Vol. 8 No. 2
Winter 2004
Reading Matters
publication of the SAN FRANCISCO GREAT BOOKS COUNCIL
Serving Northern California
By Brian W. Mahoney
It is first a privilege and second a responsibility serving the SF Great Books Council as its president. I want to honor you the readers, for it is the readers of Reading Matters that created the space for the San Francisco Great Books Council to exist.
What we do best is to lead book discussions! That is why we exist. I would like to suggest that what we do is radical, revolutionary, patriotic, and dangerous. We discuss books and ideas that are the foundations of a democratic society. We publicly discuss ideas in the open market place.
The San Francisco Great Books Council is a non-profit educational organization associated with the Great Books Foundation located in Chicago. I emphasize the word “education” because we need to be clear about what we mean by the term. We are not didactic; we do not prepare people to specialize in a particular area; we are not vocational or even avocational, and we do not offer any academic degrees. The education that we provide is to enable participants to be a free people, to be human beings, to be responsible members of a democratic society, to be an informed electorate.
The United States Constitution does not require us to be specialists in everything. It requires us to be informed, intelligent enough and interested enough to make sound judgments in electing candidates to represent us. The issue today is that we have elected and unelected officials that are attempting to convince the citizenry that they know what is best for them, the nation, and the world. This is why I find that it is our civic responsibility to participate in Great Books Reading groups. I want to challenge the readers that if we do not incarnate, that is to turn into flesh and blood, event and behavior, these radical, revolutionary and patriotic values, that are embedded in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, in this very moment, then perhaps our future may not be worth creating.
When I picture the future for myself, I choose certain sentiments, certain actions, and certain qualities from the past, which I project upon the future. I find many of these values in the classical Great Books that I have read and discussed over the years. Sometimes, I refer to this idea as “remembering the future.” Martin Heidegger once wrote, “It is only in a moment of remembrance that we gain access to destiny.” Where I succeed by acting compassionately, truthfully, peace-lovingly, there at that practical point the future is born. I am driven by what is not yet, and strangely by what may never be. No matter how insubstantial this might sound, I find that it is the most powerful force in the universe. For we are all busy making it come true.
Perhaps Great Books meetings, the shared inquiry method, and the discussions that we participate in are the most important functions that will preserve our democratic society; and might be even more relevant than what our elected officials are doing in the legislative and executive branches of government.
Therefore, dear readers, now is the time to take responsibility for what you have created. You have created the space for the San Francisco Great Books Council to exist.
Carpe diem!
By Mary Wood
“Signups are going really well,” says registrar Jimmie Harvey. “We’re ahead of where we expected to be at this time of year.” Registrations will be accepted “until the last minute” says Jimmie, but there is a $10 surcharge after March 10. This pays for priority mail to get the books out quickly. Readings this year are Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance and The American Scholar, Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, and selected poetry. Brent Browning is in charge of the Asilomar committee with Jimmie and Roy Harvey doing the huge job on registration. To sign up call Jimmie at (415) 383-1319 or go to Asilomar.
An orientation for first timers will be held. At Asilomar we eat meals together in groups at specially marked tables. Everyone is friendly and will welcome your company. Going to Asilomar was how I got sucked into Great Books—my friend Althea wanted a ride with her wheelchair and I wanted a cheap vacation (and found a vocation). The facility is across the road from the beach in a forested area. It is also a beautiful drive in the spring when the hills are still green and the mustard is blooming. The food is great—cafeteria style, at big round tables which give you a chance to talk to other participants.
For as little as $220 participants get two nights lodging, books, meals from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch, parties, and great company. And for $220 you also get two to three roommates! The fee structure is as follows: Per person for historic rooms, which are more modest: single, $355; double, $260; multiple (3 to 4) $220. For standard rooms the rates are single, $412 per person; double, $280; and multiple, $240.
