Coming Salons

Killing humour? Reading Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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Photo by Nikki Fraunhofer shows architectural detail from St Stephen Walbrook church, London EC4

Merricat, Constance and Uncle Julian Blackwood live in a grand, eccentric house which they call the Castle. The rambling mansion itself forms a powerful character within the novel and sits on the edge of an unnamed American village. Within the Blackwood wire fence, eighteen-year-old Merricat roves the estate, burying magical charms to conjure an illusion of safety. Twice a week however, she must venture out into a world of petty, spiteful villagers. They stare and whisper, whilst local children hound Merricat, chanting a mocking rhyme about her older sister.

When Jackson introduces us to the Castle any ordinary writer would buckle under the weight of laboured tropes about mayhem, magic and madness. Yet from the start, Jackson’s spare, taut prose signals this is no mere work of folkloric, gothic froth. Her narrative is pierced by acute observations about the kinds of small-town prejudices which leave the Blackwoods marginalised and marooned at the edge of their community. She weaves a sardonic thread of social commentary throughout the story, but her genius lies in one skill above all others: the way she touches, oh so lightly, on the fact that one of the sisters is a poisoner.

Constance was once tried and acquitted for poisoning her family, but years later she remains imprisoned by choice, never leaving the grounds of the Blackwood home. Defined by a world which prizes a clean house and well-cooked food as the paradigm of feminine virtue, Constance produces a stream of jewel-like preserves with an almost magical ease. As readers, we are left to wonder why nearly everyone in the Blackwood family died after sharing the meal which she cooked. Merricat, our narrator seems to neither know nor care, but when Cousin Charles arrives hoping to charm Constance and her fortune away with him, the question gains new urgency.

Jackson’s book is rich with astute perceptions about the murky depths below our paper-thin layers of civilisation. Her novella defies classification, fitting none of the conventional murder-mystery, feminist polemic, or teenage ‘coming of age’ categories. Whilst Castle has resonances with Jackson’s short-story The Lottery, here Jackson fleshes out the end results of community-enforced rules of ‘normality’ and their effects on social order. Set in 1950s America, the novella provides a savage commentary on the Cold War paranoia, as well as rigidly enforced, gender-specific expectations of the times. It is a tale of many kinds of poisoning and yet the book is also strangely funny. Were Jackson alive today, one has to wonder whether her intelligent, incisive humour would be published. Could it be that our contemporary ‘norms of civilisation’ are now too poisonous to be funny?

You can join Nikki Fraunhofer to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle over three two hour meetings on Zoom, Thursday 29 August, 5 & 12 September, 5.00-7.00pm UK time.

Reading Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day in Alfriston

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Just over one hundred years ago a group of artists, writers and intellectuals changed how we think of a special corner of Sussex – and a lot else besides. Here, beneath the South Downs and between the Ouse and Cuckmere valleys, is Bloomsbury’s country heartland. The Bloomsbury Group, as they became known for their London base, adopted this part of Sussex as their place of escape, to live their own lives in the way they wanted – independence, sexual freedom and a rural existence. 

Salonista and Woolf devotee Sharon Bylenga

For our forthcoming study of Virginia Woolf’s novel Night and Day we will be staying at Wingrove House, in the high street of Alfriston, East Sussex, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel, with roaring log fires and rustic-chic rooms, located just a few miles from Charleston House on the banks of the Cuckmere River. Here we will be perfectly located for exploring Alfriston and the South Downs that Woolf and her family and friends loved so dearly (the photos above were taken on a recent research visit so I write from experience).  We will use the Lodge at Wingrove House for our meetings – a perfect Salon environment complete with fireplace! – and I’m thrilled that my fellow facilitator Karina Jakubowicz will be joining us.

These long weekends away give us the opportunity to stretch into a book; finding together a rich weave of insights, ideas and connections between the text and our contemporary experience. As one of Virginia Woolf’s lesser-known works, Night and Day (1919) is a bridge between traditional fictional forms and her more radical explorations. The characters in Night and Day  probe and push against social conventions, but ultimately both text and the characters remain confined within the social expectations of Edwardian England. 

