People groaned when I asked them to tell me the plot of the 800-page book.  “To start with,” said Kyra, "there are two heroines—thus, at least two love stories. And there is mistaken identity."  Hal Hubis added, “It’s about money, class, and character.” "I heard the novel was dark,” Rick White said, "no, dirty as the muddy River Thames and the dust mounds (English garbage heaps) are important. Kathleen Conneely said participants agreed that the most interesting character was the schoolteacher, Bradley Headstone.  I’m on page 184, and he hasn’t shown up yet.  So far I find the book dark, sentimental, funny, and charming.  

Book vs Movie:  Dickens and Dorian Gray, White and Cox

Rick White said that seeing the "Our Mutual Friend" TV series first gave him a pictorial view when reading the novel.  Rick liked the series so well he suggested the book for Ralston-White. “The book was even better,” he said. “They were so different.” Of the TV show, he says several characters, especially the villain, were magnificently done.  One of the ingenues was less beautiful than she should be, and one of the actors not nearly handsome, attractive, or personable enough to sweep a young woman off her feet. Rick felt that in focusing on plot, the TV series left out some interesting characters and important scenes.

Sound as Well as Sight

Tom Cox highlights the audible in the playing of Chopin's 24th D minor Prelude as the movie background of “Dorian Gray.” He writes:  “There is no more wicked and exciting piece of music, and it fits perfectly that first dive off the platform of respectability into a sea of perversion.

“One point for the book is, oddly, the puerile disquisitions of Lord Henry and Dorian into those psychic shallows Dorian dives into. They reflect--perhaps better than Wilde  intended--the superficiality of the characters, their ideas of art and society, and the novel itself.

“To the film's credit, the tawdry thought represented in the book was faithfully sustained in the making of it; the product is "no better than it should be." It is little more than a pretty melodrama hung on the visual: light, camera angles, cuts, and special effects (for example, the Albright Brothers' progressively degenerated image of Dorian, which was at one time the rave of Hollywood).  Film and our fascination with human motion command our attention, but with a different part of the brain. Images cause no introspection; and regardless of the actor's ability to depict emotion, film fails when compared to print, in conveying philosophic concepts.  The irony is that the book did not put up much of a fight. The Artist’s agony over whether to confine his to the Moral or to go for broke, as Wilde did in Dorian, is toyed with, in a manner like a dinner-table conversation in the upper echelons of that society.

            “All that being said, I prefer the movie.  Movies are great at depicting the cheap and the tawdry, arousing forbidden urges, and manipulating bathos--which this one does, to the nines."

Dorian Gray, cont.

The Chopin Prelude?  It grabs me still--hearing it, I want to race out and do something wicked and rebellious. If only I were as pretty as Dorian, and if only there were wicked and rebellious things to do, anymore.

Area Coordinators Introduced at Annual Meeting/Picnic

A day in the country—that was the annual meeting at the Cheese Factory in Petaluma. There was a great discussion of the “God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy, along with a barbecue, lots of food, and good company, 

Brian Mahoney was elected in absentia as Vice President.  Fortunately he agreed to take the job, writing, “Based on the evidence that vice-presidents of the country do not become president, I accept the position.”    Remaining in office were Rick White, President, and Grace Apple Dennison, Treasurer.  Erma Browning is past president.  The secretary job is vacant.

Rosemarie Hitchens was introduced as the new publisher of Reading Matters, replacing Rick White.  Mary Wood remains as its editor.  The area representatives are:

Lou Alanko:         Alameda and Contra Costa

Jim Carbone:        Sonoma County and North Coast

Erma Browning:  Santa Clara County, Central Coast

Dick Stephens       San Mateo County

Roy Harvey and Shirley Mortensen: Marin County

Beatrice Petrocchi:             Sacramento & Vicinity

Beverly Rosenow:              Fresno & Vicinity

Area coordinators will be the liaison between clubs and the Council. Rick has been acting as the sole coordinator since the death of Laura Holt Rubin. Before Laura, Jan Fussell held the job until she moved to Wisconsin with her husband Larry. 

Coordinators Already at Work

One way to find new members is to get a copy of Adult series sales invoices from Chicago Great Books. Lou Alanko says she has identified 12 people that she plans to call that aren't in groups.

Beatrice Petrocchi has found a group that has been meeting in Walnut Grove for many years.  They were “joyous” to hear about the council.  For a Sacramento group that she found, she recruited a volunteer secretary for the leader. 

Jim Carbone has started several groups in Santa Rosa.  Erma plans to set up a luncheon for the group leaders in her area.

Oakland Group Now East Bay

It used to be the Oakland group, but now members are from all over the East Bay:  Danville, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Fremont.  “People move”, said group administrator Stana Herne, a member since 1968, “but they want to stay in the group.”  Catherine Sugrue, who leads the group, said that Edith Ham founded it about 40 years ago, and led it. After Edith’s death about 10 years ago, I volunteered to lead once and I'm still leading.

The group meets in members’ homes and shares the workload.   “Whoever is holding the meeting sends out directions and announcements of the meeting date, time, and place,” says Stana.

