Reading Notes and Questions

Reading Jesus -- from Allan Campo

Tahani Sticpewich — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:46:41 -0400

Dear All Souls Book Group,

Just a reminder that the meetings about Mary Gordon’s Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels will begin this coming Monday, July 26, 7:00 p.m., in the conference room of the Warner Building. Reading Jesus is available at a discounted price at Accent on Books.

This Monday’s meeting will focus on Part I. It will be following by two further meetings:

Monday, August 9, 7:00 p.m., in the Warner Building. The meeting will focus on Part II.

Monday, August 23, 7:00 p.m., in the Warner Building. The meeting will focus on Part III and an overview of the book.

As most of you know, Emilie White, the leader of the All Souls Book Group, is on an extended vacation. However, she will be sending along this week some ideas and suggestions for engaging this uniquely challenging book.

Looking ahead to Emilie’s return in mid-September, she intends to lead the Group in the reading and discussion of three novels by Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize American novelist. The first of the novels will be Sula, which is also now available at Accent on Books. It will be followed by Song of Solomon and Beloved.

Looking forward to an interesting discussion on the 26th.

Allan

Not P. Roth / A poem by Gwendolyn Brooks

Tahani Sticpewich — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 19:01:50 -0400

Hello, and I hope everyone is well.

At our last Book Group meeting I extemporized a little about what we'd be reading in the fall, suggesting it might be a novel by Philip Roth, American Pastoral. Some of you looked as though ready to go get a copy of American Pastoral and start reading. So I wanted to let people know that we will NOT be reading American Pastoral. I'm nearly finished with it, and though it's an amazing book, I think we'd do better with something else, and so am now considering the novels of Toni Morrison. As soon as I know for sure what the book/ author will be, I will e-mail you.

Meanwhile, a poem, by Gwendolyn Brooks. (See below.)

All best,

Emilie

The Coora Flower

Today I learned the coora flower
grows high the mountains of Itty-go-luba Bésa.
Province Meechee.
Pop. 39.

Now I am coming home.
This, at least, is Real, and what I know.

It was restful, learning nothing necessary.

School is tiny vacation. At least you can sleep.

At least you can think of love or feeling your boy friend against you
(which is not free from grief.)

But now it's Real Business.
I am Coming Home.
My mother will be screaming in an almost dirty dress.
The crack is gone. So a Man will be in the house.

I must watch myself.
I must not dare to sleep.

--GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000)

Book Group Summer Schedule/ Poem and Prayer read at Monday's meeting

Tahani Sticpewich — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:37:16 -0400

Dear All Souls Book Group,

Enclosed are a couple of items, the first being the Summer Schedule for the All Souls Book Group, the second being the poem and prayer read at last Monday's very fine meeting about Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge. Thanks to everyone who was there.

I. Summer Schedule for the All Souls Book Group

The Book Group has made its “Group Pick” summer selections, and they are 1) John Steinbeck's 1952 novel, East of Eden and 2) Mary Gordon's Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels (2009).

East of Eden meetings:

Monday, June 28, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss first half of the novel
Monday, July 12, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss all of the novel

Reading Jesus meetings:

Monday, July 26, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss Part I of Reading Jesus
Monday, August 9, 7 p.m., the Warner Building: Meet to discuss Parts II and III of Reading Jesus

A word about Reading Jesus for those of you who don't know the book: I have read Reading Jesus and think it excellent. Gordon is a fiction writer who was raised as a Roman Catholic, and who, as a Roman Catholic, was "discouraged" from reading Scripture. Writes Gordon in the introduction to Reading Jesus:

“Brought up as a Roman Catholic in the 1950s, I did not grow up reading the Bible. We weren’t forbidden Scriptural reading, but it was certainly discouraged: that was something Protestants did. Protestants, who didn’t realize the danger of individual interpretation, the rich safety of ex cathedra pronouncements, worked out by a body of ordained men over centuries of inspired time.

And so I didn't read the Gospels. Rather, I heard the portions of them that were read out from the pulpit each Sunday. This was a singular way of knowing a text: fragmented, chopped up, interpreted before I had a chance really to digest what the words had said. And yet I have always been able to say with certainty that the figure of Jesus and the words of Jesus have been at the center of my ethical and religious imagination. This struck me, suddenly, as very strange indeed."

And so Gordon sets about to reading the Gospels. The result is a 200 page book organized into eight-to-fifteen page sections, some sections treating individual episodes from Jesus’ life, and/ or his parables, others looking at a concatenation of Jesus’s teachings which Gordon see as pursuing the same question/ challenge/ offering. Each section begins with the gospel text (s) under consideration—-which is great, in that you don’t have to be shuttling between Gordon’s book and the Bible—-then opens out to Gordon’s reflections on those texts. The brevity and discreteness of the sections let you meditate on the given gospel text for however long you want. Perhaps you too would like to write out your own questions, as has Gordon, and so you keep a journal with Gordon’s book, engaging in a conversation both with the gospel story and with Gordon’s response to the story. Gordon’s book lets you experience the Gospels freshly again, and with a friend—-a clear-eyed, brave, articulate, patient, strong-minded but unobtrusive, friend. Some of you may remember Mark Jarman, the wonderful poet who read at All Souls as part of the Kay Falk Literary Project two years ago. Well, he has a blurb on the back of Gordon’s book, which says:

"A fresh and humane take on the Gospels. Gordon's approach is aware of, but not burdened by, doctrine. Her many insightful questions give expression to thoughts which have, for many readers and for many years, been waiting to be asked aloud." -- Mark Jarman

And here’s Publishers Weekly on the book:

“Gordon tackles the power and puzzle of the Christian gospels with measure and imagination, providing welcome relief for those left cold by scholarly or fundamentalist parsing. . . Her savoring of particular lines is poetic and amplifies the beauty and sometimes ambiguous challenge of the language, stories, and injunctions of the gospels.”