However, both on the surface and just submerged, there is another register of questioning and resistance. There is an opening out towards wider spaces, there is a pushing against the weight of the past. While the book offers us a variety of romantic situations that are not typical Woolfian fare, these relationships show fractures in the gendered spaces of the time. I find the tension that the book barely contains, the daydreams that threaten to overtake the social performances; give a vision towards the possibilities that Woolf would later expand into. It is an absorbing link in the ever fascinating chain of Woolf’s work. 

What is a ‘text’?

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Angelus Novus by Paul Klee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When I thought about an image to illustrate Philosophy & Literature, Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus immediately came to mind. Benjamin, the German Jewish philosopher, was a literary critic known for his work on Proust, Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, theatre, storytelling, libraries and more. I felt that a salon reflecting on ‘text’ should somehow pay homage to this great critic who was interested in the truth found not just in books but in objects, advertisements, technology, arcades . . .  A monoprint of Klee’s Angel was one of Benjamin’s most cherished possessions and was found among his sparse belongings when he committed suicide in 1940, at the French/Spanish border he needed to cross to escape Nazism in France and which had just closed.

For Benjamin, the Angelus Novus is the Angel of History. “His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet”. The pile of debris only grows higher as a storm pushes him backwards towards the future. This storm, says Benjamin “is what we call progress”, I wanted the Klee image to “quote” Benjamin, to remind us of his dedicated search for truth in all forms – from the smallest object to the most scholarly treatise. Unfortunately, with the horrendous attack on Israel by Hamas and the suffering of the Palestinian people, the Klee image brings back to our minds the despair suffered before, the pile of debris, the wreckage of human folly that we call progress and which surrounds us at this moment.

The philosophical work of Benjamin is inspiring and his search for truth in all objects and texts is worth pursuing. We are keen readers who, like Benjamin, love stories and books, and we ponder over them. Is Ulysses telling the ‘truth’ when he recounts his adventures to the Phaeacian king? Is Ishmael telling the truth when he weaves a story about Moby Dick to some Spanish gentlemen in Lima? What is the ‘truth’ of these narratives? Who is Mrs Dalloway? Who is the ‘real’ Clarissa? Reading Proust’s Search, we wonder, who is telling the story? What is that story about? Is there only one way of reading a text? What is a ‘text’? Who speaks what, to whom and with what effect? Can we speak of truth, reality or knowledge when we read? Can we speak of pleasure?

These questions do not have straight answers but, as a philosopher by training, I think they deserve a space of their own. Not that I believe philosophy can resolve them: nowadays we have become suspicious of the idea of a ‘foundation’ of knowledge.  Indeed, often we believe that philosophy is just one possible narrative among others. Still, as philosophy has traditionally addressed many of these questions, it will be interesting to see if, by reading excerpts of some well-known philosophical texts we can enrich our discussion.

Participants joining the Philosophy & Literature salon do not need to have had any previous acquaintance with philosophical texts. As readers who enjoy reading and discussing texts using our own experiences, we are ready to start. I will provide notes with background information on the authors, concepts and ideas, as well as some further reading for those who want to pursue those ideas. In the sessions we will be reading the texts and discussing how they present ideas of reality, truth, art and experience, seeking to integrate these ideas with our own understanding of books we have read and our own lived experience. Contributions from participants from all areas of knowledge will be very welcome. ‘Text’ as Barthes suggests, encompasses more than just the written word.   

We will start with Aristotle, who defined the art of ‘poetics’ as ‘imitation’: copying, representing reality. We will try to see how those ideas influenced the way we understand language, knowledge and art. From there we will move to Nietzsche, a big leap no doubt, but one that opens the space for modernist – and postmodern – literature. Wittgenstein will bring to the fore the horizon of shared practices, values and customs that surround language, writing, speaking and reading. Finally, we will ‘visit’ Paris and possibly find ‘pleasure’ amidst the multi-layered texts of Barthes, who in many ways and forms reminds us, once again, of Benjamin.

