The free LitSalon Challenge is now in its fourth month, with Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Birches by Robert Frost as the chosen works for April. Full details here.
The LitSalon Challenge – April 2022
Salon News
What do Greek philosophers from 400 BCE have to say to us in the 21st Century?
“Can you tell me, Socrates—is being good something you can be taught? Or does it come with practice rather than being teachable? Or is it something that doesn’t come with practice or learning; does it just come to people naturally? “
– from Plato’s Meno
The good news is that Plato’s dialogues are both accessible and enjoyable to a modern audience, particularly when read as part of a group! They are intricately crafted, dramatic philosophical works and the Meno is an excellent place to begin.
In its opening line, the dialogue gets right to the heart of a matter that could hardly be more relevant today. The title speaker, Meno, asks Socrates whether being ‘good’ (a term sometimes translated as ‘virtue’ or ‘excellence’) is a thing that can be taught. Far from being able to answer, Socrates tells Meno that he has no idea of what virtue even is, and nor does anyone else he’s ever met. As they try to find a solid definition of virtue, Socrates and Meno find themselves confronted by some of philosophy’s most basic and profound questions: what can we know, how can we know it, how can we teach, how can we learn? All of which remain as relevant to contemporary life as to the ancient world.
The Meno offers a multifaceted view of Socrates, Plato’s teacher and philosophical protagonist—at times thoughtful, playful, humble, flirtatious, ironic, and slightly abrasive. To this is added an intriguing demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem by an untutored slave boy, and a brief encounter with an Athenian politician who will later bring Socrates to trial on charges that will lead to his death.
The Meno offers a classic demonstration of Plato’s chosen philosophical format, the dramatic dialogue, in which the drama is sometimes just as important as the participant’ words and ideas. Our Beginner’s Guide to Plato study starts on 28 February.
Dramatic writing workshop: what and why?
Many Salon participants enjoy writing as well as reading. In response, we have been developing a programme of creative writing studies, most recently with Alison Cable’s Writing for Wellbeing series. The primary aim is not necessarily to prepare for publication, but to develop and enjoy a writing practice as part of self-development.
Now we are offering an opportunity to experiment with dramatic writing which, with its emphasis on structure, character and dialogue, is a way of telling stories that can feed into all kinds of literary creativity and appreciation.
Award-winning writer Jeremy Kamps, Professor of Dramatic Writing at New York University and a Guest Professor for the Pratt Institute writing department, explains the design of his eight-week study:
Our workshop will focus on the craft, process and art of dramatic story. You will write either a film short or a ten minute play (your choice), and our time together will include craft study, story de-construction, rumination on process and voice. Or, in other words, how your story meets and moves the world.
We will engage in peer review using the writer-centred Liz Lerman feedback protocol and there will be an emphasis on the idea that “writing is rewriting” (with its attendant joy and pain). The workshop is not about good or bad, but about how you tell the story you want to tell and why it needs to be told, while also providing some tools and ideas to consider along the way. Professional actors will join us for the culminating reading of our work.
Click here for more information and booking details.
ULYSSES centenary!
100 years to the day since the first publication of Ulysses
Founder and Director of the London Literary Salon, Toby Brothers, is in Paris today to celebrate the centenary of publication of Ulysses. Scandalous in 1922, the book – widely acclaimed as a work of genius – remains controversial a century later!
Expect more news of Joyceans en fête in Paris on Toby’s return.
Reading Virginia Woolf in St Ives
Having just wrapped an incredible study of The Years in St Ives, I am inspired. We encountered a new book (for me and for the Salon). We were a tentative group — some knew some, some knew none — and all were in the wild and constantly changing weather of St Ives.
Our meeting space was in the wonderful Porthmeor Studios, with windows of stained glass made from the sands of the sea below us. This special space was renovated to honour the rich history of artists and fishermen who have worked and created here for centuries. Now the walls also hold the words of Woolf and the thoughts she inspired in us.
To be together after months of isolation and multiple postponements, to be in the surging air and seas of Cornwall, to face and grapple with Woolf’s contemplation of fragmentation, of breakdown (social, political and domestic), of ‘obdurate language’, to find our way through to our own shared epiphanies in the face of her shards: this is what is so deeply satisfying about these retreats.
In The Years, Woolf tries to use fact to find truth in the expanse of fiction, but this is an uneven attempt from a writer who sings so beautifully the realm of interiority. She experiments — and finds a play between — the snapshots of nature at seasonal moments, the movement between light and shadows, between what we say and what we mean. Setting the work to span the twilight of the Victorian era to the ‘Present Moment’ (unspecified, but most agree 1932), we move with a London family through meals, parties, deaths, war and structural change. There are moments of pure lyric flight and moments interrupted — profound thoughts uncompleted, intense connections unrealised, desires frustrated. For the better part of a week, twelve of us lived with this work, the discussions not stopping after the sessions, but seeping into our dinners, walks and swims.
It was an incredible experience to be with a group of hungry minds in a beautiful place, as we dug deeply into the complexity and richness of Woolf’s vision. And then there were moments of hilarity: was that an orgasm on the train? Do we need to comment on the stain on the wall? And what’s the fuss about lavatory vs. bath? There were moments of discomfort as we worked to situate the antisemitism that Woolf portrays — is this her own, or her reflecting a difficult world, or the struggle for the artist against the press to speak politically?
Together, we came to some extraordinary understandings. And then there were rainbows, and Sheila sang . . .
For anyone who fancies joining our next trip to St Ives, we are beginning to plan for Spring 2022. In the meantime, a new study of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway begins on 11 October and there are still places left!