There are many wonderful things to see in Monterey. Last year I toured poet Robinson Jeffers’ house and tower in Carmel Village, an appropriate visit because we were reading a Jeffers poem, Carmel Point. Tor House was built out of stone. Jeffers, who apprenticed himself to the builder, later expanded the cottage and built a small tower/retreat next to it. The tour I attended was given by a family member who had grown up in the house—before it was electrified and had water—who had great stories to tell. Tours are conducted hourly. Reservations are required at least a week in advance, but I would book them a lot earlier: call (831) 624-1813.
Brent Browning is in charge of the Asilomar committee with Jimmie and Roy Harvey doing a major job on registration.
I went last year in a wheelchair and can attest that the jitney service is great and reliable. If they can roll a 300 plus pound woman like me up the ramp, they can handle anyone. I would recommend a flashlight at night. The site is hilly. Meeting rooms are widely dispersed and not always wheelchair accessible so you may want to pick one near meals or near your lodging.
The novel this year is Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which comes with exquisite existential accreditation. None other than Albert (“The Stranger”) Camus, says “Here we are taken to the limits of human thought. Indeed everything in this work is, in the true sense, essential. It states the problem of the absurd in its entirety.” It sounds like it needs a Prozac cocktail with it, but at least it isn’t waking up as a cockroach, the Kafka work which your editor hasn’t managed to avoid.
The history play, Henry IV Part I, is more fun than you would think from the catchy title. It has a father-bad son conflict with Prince Hal and Henry IV. The son is living it up with wine, woman, and Falstaff. His father, who is sitting somewhat insecurely on a throne he won rather than inherited, would like his son to do the football team/honor student gig rather than hanging out in bars. For a comparative couple the father-good son duo portrayed by Henry’s archenemy the Earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur. (The latter’s name refers to his quickness to anger.)
Although we are discussing only two essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the edition provided includes many other writings including poetry. As Dr. Charles Johnson points out in the introduction, Emerson’s writing reflects his many facets: a thorough classical education, a keen wit, a critical eye, a poet’s sensibility, and his “dogged faith” that it is our duty to seek perfection in ourselves. Emerson was one of the American Transcendentalists. There actually was a “Transcendental Club” that met for 5 or 6 years. Of the group, Emerson wrote “For Joy and beauty planted it/With faerie gardens cheered,/And boding Fancy haunted it/With men and women weird.”
Emerson believed “The individual is the world”—as opposed to the State—transcendentalism included other philosophies such as the Brook Farm experience in communal living (of which the women complained they had to do all the cooking) and social action.
The featured poetry at Asilomar is rich in Americana with Barstow (CA) by Charles Tomlinson (a British Poet), On the Move, a motorcycle poem by Thom Gunn, and The Subway Platform by Laurie Sheck. That touch of the classics to make us feel we are learning something and to assure us that we are actually reading a “great” work will be provided by the country cleric, Gerard Manley Hopkins, with The Caged Skylark, and Lift not the Painted Veil by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Death in Venice, the movie and the story, are featured at the mini-retreat to be held Saturday, February 28 at the Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco. A “mini-retreat” is a one-day book & movie event held from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Fee is $27 including the book, with lunch on your own. Claudia O’Callaghan chairs the committee organizing the event with Vince Scardina and Kay Blaney assisting. Claudia says Vince has described Thomas Mann’s story beautifully in the flyer, a “bold and lyrical drama of sensual awakening” and “a celebrated story of a man’s obsessed ideal of beauty.” As an anonymous reader on Amazon says of the story, “Without beauty there is no reason to live, but in the deep lust for beauty the subject is consumed and dies.”
And the reviewers of Luchino Visconti’s movie on Amazon are ecstatic about the visual quality, the music, and the acting. “I found myself enveloped by this film, as if I were a guest of the Grand Hotel quietly seated on a wicker chair watching these events unfold before me,” says a Coral Gables viewer. “Never has Venice looked more beautiful and alluring, more decadent and effete,” says Michael E. Corbin of Chicago. Another viewer says “I was haunted by its images for weeks.” The movie takes advantage of closeups in showing feeling through facial expression in the acting of Dirk Bogarde as Gustav Aschenbach, Bjorn Andersen playing Tadzio, and Silvana Mangano. In the movie, Aschenbach is changed from a writer to a composer based on Gustav Mahler. The use of Mahler’s music is especially praised by reviewers.