Philosophy & Literature, a four week study, begins on 25 January 2024. I invite you to join the journey.

Why read Marilynne Robinson?

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Marilynne Robinson — winner of the Pulitzer Prize (2005), PEN/ Hemingway Award (1982), Women’s Prize for Fiction (2009), National Book Critics Circle Award (2015, 2004) among many others — is considered one of the world’s greatest living novelists. She was Barack Obama’s choice for philosophical discussions to help him in his Presidency of the USA, and she has been cited as an inspiration by many recent writers of fiction and non-fiction. Even so, I am surprised to find very well-read people who have not heard of her or who have never read her.

For me, reading Robinson’s novels is like being immersed in a mountain stream after an arduous, sweaty hike. She goes directly into what is tormented and messy in the human heart and, through her crystalline prose, finds what glows there. Robinson is drawn to the places of paradox in the human psyche. For example, in the Gilead Quartet one of her questions is how a community, historically defined by a fierce commitment to the Abolitionist movement, might evolve in a later generation to disregard the racism at the core of the American project (and therefore at the heart of apparently ethical small-town, Protestant America).

Robinson’s theology is an essential part of her vision. While this may put some readers off, what Robinson does with her faith is to employ it in her muscular inquiry of human behaviour. How is it, for example, that some of those who are most committed to a monotheistic code of a life of good values, end up becoming rigid and dangerously dogmatic in their views? How is it that the Christian values of charity and grace seem to grow into prejudice and harsh judgements of neighbours?

A recent Salon discussion around Home (published 2008) became one of the most respectful and rich interfaith exchanges I have had the privilege to experience: the group comprised practitioners of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, an Anglican priest, a few raised in the Catholic church, an atheist, several agnostics and a few who follow Buddhist principles. Because Robinson creates a community of faith that she then uses to consider how faith may be used – or misused – in translating values into living, we as a group found material that helped us consider how our various theological imprints shaped our view of the world, specifically in the realms of forgiveness, salvation and grace. As Nicky Von Fraunhofer, co-facilitator for the Robinson studies commented: “Jack’s position in the family is the provoker of questions about the family’s faith and attitudes, especially over the theology of guilt and sin. This plays very directly into the story of the Prodigal, but Marilynne extends it here, to what happens after the son comes home.”

A recent piece in the New Yorker gives a precise reading of what Robinson offers, particularly in reflection of the tormented story of American history:

Her nonfiction had taken on the thunderous tones of a prophet, but in her fiction she found the range of the psalmist, sometimes gentle, sometimes wild, and always full of empathy and wonder. “I have a bicameral mind,” she says, explaining that her lectures and essays are a way of “aerating” ideas that often originate in agitation or outrage, whereas the novels are a different exercise entirely. The essays are the most explicit expression of her ideas, the novels the most elegant. “With any piece of fiction, any work of literature, the assumption is that a human life matters,” Robinson says. For her, this is a theological commitment, a reflection of her belief in the Imago Dei: the value of each of us, inclusive of our faults. “That is why I love my characters. I can only write about characters I love.”

Casey Cep, The New Yorker

Robinson’s vision, as expressed in her fiction, honours the immediacy of life; rendering the details of sensation and thought with a lyric and respectful attention. Her view is intimate and direct to the quiet inner lives of her characters, but from that personal space, she takes in huge questions – around faith, family, homelessness, hypocrisy, grief, identity, ecology – engaged with the natural world, but always in respectful and exploratory mode that invites the reader in.

There are passages in her fiction that I just relish (I have been known to pull out her book in the midst of a dinner party and subject the guests to a reading):

“For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing — the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.” 

