Today sees the launch of the LitSalon Challenge. We’ve developed a new online opportunity for anyone who is interested in reading more widely and exploring what the Salon offers but can’t currently join a conventional Salon study. It’s free, open to all and will complement the existing Salon. You can find out more here.
You can hear Toby talking about the Salon and the Challenge on Times Radio’s Hugo Rifkind show today, Saturday 18 December, at around 12.15 GMT (and we’ll make it available later on the website if you can’t listen live).
As someone who wonders about buying green bananas these days (will any of us be here to appreciate them when they ripen?) why take a leap into the dark with Proust, whose reputation inspires trepidation in the heart of the ignorant reader?
I knew Toby’s salon would be a safe space where I could learn from bright, committed, generous friends I had not yet even met. I wanted a fixed appointment in my week when so much of what was once a routine had fallen off a cliff . . .
The Proust Study is way more than a reason to get out of bed every Monday. It is a privilege to share the frustrations and genius of each reading, to get to know the cast of characters, their way of conversing, the class system, the politics, art history, classics, science and human nature, warts and all. I have been horrified by the anti-semitism – as a traditional but not religious Jewish woman I thought, wrongly, I knew all there was to know – and the salon has been sympathetic and equally disgusted by the vile anti-semitism from which Proust doesn’t flinch. I have learned more about furnishings, flowers, clothes, food, fragrances and trees, spires, seascapes, carriages, Paris, army life, snobbery and magic lanterns than I thought possible . . . . and I am only on The Guermantes Way (Volume III).
In a nutshell: ‘Frail, sickly, sensitive, over-imaginative mummy’s boy in middle-class French family reaches adolescence (perhaps, even, becomes an adult, Proust’s narrator changes tense so often I am never entirely certain of anything). Against a backdrop of Dreyfus, crumbling aristocracy, ennui, and the tyranny of servants who make life possible, the volumes are as much about procrastination, memory, the impossibility of love, perception, grief, longing and cake.’
Sue Fox is a journalist and veteran of many Salons
I’ve been thinking a lot about close reading, the kind we do at LitSalon, not the lazy before-bed turning of pages or the rushed speed read of the latest bestseller. The world rushes past us, dips and dodges like a butterfly, but we often fail to notice the markings on its wings. For me, attentive reading can be my moment of watching the butterfly, attending to it.
In Kew Gardens Virginia Woolf is paying attention to moments where the human and natural worlds intermingle. The “zig-zag flights” of butterflies are not unlike the random movements of people through the gardens, all the while a snail slogs linearly toward its goal. We readers are given the opportunity to pause and relish the details — flashes of colour and snatches of conversations — for example, eavesdropping on a married couple contemplating past lovers:
“How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly.”
Woolf’s painterly style invites us to contemplate the words visually, and in these moments at Kew Gardens are distilled a thousand dreams — the human and natural worlds collide in an image where dragonflies contain passions and people are the garden:
“Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with red and blue.”
At LitSalon, we practise and celebrate slow reading as a communal act as well as individual activity. Committing to a study is committing to close reading, collaborative meaning-making, and the idea that great thinkers and beautiful words deserve our close attention, our time together. Noticing these fine details is the opposite of scrolling through Twitter, rushing past the rose garden. And great words open up opportunities for conversations we wouldn’t normally have these days.
Yes, it can be hard to make the time for slow reading, but whenever I do, I’m always grateful. And I feel better, ecstatic even. Indeed, it’s not a new idea that reading can increase our well-being and restore our zest for living. In his article The Reading Cure, Blake Morrison writes:
“Plato said that the muses gave us the arts not for “mindless pleasure” but “as an aid to bringing our soul-circuit, when it has got out of tune, into order and harmony with itself”. It’s no coincidence that Apollo is the god of both poetry and healing; nor that hospitals or health sanctuaries in ancient Greece were invariably situated next to theatres, most famously at Epidaurus, where dramatic performances were considered part of the cure. When Odysseus is wounded by a boar, his companions use incantations to stop the bleeding.”
Blake Morrison, The Guardian, January 2008
It seems to me that now, more than ever, we can use the kind of healing that comes with careful reading, and that we can benefit from making the time to pay attention. Revisiting the words together expands our understanding, increases empathy, and reduces loneliness — we share assumptions and learn from each other’s reactions. We connect.
Alison Cable is a facilitator at the London Literary Salon, she is currently leading a series of Writing for Wellbeing studies.
Leah Jewett (far left) and other members of The Years study group, St Ives, September 2021
Three times I’ve taken the train down to St Ives – a region apart – for London Literary Salon Travel Studies of Virginia Woolf books: The Waves, To the Lighthouse and the last book published in her lifetime, The Years.
