Ulysses and the Sirens, mosaic, Roman antiquities collections in the Bardo National Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“This show is at least one hundred times more interesting, revealing and entertaining than the film . . . and I liked the film.” Steve Richards, creator Rock and Roll Politics Podcast
“Whether we know it or not, The Odyssey is already part of our cultural heritage. If you have seen Star Wars, read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, watched Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, or immersed yourself in the world of Harry Potter, you have glimpsed Homer’s work in the background.” Toby Brothers, founder of the London Literary Salon
Following the success of our first Odyssey Live! performance at Camden’s Theatro Technis in July, we are pleased to announce two more opportunities to enjoy this live event at private members’ clubs in London’s Soho: The Century Club on 17 October, and The Union Club on 3 November.
Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film has super-charged interest in The Odyssey, with sales in print and as an audio-book scaling the bestseller lists. In our show we bring Homer’s immortal words to life, speaking them aloud, as part of the oral tradition that gave birth to this epic poem. Following an hour of dramatic readings there will be opportunities for audience discussion of questions including: What is The Odyssey about? Why has it endured for 3,000 years? Why does it still speak to us today?
London Literary Salon founder Toby Brothers, who has shared The Odyssey with readers aged from 9 to 90, will be joined by actor Jane Wymark (3 November), whose work ranges from Shakespeare and Chekhov to Midsomer Murders, classicist Susanna Taggart (17 October) and Greek specialist Alexis Cambanis to present some of Homer’s most brilliant and compelling verses live. A chorus of seasoned Salonistas will enhance the performance by reading together the introductory Proem.
On the train home after a week on the Eda Frandsen, the Scottish Highlands are draped with thick clouds and we rock by heather patches and lakes where you really could imagine a Lady of the Lake lifting her marbled arm and brandishing a sword. The pure, stark beauty of this landscape leaves me breathless, even though I have been surrounded by seascape beauty all week. How many sparkling vistas can one being inhale? I feel absolutely satiated from our days cruising along the North-western coast of the Inner Hebrides.
“Anything down there about your souls?”
It is a lot to ask, a group of eight people who have never met in person gather together around one big book to spend a week in close — very close — quarters on a venerable wooden gaff cutter, cleaving the waves and surviving the mad weather. Luckily, it was a very game group. Over the month of August we had met on Zoom five times in advance of our adventure but, of course, Zoom is not the heaving, lively space of a pitching boat saloon. Some of us had a bonding experience before we even left home when our Caledonian Sleeper was abruptly cancelled the day we were meant to travel north . . . there was a bit of a scramble, but this perhaps tenderised us for the coming adventure and showed us that we were able to pull together as a group and support each other.
We all managed to get to Mallaig on time to board the Eda after gathering for a final lunch at The Tea Garden. The first afternoon, after our safety orientation and assignment of oilskins and boots, we motored (the winds being unfavourable) to our first night’s anchorage, tucked in Loch Nevis (translated from Gaelic as ‘Lake of Heaven’) and already, we were amongst sheer granite cliffs and shadowed coves. As we dropped anchor our captain, Mungo, pointed out a white-tailed eagle lifting off the waves of the loch with a fish in its claws, circling on the air gusts up the cliff to its nest.
After our first morning of shrieking dips into the chill waters and hot coffee and porridge, we were in. There is always a moment – that may be hard to pin – when you slip from your home-based self into the self who is adapting and rooting into the foreign rhythms of a new place-new people-new bed-unknown schedule. That shift involves a letting-go of the safety and security of habit (or, as my friend Marcel might say, Habit) and with the letting-go, one gains the ability to manage discomforts and vulnerabilities that might not have been imaginable in our curated, daytime lives. There is a release.
Each day was shaped by that most elemental aspect, the weather. Where we were to go, how we were to go became a function of winds, weather, tides and sunlight. Our needs were minimal: eating, swimming, two hours of book discussion and moving from anchorage to anchorage as Mungo and Stella determined each day. We shuffled around each other as we tumbled out of our cavern-like bunks, moved up on deck and gathered in the views and fresh sea air. When it was time to put up the mainsail, the jib and the topsail, we all joined in, becoming part of the mechanism of boat. Most days, we landed on one of the magical islands of the Inner Hebrides and had a few hours hiking, exploring and swimming to stretch our legs and be reminded of how land felt. I am tempted to describe the incredible meals that Sylvie conjured out of the tiniest of galleys, but it would sound to much like hyperbole. Suffice to say we applauded her fish pies, banana bread, butternut squash soup and homemade bread with enormous appetite and gratitude.