Marilynne Robinson

Robinson’s work generates energetic, even passionate discussions as the exploration in her fiction goes deeply into the contradictions of contemporary existence and the history we have inherited. Housekeeping, her first novel, asks us to consider how a model of parenting that is – quite literally – outside the social spaces might be right and appropriate for a grieving young woman.

In the coming months, we have several Marilynne Robinson texts on offer — coming soon, her first work Housekeeping — you are warmly invited to join our own exploration.

The Lady Vanishes – where are the women poets of the English Renaissance?

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Nicholas Hilliard miniature, believed to portray Aemilia Lanyer

What comes to mind when you think of English Renaissance poetry? Probably Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare. Perhaps Wyatt and most certainly Donne. We delight in their inventive iambic pentameters, their creative imagery, their musical verse that takes our minds back to a time of courtly intrigue and endless linguistic innovation. We get lost in their clever metaphors, and revel in their elaborate rhetoric.

But what comes to mind when you think about women and the poetry of the English Renaissance? The chances are you might think of the many, many women who appear in the poems by Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Donne and Shakespeare. And this is where we find a disturbing paradox: while Renaissance women are everywhere on paper, it’s very hard to find them holding a pen. This is the conclusion Virginia Woolf came to in 1928, on speaking to a small group of Cambridge female students at a time when, after long struggles, women were allowed to study at university but still could not obtain a degree. Woolf, ever the storyteller, cast her mind back to the 1600s to imagine what would have happened if Shakespeare had ‘a wonderfully gifted sister’, how would her fictional biography go? As Woolf concluded, it ended badly.

Until very recently, if you wanted to read poetry written by women in Shakespeare’s day you would be in trouble. If you were really determined you might come across English women whose poetry survived largely because they were lucky enough to be in elevated social positions, the likes of Queen Elizabeth I, and Ladies Mary Sidney and Mary Wroth. But what about the common woman? One who could have been Shakespeare’s sister?

In the last decades scholars have started scouring archives and libraries in search of women writers of the English Renaissance, and they’ve made surprising discoveries. Despite not being born in courtly circles and being mostly denied any education or professional path, some English women managed to write (and occasionally even publish) impressive poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries. So, who were they? And was their poetry any good?

I’m excited to be leading the LitSalon study Women poets of the English Renaissance, which invites readers to explore this previously silent canon and begin to form an opinion. Together we will let these poems live again by revisiting their dormant sounds, rhymes and imagery. The study focuses on three groundbreaking poets and their work: Anne Locke’s fiercely devotional poetry; Isabella Whitney’s mock ‘last will’ bequeathing London to Londoners; and the feminist poetry of Aemilia Lanyer, who came from an Italian-Jewish family of courtly musicians and is rumoured to have been Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’.

Together we will try to build a picture of these poets and their lives in the Renaissance world. And we will look to pair up their poetry with artefacts from that world, enabling the words and objects to converse across time. We will ask the compelling question: how does this poetry speak to us today?

Writing Through the Seasons: Summer

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver
from Thirst, © Beacon Press, 2007


At the LitSalon’s Reading the Body retreat in Umbria earlier this month, I was reminded how intimidating creative writing can be for many people — even the most intelligent, eloquent and accomplished.  

As fifteen of us gathered and got acquainted in front of the villa, with its many varieties of trees and birdsong, I knew there’d be no shortage of inspiration for our writing together. Not to mention the literary discussions and daily yoga practice. Yes, we’d be not only reading the body but writing it too.

A few people pulled me aside to say that they would not be joining the writing workshop. More than a few were hesitant: it wasn’t their thing; they’d been scarred at school; they weren’t creative enough; it’s intimidating . . .  But, like Mary Oliver says, ‘it doesn’t have to be.’ 

The way we write together in these workshops is more about noticing, connecting, and playing with words.  Because I gently direct the writing, participants can be released from pressure and be spontaneous and intuitive — the opposite of the kind of writing we did in school. There’s no concern for grammar, spelling, punctuation, ‘You don’t even have to use words — you can doodle if you want,’ I say.  We’re not concerned at all with perfection.  It’s precisely the imperfection of spontaneity that’s at the heart of this playful writing, and I reckon that’s why it feels so good.