You can sign up by mailing $27 to Kay Blaney, 6205 Drifter Drive, San Jose, CA 95123. Registration is limited to 40 participants and usually sells out early. After February 1, call Kay Blaney for availability at (408) 629-6885. The Mechanics Institute is located in downtown San Francisco at 57 Post Street—easily reached by BART or AC Transit. Please make your check payable to “Great Books Council”.
Sharpen your skill in leading Great Books discussions. Improve your ability to ask productive questions that will trigger insights. Strengthen your self-confidence. Commit yourself to leading:
When: Saturday, March 6, 2004 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Refreshments after – No Fee
Where: Kay and Rick White’s house, 10 Oak Forest Road, Novato, CA 94949
How to register: email kaycleveland@aol.com
e-mail is preferred to telephone because we’re traveling a lot. However, my home phone number is (415) 382-1927.
Registration closes February 28th. Registration is limited. Enroll early.
Former Great Books council member Jack Stavert has 20 members in his new group in Tellico Village, Tennessee. Jack moved there to be closer to his daughter and son-in-law in Charlotte, North Carolina. Jack describes Great Books sessions as getting together in “civilized discourse” to discuss what authors mean. These discussions are particularly important now, Jack says, because of Al Qaeda and its opposition to Western culture. In his group Jack takes an hour to explore the text and then another half-hour to look at the significance of the writing in western culture and its applicability today. Jack, a retired corporate lawyer, says his reading tastes keep changing. Favorites include John Donne, Karl Popper, David Hume, and George Orwell. He recently enjoyed Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the story of a young Indian boy adrift in a lifeboat with his friend, a Bengal tiger.
Two spiffy new blue and white gazebos over the potluck dishes were a great addition to the annual picnic-election-and book discussion held June 22 in Tilden Park. The prior year it was so hot all the casseroles kept warm and the desserts melted.
Tom Vargo came early to set up the gazebos and Bob McConnell to light the barbecues. The picnic committee is composed of Kathleen Conneely, chair; Vince Scardina, Gary Geltemeyer, Rob Calvert, Jan and Tom Vargo, and Dorothy Janisizian. Tom Cox acts as consultant. The committee will announce shortly the selection for June 13, 2004.
A very brief election took place, brief because the candidates were unopposed, although maybe not uncoerced. Brian Mahoney, took over as President; Lou Alanko, Vice-President; Grace Dennison, Treasurer, Gary Geltemeyer, secretary.
We often imagine which books we would take to a desert island—but imagine having no books. This is the situation in Dai Sijie’s book, which was discussed at the 2003 annual meeting & picnic. It is a charming novel, which never descends into gloom, although often to irony. It concerns a 17-year-old unnamed narrator and his best friend, Luo, both bourgeois doctors’ sons who are relocated during the Chinese Cultural Revolution to serve four years in a mountain village. The physical and cultural isolation of the town are almost unimaginable. The two must report to the village headman, who gives them the task of carrying human waste up the hill and mining coal.
Because the friends can tell stories, the headman gives them a pleasant assignment, which is to go each month to the nearest town to see the movie and come back and relate it to the villagers. In this town they meet the fascinating little seamstress, daughter of the village tailor. She is a “lovely mountain girl in need of culture.” In a hilarious scene, they steal a suitcase of forbidden foreign novels from another reeducatee, who has managed to get released. The novels seduce them into the Western world of “woman, love and sex”.
Luo’s favorite is Balzac, which he reads to the little seamstress. In the true tradition of novels and movies, Luo is brave and adventurous and his friend is quieter (a violin player). To visit the seamstress, Luo has a harrowing trip on a ridge between two chasms. And also in the tradition, it is the best friend who gets stuck helping the little seamstress with her abortion.
Several chapters are told from other points of view, which is disruptive. One purpose served is to be able to show the little seamstress’ thoughts. She says “The books Luo read to me always made me want to dive into the cool water of the mountain torrent.” Her chapter is about diving into the water to try and find a ring Luo loses, and getting bitten by a snake. It is a rather puzzling chapter, but in that it shows her brave and adventurous nature, which makes her decision—which I won’t reveal—at the end understandable. Incredibly, after all the enjoyment of books, the story ends with book burning by the narrator and his friend.