Our discussion of Moby Dick grew in energy and excitement – in keeping with the rhythm of the narrative – as each of us moved more and more deeply into the incredibly rich text, together discovering layers of meaning and structure that are not as easily available to the solo reader. Melville’s great work is propelled by a hunger to know – to know the mysteries of the world, to probe the depths of the natural world – and so the magnificent whale becomes the focus of study. The book raises questions that resonate across time: must we destroy to understand the wild creatures of the land and seas, can we live in harmony with those from other cultures, can we manage the depths of woe and savagery within ourselves? Melville – through Ishmael – digs deep and considers the vast realm of the sea and her inhabitants, as well as the driven men aboard the whaling ship.
It is not possible simply to summarise either the book or our work within it. Even with the vast luxury of a week of time and a sea of imaginative space to hold and play together with the ideas and language, there is always more to explore. Our final day – after a lovely hike to Loch Morar with an informal swim, we were preparing for the final discussion, the last frantic chapters of whale chase – Mungo called us all on deck to witness a most spectacular exhibition of dolphins. It was a pod of about thirty including a few babies, all leaping and playing alongside the boat. Mungo turned off the engine to welcome them and the watery gambol continued, I even glimpsed dolphins en amour.
Each of the participants brought their own energy and curiosity, and the crew of the Eda Frandsen supported us with grace and care. We sang together, shared stories and histories, indulged in libations and limericks. I felt the peeling off of layers of stress and to-do lists and return re-energised, my thoughts expanded by the wide open horizon.
Thank you Rosie, Katriona, Mark, Simon, Lucinda, Emily and Lorraine for our joy-filled adventure. I love my Eda Sweatshirt!
We are now inviting applications for the seven places on our next adventure on the Eda Frandsen (13-19 September 2027, £2,180.00) to read Moby Dick, please email litsalon@gmail.com if you are interested in joining. You can read full details here.
The voyage will involve sharing confined living and sleeping space while onboard. We do not require you to have nautical skills, but some time spent on sailing boats or camping would be useful so you know what to expect. We ask you to let us know in your email whether you have such experience and to confirm that you are in good physical health. Even in late summer it is possible that there may be rough seas and weather, so please consider carefully whether you are likely to be adversely affected by these conditions.
“Ah,” Mr. Compson said. “Years ago we in the South made our women into ladies. Then the War came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts?”
Absalom, Absalom is one of those books that enthrals you—the deeper in you go, the more you feel haunted by it, fascinated and intrigued. Whether this is your first foray into Faulkner or a return to his pulsing and complex vision, Absalom, Absalom! is the broiling centre of his evocation of the American South, tackling its passionate history – its horrors and its heroes – head on. The book itself becomes about how we narrate our story, and how our individual story is always enmeshed with the world we come from, even when that history is indigestible. This is Faulkner at the height of his powers – battling through the fraught and agonised realms of racism, class prejudice, rigid gender roles – showing how these struggles play out against the legacy of the Civil War and the collapse of a culture rooted in inequality.
That’s the heavy stuff, but what makes the novel so enriching is our deep engagement with the characters—with Miss Rosa, with Quentin Compson, with Thomas Sutpen—who give life to these larger conflicts as they play out their own extraordinary drama.
“You get born and you try this and you don’t know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don’t know why either except that the strings are all in one another’s way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it can’t matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying or having to keep on trying and then all of a sudden it’s all over.”
Absalom, Absalom! is all at once historical fiction, a murder mystery, a meta-fiction, a broken family tale, a romance, a war story, a psychological exploration–and, at its heart, a deeply American tragedy. You can choose any one of these lenses to focus your reading, and still the voices of the characters will clamour for attention, demand that their story be told. Judith (quoted above) puts words to the entanglement of people with each other, how we all trying to weave our own pattern on the loom together and how this pulls and tugs. This is also a book to re-read, each exploration rewards with further insights into the human spirit.
“Good God! William Faulkner. What can I say? Certain books and certain writers knock you to your knees and lead you to wonder why you even bother to get up in the morning and think, much less write. I said to Eudora [Welty] one night that I thought of Faulkner as the biggest, boldest mountain, and I’m scared to even stand at the foot of it, so vast and frightening it is. And she lowered her head and her voice and said, ‘I won’t even visit the country in which that mountain stands.’ So that’s my response to your question about Faulkner. He’ll change your life for sure, but he’ll scare you when the topic of your own writing arises. Go with God, baby.“
Tennessee Williams, interview with James Grissom, New Orleans, 1982
There are still some places left on our study of Absalom, Absalom!, the second in our ‘Faulkner & his children’ series, focusing on the author’s work, critical heritage and the generations of extraordinary writers who have followed in his wake. John Allemand and Deborah Lawunmi, the two facilitators, bring to the table a history with this book and a passion for Faulkner’s vision, as well as an understanding that the agonies he exposes are still with us today.