It feels good because there’s no critique, no judgment, just reflection. It isn’t a contest; it’s listening to our inner voices and knowing that everyone has something to say. Sharing and noticing the process of writing, not the writing itself.  Of course, you can read your words if you want to. And sometimes, but not always, there’s a bit of magic in what emerges.  

By the third workshop, word had spread like our laughter in the air. Almost everyone had given it a go.  We made pantoums (an ancient Malaysian poetic form), sankalpas, metaphors, a collaborative poem . . .  As a facilitator I was grateful for the bravery and creativity of all who participated and I like to think it added to their retreat experience. I wrote in my own reflections, ‘the Salon is as full of curious, creative women as the place is full of aromas — herbs, grass, rain. Fruits are ripening. Are we?’

If you feel curious or inspired, why not join me online for the next set of workshops in the ‘Writing Through the Seasons’ series? Summer starts on Tuesday 27 June.

Editor’s note:

Below, hot off the press, are two reviews of Alison’s writing sessions in Umbria.

‘An unexpected bonus for me was Alison’s writing groups. I went with a lot of trepidation, wanting, but not expecting to be able to write anything creative – even though I have wanted to do so for years. I have come back with a notebook full of fragments, embryonic poems, and ideas. We were told to dismiss our inner critic, and thanks to the time limits- (5 minutes to write a poem!) – my ‘busy old fool’ – (a Welsh Methodist superego) – never got a chance to stick his thin nose into the process, or to sniff disapprovingly at my unruly spontaneity.’

‘Alison proposes a writing experience which works just as well for a seasoned writer as it does for a beginner. Her exercises are uniquely tuned to take away inhibitions and provide participants with the confidence they need to express themselves freely. I found the writing that emerged could be as surprising as it was effective. Alison’s natural empathy immediately makes everyone feel comfortable. It’s about harmony; she creates a little circle of concord. She provides the wings we need to fly. And we do!’

Letter from Athens

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Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash

Snow was falling when I arrived in Athens, which will be my home for the next two years. The hills around the city stayed white for a whole week, making the trees loaded with oranges which line every street seem even more magical. The move has been complicated and much delayed, necessitating a break from the LitSalon. It’s by very happy coincidence that my first new study will be on the island of Agistri, to read the Odyssey and The Oresteia, with lots of familiar faces (and some new) joining me in my new home.    

In the meantime, I am enjoying Athens’ incomparable museums before the onslaught of summer visitors.  Museums, like literature, have always captivated me – just as words help us to make sense of the past, objects can do something similar, bringing us a closer connection to history.  

For a lover of the Homeric legends, the National Archeological Museum is the highlight of an Athens visit. The first two rooms house the contents of the graves from the palace at Mycenae, including the famous gold ‘Mask of Agamemnon’. Here are the hauls of treasure that Odysseus kept acquiring and losing, which Homer described so meticulously even though, a hundred lines later, they would end up at the bottom of the sea. They are gleaming inside their glass cases, seemingly ready to be loaded on to a ship.  

There are gold drinking vessels, tripods and bowls for mixing wine, all of them splendidly decorated. Objects made to be desirable as well as useful. Real hands lifted these cups, or wound the strands of gold beads around their necks and admired themselves in mirrors shaped like lotus flowers. Everything is rich with detail, even the smallest objects contain secret worlds. The blade of a knife is inlaid with a picture of a striped cat stalking water birds, a large gold signet ring shows a masted ship with full crew and two couples hailing it from the shore. Although so much of the Odyssey is fantastical, a myth, the people that Homer sang about never seem more real, or more like us, than when looking at the treasures they collected in life, and brought with them on their journeys to the afterlife.  

