Parisian Literary Salon

London Salon Update…A Thousand Acres One-day Salon announced
First, some words from Virginia Woolf on the relationship between the writer’s life and fiction:
” …For nothing is more fascinating than to be shown the truth which lies behind those immense facades of fiction — if life is indeed true, and if fiction is indeed fictitious. And probably the connection between the two is highly complicated. Books are the flowers or fruit stuck here and there on a tree which has its roots deep down in the earth of our earliest life, of our first experiences. But here again to tell the reader anything that his own imagination and insight have not already discovered would need not a page or two of preface but a volume or two of autobiography.”
–from An Introduction to Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (found in Francine Prose’s The Mrs. Dalloway Reader (Harcourt, London; 2003, p. 10)

The Mrs. Dalloway Salons are plunging forward with profound considerations inspired by the book around the nature of love, one’s relationship to history, the permeable boundary between the interior and the exterior world and the many levels of social relationships. Since September I have continued to run Salons in Paris by returning for one-day intensive studies of a book. These sessions have been immensely satisfying for all involved, and I have had requests to float this one day intensive study in London. After our thorough consideration of King Lear in January, it seems natural to open Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. Written in 1991, Smiley takes the Lear story and reconsiders the events from the perspective of Goneril, placing the tale in the farmlands of the mid-western United States and using the framework to consider issues of power, community, gender roles and the relationship between body and land. It is a beautiful book, a haunting book that will suit nicely into the one-day format.
To get you started, here is Smiley’s epigram:
The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. We were marked by the seasonal body of earth, by the terrible migrations of people, by the swift turn of the century, verging on change never before experienced on this greening planet.
– Meridel Le Sueur, “The Ancient People and the Newly Come”
The one-day Salon goes for four hours with a break for a pot-luck meal in the middle- it is a wonderful marathon for the mind. If you have not done a Salon but have been interested, this is a good way to get a taste of the Salon. You do not have to have read King Lear to participate- there will be plenty of participants who recently have to help fill you in- but you will want to complete A Thousand Acres before the Salon meeting.
Proposed Dates (a choice):
• 27 March 6-10 PM or
• 29 March 5-9 PM
If you are interested, please email me your preferred date by mid-day Friday 6th of March (if both times work, let me know). The cost is 35 pounds including copies of supplemental sources.
The next series will be starting at the end of April…there are rumors of a build up towards James Joyce’s Ulysses so we may dip into the Odyssey, or may continue with our exploration of the rich world of Woolf in To the Lighthouse… or Beloved…. Join in the conversation- let me know what you would like to study.

See you in the pages-
Toby