By Gary Geltemeyer
We have already chosen the book for this year, a wonderful new translation of an old classic, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. We are announcing the book early so those who travel or are busy during the summer can get the book early and plan their calendar ahead.
Louise DiMattio, the Long Novel Weekend Coordinator the past few years, is taking off this year to complete a Master's Degree in Midwifery. Of all things! Best wishes to Louise, she will make a great midwife. (Louise is taking classes, working in a hospital, and has been offered a teaching job.)
I will take over as Long Novel Coordinator for 2004. Mary Stuart continues as Registrar. Walker Creek Ranch in West Marin has been a good venue for the Long Novel Weekend, so we will continue there next year. The date is the last weekend in August (Saturday, Aug. 28 and Sunday, Aug. 29).
The rooms are comfortable, the food is excellent, and the discussion rooms large and airy. The weather this past year was wonderful, not too hot, and the night was downright cool, perfect for sleeping. The drive through Marin is scenic, and if you have time on Saturday you can drive a few miles to Marshall on the coast for oysters and a glass of wine.
In order to simplify things, we will not be sending out the book this year. So if you think you may be interested in attending the Long Novel Weekend next year, why not buy the book now and start reading now, and then brush up on the details just before the weekend? The edition we will be using is the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Penguin Books USA, 2002, 837 pages. List price $16.00, ISBN 0142000272, paperback. The print is normal size. This translation has gotten great reviews. The translators are described as "vivid stylists of English." This is "a version of Tolstoy's great novel neither musty, nor overly modernized."
This edition is the only one we will use for the weekend. It is available at any bookstore that has a decent literature section. Registration flyers will be available next spring and at Asilomar. See you then!
Special Treat: Rick and Kay White plan to have an open house at their new house in nearby Novato Sunday afternoon after the discussions, and participants will be welcome to stop in. (Editor’s Note: You can also see the house at 10 Oak Forest Road if you go to leader training.)
For more information on the Long Novel Weekend, see Long Novel Weekend.
Note: These events are not sponsored by the Great Books Council of San Francisco.
April: Great Books Chicago Weekend, (800) 222-5870 or gbf@greatbooks.org.
June 18-20: Pacific Northwest Great Books Institute, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA, Mahlon Nichols (206) 633-0536 or mahlonnich@aol.com. Asilomar chair Brent Browning and his wife Erma enjoy this event.
August 13-15: Ashland Shakespeare Weekend, Duane Denney (503) 297-5024. Includes discussions of the plays and a lecture by Barry Kraft, dramaturge. The plays are Oedipus, King Lear, Henry VI Parts 2&3, Much Ado about Nothing.
August 4-10: 48th Wachs Great Books Summer Institute, Colby College, Maine. This week long event is the primo Great Books event in the country. Contact: Tom or Carol Beam (215) 836-2380, agreatbook@aol.com or Colby Special Programs: (207) 872-3505.
October 11-16: London Theatre Tour for Thinkers II; Play and Book Discussions. Contact Ted. M. Kraus (925) 939-3658 or tmktheatretours@hotmail.com. Last years attendees include Great Bookies Larry & Roberta Colin, Paul and Lucille Ortega, Lana Dilger, Linda Coffin, Flora Larkey, Rosalind Leighton, Jutta Organek and Shelly and Jim Levy of Iowa, who also attend Asilomar. Jim says, “The group was compatible, friendly and mutually supportive. Laughter was always close to the surface and the subject matter invariably fascinating. All of this in the marvelous Bloomsbury environment [which was] within walking distance of all the theatres, the Thames River, shopping, restaurants, grocery stores and the best YMCA gym possible.”
By Chuck Scarcliff
Chuck Scarcliff wrote a letter in response to a question from John Kazan asking how to pick a play. The letter “has developed a life of its own” Chuck says, due to the modern wonder of email.