Woolf means a lot to me. Growing up I read her journals, just as I devoured the diaries of Sylvia Plath and Anaïs Nin to enter into the detail of these female writers’ thoughts and lives. Some of the last lines of Mrs Dalloway saw me over the threshold of turning 50: “What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?”
Travel Studies are worth going the distance for. Set against the backdrop of a place related to the book you are reading, a Travel Study makes the words come alive over time and feel shot through with new meaning.
I’d already been to Dublin with the London Literary Salon after doing a six-month study of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Because Joyce, as he proclaimed, “put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries”, the least daunting and most rewarding way to read this vast book is in the company of a group of people spearheaded by the astute, inquisitive, light-hearted, deep-diving teacher/facilitator Toby Brothers. Founder and Director of the Salon, she masterminds seminar-like discussions that are informal and in depth. Because she’s an avid swimmer, a Travel Study often incorporates swimming – in the bracing Atlantic (for The Years), in warmer Grecian waters (for The Odyssey) and off the Forty Foot promontory into the roiling Irish Sea (for Ulysses).
In Dublin on Bloomsday – which commemorates the events of 16 June 1904 described in Ulysses – we retraced characters’ steps and watched scenes played out in costume on doorsteps, in a crypt and at Sweny’s, the Dispensing Chemists (“Mr Bloom raised a cake [of soap] to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax”).
He bought lemon soap; we bought lemon soap – and its tart scent time-travelled me back to turn-of-the-century Dublin.
That’s the thing about a Travel Study: it superimposes echoes of the book, and the life and times of the author, onto your experiences in real time. It transports you into the book and the book into the moment.
No 4 St Ives, the B&B where we’ve stayed for the Virginia Woolf Travel Studies, is a 30-second walk from Talland House, where Woolf spent 13 happy childhood summers. We stand transfixed in front of the white villa and think of how she movingly wrote in the essay “A Sketch of the Past”:
If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying half asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach . . . and feeling, it is almost impossible that I should be here; of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive.
A bit bedazzled, I keep thinking: This is the view (partially impeded, since, by houses) of the sea that she would have seen; that tide mirrors the waves she wrote about in The Waves; there’s the lighthouse from To the Lighthouse. Did the wind sound similar in these same trees? Undoubtedly she walked here, turned that doorhandle, looked through that pane of glass.
Time on a Travel Study is telescopic: it takes a while to put the workaday London world behind me, but by day two I’ve decompressed and am caught up in the escapism.
Each Travel Study is a study in work/life balance. It reminds me of the buzz I felt working at the Cannes Film Festival. Alternating schedule and spontaneity, you work, wander around, run into people, socialise, carve out some solitude.
Every day we parcel out the time: dash five minutes down to the sea for a 7am swim; join the others for breakfast; walk through the cobbled streets of whitewashed houses over to the rough-hewn, Grade II-listed Porthmeor Studios, which give on to a beach, to read aloud and discuss The Years; go our separate ways – to maybe take an open-top double-decker along the coast, tour the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden or opt for downtime to catch up on reading – then reconvene to discuss the book for another hour; continue talking over dinner; sleep.
A Travel Study, which elides past and present, is a journey to the centre of many things – of how aspects of a book’s personal and political landscapes resonate when you take them in experientially, how your ideas can evolve as you hear other people’s perceptions and analysis, and the connectedness – on location – with a writer and their words.
Leah Jewett is director of Outspoken Sex Ed and an inveterate Salonista
Every visit to Paris is an encounter with the inexhaustible ideal of style. Even though I once lived here, I find myself tipsy with the sights and smells and sheer beauty of it all, even before I sip the crisp Pouilly-Fumé that somehow tastes better in Paris.
Here, life is lived on the streets in the most swirling and satisfying ways. In this city I am always hungry: the smells of coffee and patisseries surround me as I run along the Canal Saint Martin; on rue Montorgueil we are torn between multiple bistros for dinner, our mouths watering with the possibilities of fresh fish and autumn’s mushroom bounty.
We visit the newly reopened le Musée Carnavalet — the city’s oldest museum, dedicated to celebrating the history of this illuminated city. The current retrospective exposition of the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson reminds us how his work is so embedded in the history and vision of Paris that my friend, who thought she was not familiar with his work, kept murmuring, ‘I know this picture . . .’ With his images in my mind, I am thinking about how an artist can shape our idea of a place — Paris becomes the time-misted, complicated, fleeting glimpses that Cartier-Bresson captured: the days of liberation, the children on Paris streets whose poverty does not diminish their intense play, the women walking as though they aren’t being watched, knowing very well they are watched . . . All his images catch moments of motion and hold them frozen in time: I am aware of a tilting skirt, a leaping man, a glance across a room. None of these movements may be remarkable in themselves, but by being captured in the instant they become eternal. In this and many other ways, our visit to the Carnavalet has me thinking about Proust’s explorations. Finding on the rue de Sevigne the entrance to the building that was home to Mme Sevigne, the 17th century journalist beloved by Marcel’s grandmother, is only the start of the threads of connection to Proust.
