Parisian Literary Salon

Parisian Literary Salon Update July 2008
1. London Salon choices for September/October London 08
2. Paris Salon Lives of Girls & Women September 20th
3. Reflections

1. London Salon choices for September/October London 08
TITLE CHOICES(see What Might We Read for book descriptions):
The Sound & The Fury by William Faulkner
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Beloved by Toni Morrison

SCHEDULE CHOICES
Tuesdays or Thursdays, afternoons 2-3:30 PM or evenings 7-8:30 PM
Location Choices: Hampstead School or Highgate/Tufnel Park
Cost is 65£ for the four week study- this includes copies. If you are a member of the Hampstead School Parent community, your cost is reduced.
Please let me know your preferences in terms of books and schedule- if all of the above works for you, please let me know that as well. Your participation is reserved with a cheque for 20£ sent to T. Brothers, 9 Falkland Road NW5 2PS. I will not cash the cheque until the first week of Salon meetings to ensure the time and title that generates the most participants works for you.

2. Paris Salon Lives of Girls & Women September 20th
For the September One- day Intensive Salon we will be studying Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women. Despite the title, this Salon would certainly be enriched with the inclusion of men- of course we will talk about the experience of women (not exclusively) but other perspectives bring clarity. Munro is best known for her exquisite short stories (she has been called the best fiction writer in North America by Jonathon Franzen); LGW is incredibly readable & can be taken as a novel or series of shorts. Through her first person narrator Munro explores the passage from girl-child to adult in rural Canada without sentimentality but employing her laser eye. Each episode stands on its own both symbolically and psychologically. LGW has been described as the female version of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. When I asked Salon regulars what they wished we had done more of in the Salon, the repeated comment was more writing. Towards this end, the talented, witty and creative writer (and Salon member) Lizzie Harwood will be facilitating a writing component to our Salon study. For those who choose to participate, the writing assignment may be prepared before the weekend in the form of a character study of a moment of adult awakening… this is just the first rush of ideas so we will confirm this piece later in the summer.
On re-reading Lives of Girls and Women, one of the pieces I am noticing is how much the narrator is using her relationships with others (mostly people, but also representations of faith) to chart her growth. She has said that one does not create identity: you have no privacy in small town Canada, others make your self. Most episodes are bounded by interaction with a particular character- and there is much that is hinted at rather than said- it is a book that requires careful attention to get all the reverberations. One way I might structure the discussion is ask each participant to take on an episode- with Fern or Mary Agnes, for example, and highlight what the narrator seems to take from knowing the character. There is much in the work about how a young girl stumbles into womanhood- the mother is enigmatic and complicated- classic Munro does not give easy assertions or answers. “Munro’s work has always been ambitious and risky precisely because it dares to teach, and by the hardest, best method: without giving answers”, says one New York Times reviewer.
Lizzie suggests: “ Maybe during the 2 hr writing slot we could do some free writing, look at the prepared pieces brought in (brave souls could read theirs out), or work on several small things during a 2hr slot so that people can go away with things to re-edit and polish and ruminate over? Could even do a few Surrealist ‘parlour games’ where someone reads a paragraph they’ve written and their last line can be the first line for everyone else to start something new and round and round. Maybe all of the above. I think we should make it as Salon-ish a writing slot as possible. And the Salons have always been about throwing ideas around and seeing what sticks…”
Details:
TIME: 3 Sessions from 1-3 PM, 4-6 then 7:30-9:30 The middle section will be devoted to writing work and will be adapted to consider writing done in advance as well as offer writing opportunities at the Salon.
PLACE: The lovely J. Butler has again generously offered to host- oh, bless her heart! We will order food for dinner for those who want to eat there. Address & contact info will be sent to participants.
COST: 45 Euro (does not include dinner)
3.Reflections

The hardest part is first: the choice to jump or dive, the purposeful, against base instinct launching into air towards a chill, shimmering, unknown surface. The body knows once the choice has been made, nothing will remain the same- submersion is never partial and the motion, once started, cannot be halted. But then you are in the water, and every surface receptor, your facial skin, arms, belly, skull cries out with the exquisite change in temperature and sensation and you are reborn.
This past weekend I had the chance to go swimming at the Women’s Pond in the Heath with a lively gang of women awake (I emphasize that as it was before most folks have rolled out of bed on Sunday morning, these woman choose regularly to hit the trails then the water in a breath -drawing ritual of immersion) to the wonders of the world around them. As I struggle to spark the Salon anew here in London, I am so sharply aware of place and self-propulsion, the launching out, the sensitivity to where I am, the way in which the widening circle around you is a keen interaction of what you create and offer melded to an awareness of where you are.
Andy, the ever-patient partner on the home front, gave me a gift of a book yesterday when I returned, electrified from my swim. The book is Wild Swim by Kate Rew and it is a beautiful testimony to all the lovely outdoor swims available in England- reading her descriptions of great swims across this Island makes me want to stay here. The introduction also got me thinking about how the act of plunging into water is that recurring, almost cliché metaphor for committing to a thing. Going more deeply (please excuse the punning- I cannot help myself), I think about how the moment of diving in means crossing boundaries, from our air-filled world to a watery realm, from the known experience of earth and stable objects to the fluidity and flux of moving liquid. My body knows I cannot live there, but I am hungry for the immersion, for the testing of time under water, for the discovery of what I cannot see on the surface, for the change in light and smell and feeling. How apt for any new undertaking, for any project or experience that requires the whole-hearted commitment of oneself without seeing where you will land!
So without having all the pieces in place, without knowing if it will work, the Salon dives in. The Salon offered above is hopeful: will enough people be willing to try? Is the location convenient enough? Too late- the body arcs, the earth is left behind.
I will be out of London from July 7 – end of August- travelling, writing, reading and swimming with Madeline- but will check email regularly. Please email me if you have questions, comments or feedback of any sort.

Current reads:
Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice & Mind by M. F. Belenky, B.M. Clinchy, N.R. Goldberger & J.M. Tarule
Wild Swim by Kate Rew
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Street Haunting by Virginia Woolf - Tiny collection of essays- the first is a lyric narration of a walk taken around London: “…here, under the lamps are floating islands of pale light through which pass quickly bright men and women, who, for all their poverty and shabbiness, bear a certain look of unreality, an air of triumph, as if they had given life the slip, so that life, deceived of her prey, blunders on without them. But, after all, we are only gliding smoothly on the surface. The eye is not a miner, not a diver, not a seeker after buried treasure. It floats us smoothly down the stream; resting, pausing, the brain sleeps perhaps as it looks.”
Modernism by Peter Childs Detailed and highly readable theoretical introduction to the Modernist movement. Gave me more ideas about Darwin’s revolutionary work: what if we come to discover human civilization is not a progressive development but an accidental, chaotic movement through history?
Answering Back: Living poets reply to the poetry of the past edited by Carol Ann Duffy : Classic poems chosen by contemporary poets who then write a poem ‘back’. I have posted two poems under “Poetry & Musings” that I found to articulate the tension between the painful nostalgia of home as idea up against the vibrancy of home as lived.
See you in the pages-
Toby