal deep interior turbulence and ambivalences: for ex.; the ‘pelting’ of the beautiful foxes in the ‘Boys and Girls’ becomes wonderful resonance for the way in which the narrator is skinned by the process of growing in to the skin of a ‘girl’- and must go through the act of un-skinning herself to find her sneaky, savage and hostile self that will fight this reduction.
Short Stories by Alice Munro and Joyce Carol Oates
This Salon Intensive offers a one-meeting study that ambitiously considers two short stories in one big, energetic gulp. Participants have described this as a wonderfully dynamic approach– we work hard and have a joyous time.
Our short story study will take two of the genre’s ruling voices, with Joyce Carol Oates’ Mastiff and Alice Munro’s Labor Day Dinner. These two works consider themes around self-knowledge and relational identities, but our focus will be on a holistic consideration of each individuallyand in their comparison. Note how the techniques of language and style probe the murky interior spaces. The Joyce Carol Oates story Mastiff is available here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/01/mastiff. The Alice Munro story is in the collection The Moons of Jupiter.
In so many tales told of romantic love, beauty casts spells that are often greeted or countered by other spells. Jupiter’s mythic moons have lives of deformity and transplant, and the moons themselves are known for their erratic orbits. How like the characters of Alice Munro. Though her protagonists are not explicitly turned into animals or cupbearers or loved by any actual omnipotent, tempestuous god, the wanderings, transformations, mischief, and anguish of possessive love—the kind of love everyone really values, “the one nobody wants to have missed out on,” according to the narrator of “Hard-Luck Stories”—are her most abiding subjects. Like the ancient Greeks, Alice Munro has always known this is where the stories are. Fate, power (gender and class), human nature (mortal strength and divine frailty) all show up there to be negotiated and expressed.
“Life would be grand if it weren’t for the people,” says a Munro character in “Labor Day Dinner,” who also offers up the line perhaps most often quoted from this collection, that “love is not kind or honest and does not contribute to happiness in any reliable way.” It is an acerbic balance to the alkaline lilt of Corinthians 1:13, also quoted in this story, which informs us that “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” That both ideas can be held simultaneously within the same narrative is part of the reason Munro’s work endures—its wholeness of vision, its complexity of feeling, its tolerance of mind. For the storyteller, the failure of love is irresistible in its drama, as is its brief happy madness, its comforts and vain griefs. And no one has brought greater depth of concentration and notice to the subject than Munro. No one has saturated her work with such startling physical observation and psychological insight. “He knew he had an advantage,” she writes in “Connection,” the book’s inaugural story, “and we had reached the point in our marriage where no advantage was given up easily.” And in the final story: “You touch a man that way to remind him that you are grateful.… It made me feel older than grandchildren would to see my daughter touch a man—a boy— this way. I felt her sad jitters, could predict her supple attentions.”
The style in which people circle one another, their mix of lunacy and hard intelligence, the manner in which our various pasts revolve simultaneously around the present, the way that children are always in a parent’s gravitational pull, even when out of sight, the fact that filial love has an infinitude of stories: all these are signalled by the book’s title and in the title story. “I found my father in the heart wing,” it begins, and the very many things it can mean to be a daughter are echoed through three generations gathered in that wing. Munro brings both a warm and cool eye to the project of loss: “I saw how the forms of love might be maintained with a condemned person but with the love in fact measured and disciplined, because you have to survive.”
Short Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Alice Munro
A three hour intensive study of two great short stories: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Runaway by Alice Munro
‘The Yellow Wallpaper‘ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman often disappears into the category of a feminist work. This subversive first person narration gives a glimpse to the dangers of an artistic temperament smothered by care- loving, oppressive care. I will provide readers with notes on the world of late 19th century women, particularly in regards to medical care and psychiatric treatment. This is a haunting and riveting read.
I think it will be thought-provoking to bring our study of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper ’into a more contemporary moment through the rich work of Alice Munro. Although Munro appears to be exploring similar terrain–the outward manipulation of a vulnerable female protagonist– Munro’s gift is to resist any simplification of her characters or the subterranean forces they reveal. This short story will provide an interesting counter-point to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.
‘Runaway’ by Alice Munro can be found: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/08/11/030811fi_fiction?currentPage=all
In my research on TYW, I have found many writers summarizing the story as showing how the rest cure resulted in madness for the patient. This is positioned as an extension of the societal oppression of women at the time that Gilman exposes using her passionate narrator. But this is too simple – and disregards the intrigue and complexity of the mind that changes over the course of the story. Pay close attention to the images and patterns of narration: how does Gilman bring the reader into the world of the narrator? How is this world made plausible – up to and through the end? To position this work as a feminist writing can be useful but also runs the risk of reducing the peculiarities of the piece. We may discuss the rubric of feminist writings and how that can be useful to our understanding of the historical context of the story while we attend to the range of questions raised in the piece. What is madness, for example, and can we definitively describe the narrator as mad?
Some Notes on Charlotte Perkins Gilman (outlined from the Norton Anthology of American Literature) 1860-1935: CPG lived her life on the margins of a society whose economic assumptions about women she vigorously repudiated. Through her resistance to the ‘masculinist ideals’ of the time came the body of work, both fiction and non-fiction, that she produced to question and offer a new societal vision. Raised by her mother alone in Rhode Island after her father abandoned her family, Charlotte describes her upbringing as painful and lonely. Her mother tried to prevent her children from dependency on broken relationships by withholding all expressions of physical love. Charlotte struggled to support herself as a governess and designer of greeting cards before she married, and quickly came to understand the lack of economic opportunities available to women. She became involved in the suffrage movement, writing in defense of prostitutes among other subjects. When she married, she struggled to continue her growing career as a writer and lecturer while taking on the mantle of wife and mother. Her growing despondency led to her treatment at the hands of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and the use of his rest cure (please read the one page description cited below). Gilman chose to separate from her husband when she became convinced her marriage threatened her sanity; her private choices reflected her championing of non-traditional roles for women. Her writings included Women and Economics wherein she argues that women’s economic dependency on men stunts not only the growth of women but that of the whole human species. In Herland, Gilman imagines a feminist utopia populated only by women (reproduced by parthenogenesis) in a society that is collectively administrated and ecologically sound.
Read more about Dr. S Weir Mitchell’s *Rest Cure *Google book introduction from Dr. S. Weir Mitchell: http://www.archive.org/stream/doctorandpatien00mitcgoog#page/n13/mode/1up