When the weather turned sunny and warmer a few weeks after we arrived, we spent Saturday on Aegina, an island familiar from last year’s study – the whole group made a day trip to see the temple there. The tables and chairs where we had a long, lingering lunch were all packed away for the winter, but the museum was open. Everywhere in Greece has museums, and even the tiniest are full of treasures. One of my favourite objects is here, a terracotta jug from the 6th century BC showing Odysseus and his companions escaping form the cave of Polyphemus.  I like it even more because, compared to some of the other objects on display, it’s not particularly well made: the painting is pretty crude, cartoonish. It is probably best described as fan merchandise – somebody bought it because they thought the Odyssey was really, really cool.  I feel the same way!

This time in Athens has given the Odyssey and Oresteia such a fresh new context, and has already increased my anticipation of sharing the joy of reading them when the study starts.

See you in the pages!

Thoughts on the ‘Slow-Read’ experience

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Photo by Nareeta Martin on Unsplash

My mother frequently told me that I lacked patience. As in, utterly and completely, almost like I was missing an internal organ. I turned the criticism into a kind of badge – of course I had no patience, but look at how much I can do all at once! Frantic movement as a superpower . . .

But high speed has its issues and one of the gifts of passing years is more time for thinking – and re-thinking. So, when Salon facilitator Mark Cwik first named and developed the ‘Slow Reading’ practice, I was intrigued but not quite certain this was my style. 

And then came Finnegans Wake.

I had resisted the Wake knowing that it is considered by many to be unreadable, but since a few honoured Salonistas kept nudging – even (Rachel) putting an excerpted book of Shem and Shaun in my hands – well I thought, what the hell: I have spent enough time with James Joyce and really, how long can I avoid the Wake? We began in 2017 and some iteration of the Wake group continues to trip through its ‘appatently ambrosiaurealised’ pages, seeking earwigger references and disappearing down the most unexpected rabbit holes – sometimes intoxicating, sometimes infuriating, but always opening up my understanding of the underlying structures of human history and identity. We read 3-5 pages a week. Some of the group have managed an entire read of the book already and we are re-Cycling-Vico-like through. And always learning.

Thus the Wake work led me to consider other Slow Read possibilities – and Ulysses was the obvious next choice. Although new readers may at first baulk at the six-month study, once they are rolling in the Bloomian pages, most chime in that we need MORE time! But once through a first read – once the arc of the book is in your mind – you are ready for a more thoughtful approach, where we can really discuss each paragraph with attention. 

In the Slow-Read Ulysses that started in September 2022, we have wonderful readers from all over the world, contributing expertise on philosophy, Jewish traditions and scholarship, psychological theories, economics, gender relationships, music, Irish history, aesthetics, narrative form, medical practices, modernism . . . we are truly eating with relish.

This week’s discussion of six pages, for example, included reflections on the Language of Flowers; desire as articulated in masochism; the Mary/Martha story from the Gospels of Luke and John, and how these are reflected in our Martha and Mary (Molly) characters; the use of the colour yellow to signal treachery; the figuration of Black people in missionary narratives; Marxism; Matzoh; what motivates people to turn to faith; relationship between colonial and religious projects; the geography of interior thoughts; the narcotic quality of sexual fantasies; pious frauds (echoing Pope Pius X); the relief of Sophocles on no longer being driven by lust . . .

The Ulysses Slow Read – like the Wake – is not a three or five year commitment. Rather, it invites participants to dip in and out as their lives allow and interests demand. Anyone who has previously read Ulysses can dive in to a 6-8 week series of study sessions (as long as there is space) and pick up the thread wherever we are. Each week, about half the participants adopt a particular passage and present this to the group with their own research or reflections. 

After years of reading and teaching Ulysses, I am so thankful for this practice of reading slowly and thoroughly. I am discovering gems that I have previously skipped over, and finding correspondences that I only now realise. The Slow Read also gives me time to explore more thoroughly the secondary literature, especially useful as there was a tremendous flowering of new work to coincide with the centenary celebration of the book in 2022. 