And the group keeps a tradition.  “After the discussion,” says Gay Linehan, “we have tea and cookies or cake.”   Says Stana, “It is a very disparate group whose members have different attitudes and viewpoints." 

Synchronicity: Great Books and Orinda Community Center

In Orinda, Jack Frankel provides the leadership, and the Orinda Community Center provides the publicity. Jack runs the Great Books as a 7-session class fall, winter, and spring.   The center, which sponsors many classes, advertises the class in its brochure, is right off the freeway, and has parking.

            To get space at the center, the group meets every other week, resulting in a cohesive group.   There’s a core of members, says Jack, with a few leaving and a few new signing up every session.

Jack got the Great Books bug at the University of Chicago, which he attended when Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins were there.  He came out to California, and when he retired six years ago he decided to start a group. Because he didn’t want to meet in members’ houses, he approached the Community Center, which had compatible courses.  One of the recreation directors is Jack’s direct contact with the center. 

No Registration Woes

The center handles registration, but does require a $15 registration fee.  The books are extra, and Jack puts Chicago's 1-800 number in the course announcement so that participants can order their own.

Jack would be happy to talk to anyone who would like to set up a similar group and would like more details. He can be reached at (925)254-7499.

"…and Justice for All" Event Draws Participants

Preservation Park, Oakland, was the setting for  "…and Justice For All," a Great Books event organized by the Pleasanton Great Books Group.  The event, held in October recognized the 50^th anniversary of the issuance by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A convenient setting, the Park is only 4 blocks from the 12^th Street BART.  The park preserves old homes, some originally located there and some moved to the site.  A beautiful fountain that once graced a mansion creates a centerpiece for the square. A guided tour of the Park by Don Tyler, a history teacher who volunteers for the Oakland Tours Program, closed the day.

 The tour included a short walk over to the First Unitarian Church where local writers including Jack London used the library.  Isadora Duncan’s first performance took place there. 

Many Volunteers

Co-chairs of the event were Ross Flewelling and Sandra Marburg  Brian Mahoney opened the event in absence of mini-event chair Ross Flewelling, who, with Sandra is moving out of the area.   Brian introduced the committee co-chairs Sandra Marburg, Jim Frair, Lou Alanko, Steve Doherty, and Leona Billings. Leading the discussions were Catherine Sugrue, Wallis Leslie, Steve Doherty, Rudy Johnson, with backups Lou Alanko, and Brian Mahoney.    After coffee and pastries in the Ginn House, the groups adjourned to breakout rooms in another house.  Lunch at Oakland’s famous French-Vietnamese restaurant Le Cheval was a pleasant break between the two sessions. 

Pleasant Surprise

Most Great Books events are run by a committee of the council.  The  Pleasanton group sponsored the event, said Ross in order to feature nonfiction, reach out to the community, and develop new event locations.

Brian adds the group wanted to support the Great Books Foundation by putting on an event connected with the book “…and Justice for All,” which was published by the foundation and the Foreign Policy Association as part of the Association’s headline series. The 80-year old Foreign Policy Association also publishes the “Great Decisions” briefing book and sponsors discussions.

“…and Justice for All” Thoughts on Human Rights

By Seymour Collins

 “We are not fighting for integration  Nor are we fighting for separation.  We are fighting for recognition as human beings.  We are fighting for…human rights.”

Speech,  Black revolution New York, 1964   Malcolm X

Two dozen of us white folk, no minorities as far as I could determine--unless you subscribe to the notion that women are a minority group--thought the subject of Human Rights sufficiently worthy of discussion to meet on a beautiful Saturday in October.

We read our Declaration of Independence in which 11 complaints against the King of Great Britain were asserted in evidence of his absolute tyranny.  If I substituted Congress, half of the complaints would apply today. We read the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen written only 13 years after our own.

 The Reality

As we talked my mind wandered to Bosnia, India, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Alabama.  Places where people belong to the wrong group; the wrong religion; the wrong race--where people just don’t belong.  Places like Ireland where the Protestants and the Catholics still kill each other, only not as frequently as they used to; Israel where the Palestinians and the Jews each wait for the other to light a match to a firework;  China where the term human rights is incomprehensible to the government.

Some participants felt the progressive measures in the UN Declaration were working.  I looked at the women: did they believe that they were regarded as equals with men?  Didn’t they have some small reservation about inequality of pay for like work; the almost automatic suspicion of the legitimacy of a claim of rape; and the apparent continuing denial of easy, free, and total access to the male domain in politics, business, industry, the world in general?

In John Locke, who influenced the drafters of our Declaration, we read that all men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit…without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.  And he also wrote that…God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men.

In a striking contrast to Locke, Hannah Arendt wrote about “The Perplexities of the Rights of Man."  The French Declaration claims, she says, that the Rights of Man are inalienable, irreducible to and not deducible from other rights of law.  But as no authority was invoked for their establishment; Man is both their source and ultimate goal.  These rights are meaningless when Man becomes stateless, no longer a citizen of a country.  Herding a people into ghettos and concentration camps cuts them off from the world of the living, and deprives them of all rights.  Man has no rights…anywhere… if he has no state. We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights.

Richard Rorty, in  “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality," discards the idea of Plato and Nietzche that rationality is