Chuck is on the book selection committee for Asilomar. An experienced Great Books leader, Chuck is also a writer, and meets with a writing group once a week. He has led many great books groups.
Note: The letter has been edited.
Dear John:
Of all factors, the most important is discussibility. The play or novel may not be one that I would choose to watch or read, but it needs to present issues worthy of Great Books discussion. Before selecting a play, I need to have a good feeling that it can generate a full two-hour discussion. As to issues, I don't mean only abstract or philosophic ideas, but include human issues that affect our lives and the lives of others around us. I also don't mean that the playwright should be going overboard trying to teach us a lesson or convince us of the rightness of a particular cause.
With that in mind, I have been reluctant to choose Synge's Playboy of the Western World, Calderon's Life is a Dream (two plays that appeal to me), Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan or Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (two plays you have suggested). I am not sure that these plays have what it takes to sustain a two-hour discussion.
I also shoot for variety. I don't want the play to be somehow similar to the novel or essay that is on the program for a particular year's Asilomar event. Further, I would like to see variety—different types of plays, different playwrights—from year to year. We have, in the past few years, discussed plays by Shaw, Ibsen, Miller and now Chekhov. I wouldn't want to select another of their plays for a while. But it's been a few years since we did a Shakespeare play and quite a while since we discussed a Greek tragedy (or comedy). We could choose either of those before long, I think.
One reason I felt Chekhov's The Seagull would be a good choice in 2003 was that we had never before used a Chekhov play and I thought it was time we did.
Also, I don't want a play that has been discussed at Asilomar in past years. My own preference is for plays (or novels) that have a classic status. Not only is this largely my own preference (and one with which others will reasonably disagree), but also I believe that classic literature is more within the spirit of Great Books than is contemporary literature. However, I do not rule out recent and contemporary plays. In fact, a play high on my list of possibilities for Asilomar is Fences by August Wilson. And if I could find Beth Henley's play Crimes of the Heart in print at a reasonable price, I would strongly consider that play.
Although it is more of a problem with novels than it is with plays, readability is also a factor. I think our selections can be challenging to the reader, but I don't think we can expect our participants to plow through something that is next to impossible to read. But our selections don't need to be easy reading either. Many of the Shakespeare plays are anything but easy, yet we read and discuss them quite successfully. (Depending on who you ask, I may have taken "challenging" a step too far with the selection of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. With it, I knew full well that the book was difficult, but I thought its other qualities outweighed the difficulties. On the other hand, I have eliminated from consideration one of the finest short novels I have ever read (Pedro Paramo by the Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo) simply because it is just too hard to read.)
Another problem can be poor translations. We've had that difficulty at Asilomar but, as far as I know, not with plays. With The Seagull I did purchase and read the translation we used and satisfied myself that it was okay.
While it has never been an overriding consideration, we need to keep in mind the cost of the books we select. As I mentioned earlier, a reason I have not wanted to use Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart is that I have not located an inexpensive edition. Her plays, and those of Lillian Hellman, seem only to be available in pricey "collected works" editions with four or five other plays. With The Seagull there was another translation (by Tom Stoppard) that I preferred slightly, but it cost almost 10 times as much as the one we are using. My slight preference didn't justify the higher cost.
I would not select a play currently used in any of the Series published by the Foundation and used by local groups everywhere. It threw a monkey wrench into choosing when one of my possibilities, The Bacchae by Euripides, was put into a recent national Great Books series.
I am reluctant to choose plays that are too narrowly focused on specific times or places. Juno and the Paycock, by Sean O'Casey, for example, is one of the great plays of the 20th century, but it strikes me as being more of a chronicle of Ireland's political history than one with ideas and issues that are present in other times and places. On the other hand, Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I is set in a specific place (England) during a specific war and is usually classified as "a history." This play, it seems to me, goes well beyond its specific time and place and presents human events that we can recognize here and now. As to other fiction (a short story and a short novel), one reason I have not (yet) chosen The Shawl and Rosa by Cynthia Ozick is that I think that these works, which I admire very much, may be tied a little too firmly and too specifically to the holocaust of the 1930's and 40's.