Reflecting on the Belle Époque in the Musee Carnavalet
Travelling is different in these pandemic days. Each café requires proof of our vaccinated status; I find this is reassuring. I wonder if I am also newly alive to the allure of foreign spaces and unknown faces. The months of enclosure have made me hungry – and Paris feeds the senses voluptuously.
As September slides in under summer’s fading shadow, I find returning to the depths of literature offers a delicious slowing down after the shifting and frantic days of this summer with its overwhelming world news. I look for a way to balance the fears and dread of global and local upheavals with a space for hope, inspiration and celebration of the human creative spirit.
One Salonista put it succinctly: “. . . I look forward to seeing you and reading the book which helps me to think deeply rather than be frightened by the daily news.”
Immersion in literature is not to escape, but to find a perspective that is wide enough to hold the chaos of living, to help give context – historical, global – to the individual subjective self that must absorb and flow through the experience of being awake in this world, at this moment.
This autumn’s Salon Studies offer a sumptuous feast to support, expand and sometimes soothe the troubled mind. We have expanded our offerings to give choices in length of courses and cost, approach, focus, genre and historical perspective. In our recent facilitators’ meeting, we discussed developing studies that connect and build on one another – studies which can stand alone but are also linked thematically, developing ideas and understanding of particular strands of literature.
The coming study of Ulysses (starting January 2022, as we approach the centenary of its first publication) offers an opportunity for this kind of interconnected study: this huge book that is both the peak of modernist literature and one of the great unread books, is interwoven with other great works. Joyce used Homer’s Odyssey – often humorously – as a reference point and scaffold upon which to weave his tale of a scruffy and sensitive modern hero who echoes Odysseus in unexpected ways. Ulysses also repeatedly echoes Shakespeare’s Hamlet both thematically and in exploring the perennial question of the relationship between the artist and their vision. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man may be seen as the prequel to Ulysses – giving the reader background to Stephen Dedalus and his struggles, as well as introducing us to Joyce’s experiments in language and style.
We will be offering studies of The Odyssey, Hamlet (soliloquies) and Portrait this autumn. If you are joining the Centenary Study of Ulysses, any or all of these courses would be valuable but, of course, you don’t need to be preparing for Ulysses to enjoy these extraordinary works!
It is with great sadness that I share the news of the death of a Salonista, beloved Agi Katz. When I went back through the records to see what studies Agi had done, I was amazed by the breadth of her participation: she was one of the second tour of Proust, she completed studies on Magic Mountain, Paradise Lost, The Iliad, Absalom, Absalom, The Sound and The Fury, Ulysses, Hamlet, Invisible Man . . . Those who were on these courses with her will remember her lively mind, her extensive knowledge of visual art, her strong opinions and her humour.
I first met Agi at the Kenwood Ladies Pond, where she became for me one of those ‘mother swimmers’ – those seasoned Ladies whose stewardship and advocacy have kept the Pond the unique haven we love. Agi also brought her incredible work in researching and advocating for lesser known European artists (she was the founder and director of The Boundary Gallery) to the Salon: for the Proust studies, she brought original sketches made during the trial of Dreyfus – bringing this pivotal moment in history to life for us.
You may also be interested to read the obituary from the Ben Uri Research Unit, where Agi was a curator for six years before opening her own art gallery, The Boundary Gallery, in 1986.
LLS facilitator Julie Sutherland lives and teaches in Canada. Please note, some of the details in this reflective piece are distressing.
Photograph: First Nations Women, Act On Climate March
How can art teach us? How can it help us unfurl into a more exposed, humane and empathetic version of ourselves? This short piece provides a brief summary of Indigenous Peoples (known in the United States as Native Americans) and considers how art may offer us insight into the lives of the first human inhabitants of the lands to which my ancestors came.
When I say ‘Indigenous Peoples’, I am referring to the first human inhabitants of the lands now called Canada, many of whom have lived on, and in relationship with, these lands since time immemorial. Pre-European contact, ‘North America’ was home to as many as 112 million Indigenous People. However, within a century of Christopher Columbus having arrived on these lands, that number was reduced by as much as 90% – a sobering result of violent displacement, disease and what Canada has now formally recognized as genocide. Officially, Canada recognizes three distinct groups of Indigenous Peoples: First Nations (originally, and now offensively, called ‘Indians’ by white settlers); Inuit (originally, and now offensively, called ‘Eskimos’ by white settlers); and Métis (individuals of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry). Indigenous Peoples are resilient. Today, they are the youngest and fastest-growing population in Canada.
The Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, which is located on the traditional and unceded lands of the Coast Salish peoples, is popularly referred to as ‘the poorest postal code in Canada’. While this isn’t quite accurate, a stroll down East Hastings Street reveals more heartbreak than the average middle class resident of any ‘Western’ country would usually encounter in a lifetime of strolling through their own neighbourhoods. Indigenous Peoples comprise less than 5% of the population in Canada; Vancouver’s DTES has the highest Indigenous population in the city, at 31%.
An extremely high number (over 50%) of the street-based survival sex workers (those who trade in sex out of dire need) in the DTES identify as Indigenous. Between 1978 and 2001, at least 65 women, many of them sex workers, disappeared from this neighbourhood. In a jailcell confession, Robert ‘Willie’ Pickton, a pig farmer and serial killer from a nearby suburb, claimed he had killed nearly 50 women in the neighbourhood, though he was only officially charged with the murder of 26. In 2007, a jury found him guilty on six counts of second-degree murder and he is now serving a life sentence in prison. An official inquiry in the matter identified ineptitude by police and prejudice against racialized peoples as two of several explanations for the delay in apprehending Robert Pickton. The case was a turning point in the nation’s recognition of the tragic issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls not just in Vancouver but also across Canada.
Sarah de Vries was one of the 33 women whose remains or DNA were found on Robert Pickton’s pig farm. Sarah was a poet and artist of mixed-race descent, including First Nations, who lived in Vancouver. She was last seen April 12, 1998. In one of her poems, she asked, ‘Will they remember me when I’m gone / or would their lives just carry on?’
We remember. Sarah was a daughter, a sister, a mother. Her disappearance broke their hearts, and mine. I lived in Vancouver’s DTES and worked for many years for different organizations that aimed to support the lives of survival sex workers in the area. I spent hundreds of hours on the streets with these women, and in safe houses, hearing their stories. I also heard the remarks of others who, not understanding or knowing these women, said hurtful, hateful things about how these women brought this on themselves, how they deserved no better than disease, rape, death. How ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’. I watched cars go by, hurtling raw eggs and bags of human excrement at the women’s bodies, heads, hearts. I saw them held at knifepoint. I looked at photos of their children and visited them in hospital when they gave birth. I saw them ‘tweaking’, overdosing, dying. I also saw them singing, laughing, living.
Reading another of Sarah’s poems presents an opportunity for us to understand ways in which art – and in this case, poetry – can, however disturbing, help readers to learn, reflect, grow and change. It demonstrates how poetry can expose us to new perspectives and encourage us to think about ourselves in relation to the world around us.
Woman’s body found beaten beyond recognition You sip your coffee Taking a drag of your smoke Turning the page Taking a bite of your toast Just another day Just another death Just one more thing you so easily forget You and your soft, sheltered life Just go on and on For nobody special from your world is gone Just another day Just another death Just another Hastings Street whore Sentenced to death
Sarah de Vries, (used with the kind permission of Maggie de Vries)
A poem like Sarah’s may conjure up many negative emotions. We may react in myriad ways. An easy, and understandable, reaction might be defensiveness. How dare she tell us we don’t care? Who is she to attack us anyway? If this is our experience, we might try to reflect on it. Why have we reacted defensively? Is it because there might be some truth to what she says? Have we ever written someone off because of our preconceived notions of their identities?
Such an awareness may lead us to consider our own positions vis-à-vis Sarah’s and try to see ourselves from her point of view. Can she help us to reflect on our own apathy? If we conclude we are not personally apathetic, can she lead us to contemplate apathy (or worse, active racism, sexism, etc.) at systemic and structural levels – perhaps at the levels of media, healthcare, justice, child welfare and education? How can we find more out about lives such as Sarah’s? What else can we read? Who can we listen to? Who can help us shed our prejudices and inspire us to work toward a more equitable, just, caring society?
The self-reflection that creative writing can inspire may be a compelling reason for engaging with ‘off-putting’ art. Critics of this kind of reading may say compositions like Sarah’s fall into the genre of ‘misery lit’ or ‘misery porn’, that is, writing in which central characters endure great hardship. They may say we as readers are merely revelling in the horrors of others. But, in fact, there is a well established body of research that has found that reading all kinds of literature has transformative power. If the studies don’t convince you, look into your heart. Has it changed because of the art you’ve encountered? Has it made you reflect? Has it made you grow? Keep reading.
Copies of Julie Sutherland’s forthcoming book: Bright Poems for Dark Days: An Anthology for Hope (to be published in November, available in Canada, the UK, the US and Australia) can now be pre-ordered. See here for more information.
