Fall Salons announced
Looking Towards…
Fall 2006 Alesian Literary Salon Newsletter
Contents
A poem
Fall Salons announced
Reflections & new ideas
Other events & website notes
The Three Goals
By David Budbill
The first goal is to see the thing itself
In and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
For what it is.
No symbolism, please.
The second goal is to see each individual thing
As unified, as one, with all the other
Ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.
The third goal is to grasp the first and second goals,
To see the universal and the particular,
Simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.
2. Fall Salons Announced
Starting the week of Monday September 12th….
Monday Evening Salon: Undetermined
Tuesday Afternoon Salon: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Trocadero)
Tuesday Evening Salon: The Sound & the Fury by William Faulkner (rue d’Alesia)
Details: Each Salon meets for 6 consecutive weeks, the cost remains 75 euro. Each Salon is full at 10, I will not run a Salon with fewer than 6 participants. Both Tuesday Salons already have 6 confirmed participants. The Monday Evening Salon is up for grabs: If there are enough participants who would like to do either of the texts listed above, then I will run that Salon. Other possible works: The Heart is a lonely Hunter, The Odyssey, a work by Ian McEwan….
To Sign up: If this is your first Salon, I require a deposit of 25 euro made out to Toby Brothers and sent to: 3 ter rue d’Alesia 75014 Paris (be sure to indicate which Salon you are signing up for and an email contact). This reserves your place in the Salon. If you have previously done a Salon, your commitment by email is sufficient. I will close the subscription when there are 10 members enrolled.
Looking ahead…After the extraordinary work of Ulysses for the past 6 months, I am contemplating another Ulysses(ian) Spring series. Some of the truly brave souls from this years’ study have expressed interest in diving in again. I think there is much to be gained in re-reading- and a work like Ulysses offers so many areas for study- we only swam in the warm surface the first time round. (Now I am thinking about diving into the deep chill of the Irish Sea the day after Bloomsday…). If there are participants interested in Ulysses starting in January, I strongly recommend a study of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first. Towards that end, I will probably offer a Portrait Salon in November, possibly alongside an Odyssey study or (another recent request) a Lolita Salon. Let me know your preferences….
About the Books & Suggested Readings in preparation:
Midnight’s Children:
Recommended Edition: Penguin ISBN 0-14-013270-8
On the surface, Midnight’s Children recounts, directly and symbolically, the birth of India as a modern nation, shrugging off the last vestiges of colonialism in a mad burst of independence. But India is not one story, one people. The billowing of beliefs, languages, ethnic loyalties that occurred after the stroke of midnight on August 15th, 1947, is reflected in the experience of Rushdie’s main character, a boy named Saleem Sinai who is born at the same moment as the independent India. Rushdie weaves magic and history in a racing, mad narrative that addresses issues of identity, communalism and the imaginary homeland we all carry within ourselves.
Our study of the text will include background information on the history of India as well as various belief systems and how these are manifested in modern India. The group will do reflective writing on how place and culture define self as well as our journeys away from and into our inheritance.
Suggested Readings: The last Salon group requested some titles to read over the summer in preparation for the Fall Salon. Please note that I have no expectation that you will read these or the main text before the Salon commences, but if you have the desire and the time, here are some works to visit:
Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins & Dominique LaPierre. This highly readable account of the events leading up to the midnight declaration of India’s independence brings the central characters to life. AS the midnight moment is also central to Rushdie’s narrative, this work adds a great deal to the historical setting.
Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie This text includes essays and criticism by Rushdie, including a whole section reflecting on the writing and impact of Midnight’s Children as well as thoughts film, politicians, racial prejudice; “and the preciousness of the imagination and free expressionâ€.
May you be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A journey among the women of India by E. Bumiller. Better known as a correspondent for the NYT and the Washington Post, Bumiller’s close account of the hidden lives of women in India gives a taste of a culture that is far from the walls of our Parisian lives.
I have not yet read the following though they are resting bedside for the summer; they come recommended by folks who know books (current Salon members).
Snakes & Ladders by Gita Mehta (Essays on Indian Culture and Belief Systems)
City of Djinns: A year in Delhi by W. Dalrymple
The Sound & the Fury:
by William Faulkner
Recommended Edition: Norton Critical Edition ISBN 0-393-96481-7
Yes, this is the most expensive edition but worth every centime. The critical essays included illuminate the text, the historical setting and the impact of Faulkner’s work.