There is one point, John, which you and I have discussed, and I am afraid we don't exactly agree. Your point of view, as I understand it, is that with all of the pain, violence, despair and other misfortunes in life, we would be better served by selections that offer more hope and less agony. My response is that, yes, terrible things do occur in the world and human nature is often very unpleasant, but that sometimes these are things we need to read about and talk about in Great Books discussions. Having said that, I will admit that one reason (the other being that the play is very long) that I have not (yet) selected Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh is that the play is very, very grim—too grim for a good time at a Sunday morning Asilomar discussion.
Finally, whether I really like a play or novel is really beside the point. Whether or not it is readily discussible and meets the other criteria I have mentioned is very much the point. While I doubt that I would ever select a play I truly dislike, I have set aside my personal likes and dislikes and the results have been good. I chose Death of a Salesman although I am not, for reasons and quirks of my own, particularly fond of Arthur Miller's plays (but I do like this one more than some others). This play, which you first suggested to me, achieved very good results in our discussions this year at Asilomar.
Before I became involved with book selection, I figured that I'd read quite a lot of novels and plays and there were some that I liked so much that I wanted others (around 200 others, to be exact) to read them and love them as I did. I wanted to share my reading pleasures with others. Now that I am involved in book selection, that kind of thinking has become clearly irrelevant to the business at hand.
By Mary Wood
“Parade’s End was a controversial selection,” says Louise DiMattio, who chaired this Marin weekend. “We had a number of people say they were so glad to be introduced to Ford Madox Ford, people who hadn’t read The Good Soldier at Asilomar in 1984. They were just thrilled, found the main character fascinating, and didn’t find the style difficult.” On the other hand, some people bought the novel and gave up after 100 pages.
The result was a novel weekend with a small (about 40) but determined group. Leaders were Kay Blaney, Mary Wood, Chuck Scarcliff, Gary Geltemeyer, Rick White. Louise offers special thanks for Chuck who formulated many questions and helped with choosing where to divide the discussion.
I loved Parade’s End. It is a compilation of four novels about Christopher Tietjens during World War I. It was like reading a mystery because of the time sequence. Think “Pulp Fiction”. Events occur, and hundreds of pages later we find out what led up to them. The book starts with Christopher Tietjens debating whether to take back his runaway wife, Sylvia. Tietjens has a brilliant mind, a kind nature, and is either fascinating or a bore depending on your point of view. (Bore). Christopher married Sylvia when she was pregnant, presumably with his child. While Sylvia is gone, Tietjens meets a young woman feminist, Valentine, and takes a long ride in the fog with her. Tietjens goes off to war, returns without a lot of his memory, his wife tries to ruin him socially. He returns to war and due to a typical muddle, becomes a front-line commander. Most of the third book covers just one day in the war. In the last book, Tietjens is only seen through other characters’ eyes.
I liked Ford’s insights into feelings. For example, one I found compelling was the way a past event can cause pain, even though the person connected with it does not. Sylvia has only to see her former married lover’s name in the paper for her to “stop dead, speaking or walking, drive her nails into her palms and groan slightly…She had to invent a chronic stitch in her heart to account for this groan…”. Yet “the odd thing was that the sight of Drake himself, left her completely without emotion…”
A lot of it is very funny. For example, the General, who is a very good general, does not like to get into discussions because he usually ends in the wrong, and he doesn’t like feeling stupid. When Sylvia wants to get Christopher at odds with the General, who is his godfather, she tells him Christopher is a socialist.
As a war book, Parade’s End shows the life in the trenches--a great deal of boredom highlighted with sudden violence. It also gives insight into massive problems of moving troops and keeping control, and the sense of isolation of the soldiers from the politicians back home who are making decisions about their lives.
The book shows the way World War I ended a way of life in England, although it is Tietjens’s brother Mark who represents this way of life. Christopher is the kind of person who never fits in, mostly because of his brilliance and his intellectual arrogance.