I would not say I have yet learned patience, but my mother would be surprised at my increasing ability to cultivate it. I have a practice – in both the Wake and Ulysses Slow Read sessions – that builds my capacity for attention and (the reward of exercising patience?) complexity. And I have learned so much: my sense of wonder expands with each dive into the realms of art, history, human nature, and the weird and beautiful intricacy of the human mind. 

Little Women: dreadful title, wonderful book?

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Anne Boyd Rioux

I recently had to confess to our new facilitator, Anne Boyd Rioux, author of the highly acclaimed Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why it Still Matters, that I have never really warmed to Little Women. This is in spite of its strong credentials as the archetypal feminist fiction and a book that has inspired countless women – many of them (including luminaries such as Simone de Beauvoir, Patti Smith, Coretta Scott King and Zadie Smith) celebrated for their talents and tenacity – to emulate the character of Jo March in forging their own brilliant careers.

On reflection I wonder to what extent my feelings are based on an instinctive distaste for the title (even as a child I thought it demeaning) and that of its sequel Good Wives. Anne patiently explained to me that in the US Little Women was first published in two volumes, the first in 1868 followed by Little Women Part Two in 1869, soon thereafter becoming a single book following its huge success. However, here in the UK (and the rest of the English-speaking world), the publishers – rather than the author – persisted in maintaining two volumes: Little Women and Good Wives.

Further confusion was caused in 1880 when the US publisher produced a new edition in which much of the language of the original text was ‘improved’ by, for example, amending the March girls’ use of the “ain’t” to “am – or is, or are – not”, in the process robbing the original prose of its vitality! For this reason Anne urges readers to seek out the original text and recommends the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (ISBN: 978-0143106654).

All of the above (further encouraged by this New Yorker article) has led me to the conclusion that I should re-read Little Women (in its original form) with an open mind and, if my schedule allows it, join her Reading Little Women study starting on 29 March!

Odyssean dreams

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As we begin to prepare for our next visit to the Greek island of Agistri for another week reading Homer’s Odyssey (28 April – 5 May 2023) here are a few reflections on our past experiences.

Jane, Caroline and I have now run two Odyssey retreats at Rosy’s Little Village on the island of Agistri in the Saronic Gulf near Athens. Each of these journeys has been personally and collectively deeply fulfilling. It is such a beautiful indulgence to spend a week fully immersed in an epic that – however much I may think I know of the narrative – surprises me on every reading with what it reveals about human nature, the deep past, our present relationships, the encounter with the stranger . . .

That quality of immersion, away from loud and full regular life, allows the mind to expand in unexpected ways. And then there is the space itself: Rosy and family have a created a unique environment, full of natural beauty and views over the crystalline waters, which feeds the imaginative realm. This is not to forget the wonderful feeding of the body, the food at Rosy’s is deliciously fresh and thoughtfully created. 

We have devised a schedule that combines the rigour of study with time to reflect and enjoy the place itself. Caroline’s guidance through contemporary poetic interpretations of the Odyssey is often cited as a favourite part of our week together, as is Jane’s generous sharing of her talent and passion for enacting the text: the words come alive as each participant has the opportunity to prepare a passage with her expert coaching and support. Without giving too much away, Jane and Caroline have activities and sessions planned that open us all up to each other and to the themes and language of the text. 

Every journey through the Odyssey in Agistri feels almost dreamlike as we experience the beauty of the place and the depths we are able to discover in our work together. And then there is the swimming, the sunshine, the company . . .

Many of last year’s participants are returning to Agistri with us to enjoy reading Aeschylus’s Oresteia (which is fully booked) and here are some of their comments on the Odyssey experience:

“It was a wonderful trip . . . the landscape, especially around the islands, is so seductive that you can see how these wonderful texts were written.”
 
“I loved the discussions around the text and getting to know a fascinating group of people.”
 
“It was an amazing and enriching experience.”

The Odyssey group on Agistri in 2022

There are still some places available on this year’s Odyssey trip if you would like to join us for this special offering!

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