In William Faulkner’s first truly modernist work, he pushes to break through the confines of time and sequence to get at the essence of human nature- as Malcolm Bradbury explains, “ Faulkner’s preoccupation with time has to do with the endless interlocking of personal and public histories and with the relation of the past to the lost, chaotic present.†The Sound and the Fury uses the interior world of its narrators to expose a crumbling world, through inference and allusion rather than through direct social critique. In the Modernist method, Faulkner employs stream of consciousness, symbolism as a connecting fiber and several interior realities (that show how one can see the world as absolutely in one’s way, and directly in contrast to others) that must compete for authority.
This Salon will draw upon individual’s questions and ideas to shed light on this complex text. The reading load should allow for re-reading as we study the work, enabling the first time reader access to Faulkner’s complex vision. Upon a first reading, the narratives appear jumbled and opaque but as the pieces start to fit together, one can see the complex and careful planning that Faulkner has used- and to what end? This is what we must grapple with for the Salon. The writing assignment for this Salon will include the use of subjective first person narrative and a close examination of the limits of perspective.
I am including some introductory comments from Richard Hughes that I think will help orient the reader in the opening chapter of the text:
Mr. Faulkner’s method in this book is successful, but it is none the less curious. The first seventy pages are told by a congenital imbecile, a man of thirty-three whose development has not advanced beyond babyhood. Benjy has no sense of time: his only thought process is associative: the event of the day, then, and what it reminds him of in the past are all one to him: the whole of his thirty-three years are present to him in one interrupted and streamless flood. This enables the author to begin by giving a general and confused picture of his whole subject. He offers a certain amount of help to the understanding, it is true, in that he changes from roman to italic type whenever there is a change in time: but even then I defy a reader to disentangle the people and events concerned at a first reading. But the beauty of it is this: there is no need to disentangle anything. If one ceased to make the effort, one soon finds that this strange rigmarole holds one’s attention on its own merits. Vague forms of people and events, apparently unrelated, loom out of the fog and disappear again. One is seeing the world through the eyes of an idiot: but so clever is Mr. Faulkner that, for the time being at least, one is content to do so.
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3. Reflections & New Ideas
The study of Ulysses has taught me more about the weight of words than any work I have previously studied. There was also some magic in the connection within the groups…our hard work together brought out the humor and struggle in each of us- and in both cases the members of the group worked together to support and challenge each other’s work. Here my words crumble a bit in the face of what I am trying to describe…but not everything can be contained in language, as Joyce has taught me as well (remember Bloom describing for himself the most important aspect of life: “ Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.â€
One of the Ulysses participants recently suggested to me that the Salon organize an occasional evening gathering showcasing the métier of the various participants. I propose starting this first with last Spring’s Salon participants (both Ulysses Salon members and Midnight’s Children) so that each person who chooses to could spend part of an evening sharing their writing, visual art, knowledge of art, architecture, music or other area of creative exploration. If those participants were interested, this could include writing about the text we had studied, as some participants have already done. Feedback?
4. Other events & website notes
Website: Since the Continuing Conversations section continues to be blasted by pornographic hackers, I am closing it down for the summer and am hopeful by Fall I will be able to make it work for the Salon purposes of intellectual exchange. In the meantime, I will gladly post any book recommendations, Salon feedback or general comments or reflections on the site- just send me your thoughts via the literary salon email and I will paste up. I will be in and out of town all summer (finding quiet places to read as well as large bodies of water to swim in) so please be patient with my response to your queries and comments. But keep them coming.
It is summer so not so much is happening or too much is happening and who has time for culture??? But here is at least one possibility- and I will try to let you know of others as I get them:
Dashka Slater- journalist, novelist and now children’s book writer will present her new book- Baby Shoes at the Red Wheelbarrow & Fontainebleau:
BABY SHOES READINGS AND SIGNINGS — SUMMER 2006
Children’s Book Author Dashka Slater invites toddlers and
preschoolers and their adult companions to come join her
for a celebration of shoes and a reading of her acclaimed
new book, BABY SHOES. Come hear a story about a baby’s
very special — and very dirty — pair of shoes,
participate in a shoe parade, learn how to do ‘’shoe-la-
la’s,” and much more.”With a buoyant tone in both verse and illustrations, this
book will be a fine addition to story hours and, given
young children’s affinity for shoes, a great conversation
starter.” -Booklist (starred review)
July 6, 4:00 p.m.
Reel Books
9 Rue de Ferrare
Fontainebleau, France
Tel: 01 64 22 85 85
July 8, 3:00-4:30 p.m.
The Red Wheelbarrow
22, rue St Paul
75004 Paris France
Tel / Fax (+33) 01 48 04 75 08
red.wheelbarrow@wanadoo.fr
See you there….