The difficulty with the book is that none of the characters are lovable. I think the only character Ford was really fond of is Mark’s wife Marie, who lives the life of a French countrywoman in England and refuses to speak English. It is a narrow book because it focuses on a few people. But we could say that of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, of which a major point is the narrowness of her life and understanding. But we feel for Tess, and I don’t think Ford provides this emotional impact.
Ford maintains an ironic distance from Christopher Tietjens, a repressed man who isn’t aware of his own feelings. And Sylvia is a tease with a sadistic streak who is frustrated, bored, mean, and very, very tiresome. Valentine is a sympathetic character but she is too good and too innocent to be comfortable. Christopher and Valentine are almost asexual by our standards. They don’t have sex even though he’s going off to war probably to be killed—contrast this to our society that advertises antidepressants with no sexual side effects on evening TV (Welbutrin).
Christopher changes in the book—but very slowly. Essentially a member of the intelligentsia, he becomes a man of action. He also lives with Valentine and becomes a furniture dealer, which is not appropriate for his class.
As to Sylvia, Christopher’s wife, she is deliberately sadistic in small ways, and there are suggestions of a more serious attraction to violence. I think this is also counter to our culture. While we can watch TV and read about rapes, murders, or cannibalism, the deliberate torture in a marriage (and for 833 pages) is foreign to our principles of happiness, self-realization, positive thinking, and an early retirement.
And finally, because Ford focuses on a small and not particularly admirable section of society, I think these novels are not Great Books. Contrast them with War and Peace, which has a sense of breadth in both time and social structure—it slices through every stratum of society. Or of Ulysses, which focuses on a single day, but gives us a whole unforgettable city of people.
Dreams and Remembrances, Love (So to Speak), and a Potpourri of unrelated poems were featured at Poetry Weekend. Examples of “Dreams” included poems in which the dream and waking state were combined; Le Reve by Edgar Bowers and The Kite by Mark Strand.
“Love” included both the “real” such as the gorgeous To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell—and the satirical: Penis Envy by Erica Jong, about women having to do everything, and Overweight Poem, by Diane Wakoski on the opulence of food as a metaphor for love.
Kay White brought buns and fruit for the morning snack. Wine, brought by Natalie Dunn, and snacks, by Steve Doherty, highlighted an afternoon party. For the evening entertainment, Kathleen Conneely brought The Dead Poets Society, a Robin Williams movie praising literature and feeling.
Poems were selected by Brent Browning, Kathleen Conneely, Theda and Oscar Firschein, Natalie Dunn, Steve Doherty, Carol O’Toole, Kay White, Mary Wood, chair.
Discussion leaders were Claudia O’Callaghan, Kay Blaney, Gary Geltemeyer, Beatrice Petrocchi, Brent Browning, Kathleen Conneely, and Steve Doherty. Tom Cox also prepared. Kay White organized the prediscussion session at Kathleen’s house.
February 28 (Saturday) Mini-Retreat, San Francisco, Death in Venice, Kay Blaney (408) 629-6885
March 6 (Saturday) Training to Lead, Kay White (415) 382-1927
April 9-11 (Friday-Sunday) Asilomar, Jimmie Harvey (415) 383-1319
June 13 (Sunday) Picnic, Election of Officers & Book Discussion, Tilden Park, Berkeley, Kathleen Conneely (510) 530-2344
August 28-29 (Sat & Sun) Long Novel, Walker Creek Ranch, Marin County, Gary Geltemeyer, Chair (510) 654-0235, Mary Stuart, Registrar (707) 575-1984
November 13-14 (Sat & Sun) Poetry Weekend, Westminster Retreat, Alamo, CA, Contact: Mary Wood (510) 865-3481
SAN FRANCISCO GREAT BOOKS COUNCIL
Serving Northern California
Brian Mahoney, President
Lou Alanko, Vice-President
Gary Geltemeyer, Secretary
Grace Apple Dennison, Treasurer
Barbara McConnell & Louise DiMattio, Past Presidents
Reading Matters
Publisher, Rick White
Editor, Mary Wood
Letters to the editor or story contributions to marylwood@prodigy.net
SF Website: www.greatbooks-sf.com
GB Foundation: www.greatbooks.org