Both East of Eden and Reading Jesus may be purchased at Accent on Books, at reduced cost, thanks to parishioner Lewis Sorrells.

And what will we be reading/ discussing in late August, early September? True to my idiom, "I haven't decided yet." Either we'll be reading a Philip Roth novel, American Pastoral; a novel by Toni Morrison--and I don't know which one yet; or a collection stories, compiled by me, by writers Anton Chekhov, William Trevor, Alive Munro, Deborah Eisenberg, Tobias Wolff, Peter Orner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander and Z.Z. Packer. Or we may do a course just on the stories of A. Chekhov. I should know which of these it will be in a couple of weeks, and when I do, I will e-mail you.

II. Poem and Prayer read at last Monday's meeting

The following poem and prayer were read at last Monday's (May 17th) meeting. The poem was supplied by yours truly, the prayer by Theresa Prymuszewski. Thank you, Theresa.

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

--RICHARD WILBUR (b. 1921)

Hopi Prayer

Hold on to what is good
even if it's a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe
even if it's a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do
even if it's a long way from here.
Hold on to your life
even if it's easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand
even when I've gone away from you.

(This prayer is one of many in an anthology called Giving Sorrow Words: Poems of Strength and Solace, ed. by Karen vanMeenen and Charles Rossiter, with Kathleen Adams. The book is a selection from all the poems and prayers that "poured" into the National Association for Poetry Therapy in the wake of 9/11. Thanks, Theresa, for bringing this book to our attention.)

I will miss you all this summer...VERY MUCH!! And please, if there are any questions about any old thing, e-mail me: I will be checking e-mail daily.

All best,

Emilie

Janice Norman

Tahani Sticpewich — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:13:16 -0400

Dear All Souls Book Group,

I just wanted to let everyone know that Janice Norman died yesterday, Monday, May 10, at 10:30 in the morning. Suzanne Bowers, a long time friend of Janice's, was at the book group meeting last night and told us about Janice's last days and hours, which sounded peaceful, even creative. Many thanks to Suzanne for sharing so generously her experience of Janice.

When I find an obituary or any other information about Janice, I will send it along.

Below are three poems. The first is by Rumi, translated by Robert Bly. It was read to us by Sarah Larson at the beginning of last night's meeting. Thank you, Sarah. And the next two poems are by Jane Kenyon and Louise Bogan.

All best,

Emilie

The Name

You should try to hear the name the Holy One has for things.

There is something in the phrase: "The Holy One has taught him names."

We name everything according to the number of legs it has;

the other one names it according to what is inside.

Moses waved his stick; he thought it was a "rod"

but inside its name was "dragonish snake'.

We thought the name of Blake was "agitator against priests",

but in eternity his name is "the one who believes."

No one knows our name until our last breath goes out.

--RUMI (1207 - 1273), translated by Robert Bly

Peonies at Dusk

White peonies blooming along the porch

send out light

while the rest of the yard grows dim.

Outrageous flowers as big as human

heads! They're staggered

by their own luxuriance: I had

to prop them up with stakes and twine.

The moist air intensifies their scent,

and the moon moves around the barn

to find out what it's coming from.

In the darkening June evening

I draw a blossom near, and bending close

search it as a woman searches

a loved one's face.

--JANE KENYON (1947 - 1995)

From Heine

Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht . . .

Death is the tranquil night.

Life is the sultry day.

It darkens; I will sleep now;

The light has made me weary.

Over my bed rises a tree

Wherein sings the young nightingale.

It sings of constant love.

Even in this dream I hear it.

--LOUISE BOGAN (1898 - 1970)

Olive Kitteridge Questions and Proposals

Tahani Sticpewich — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:30:44 -0400

Dear All Souls Book Group,

Enclosed are a few questions and proposals about Elizabeth Strout’s novel-in-stories, Olive Kitteridge, which we will be discussing this coming Monday night, May 10th, in the first floor conference room of the Warner Building, at 7 p.m. Our second meeting about Olive Kitteridge will take place Monday, May 17th, at 7 p.m., in the Parish Hall.

Copies of Olive Kitteridge are available at Accent on Books, on Merrimon Avenue, at reduced cost, thanks to parishioner, Lewis Sorrells.

Questions and Proposals about Olive Kitteridge, including a game-plan for how to discuss a book that is both a collection of stories and a novel

I read Olive Kitteridge for the first time this last weekend. The book had been recommended to me by a number of people, Porter Taylor and Robbin Whittington among them, and their enthusiasm along with several admiring reviews I read on line convinced me that the book would make good material for our group. I believe it will. I enjoyed Olive Kitteridge, as I imagine many of you did as well.

I also imagine that many of you are wondering how we’re going to talk about it, given its dual life as, on the one hand, a collection of stories, each independent to itself, and, on the other, a novel. How are we going to hold both kinds of storytelling in view, without losing focus?

Well, having consulted the wisdom of The Great Allan Campo, and having sat here for a while with a yellow pad and pencil, I have arrived at a plan (a plan! a plan!). I’m not sure it will work. But here goes.

Plan for Discussing Olive Kitteridge

Keeping the story-form in view through work we will do at home: The first way we’ll stay close to individual stories is through some very uncomplicated, not-too-time-consuming, potentially even fun, work we will do at home. This work is described in Question #1.
Keeping the story-form in view through a little teaching I’ll do at the beginnings of our meetings: Another way we’ll keep the story form in view will be to study two stories, one per meeting, for their “shapes.” What do I mean by shape? It’s complex. For now I will say that part of the way we experience stories, part of the way we come to understand them—and this is also true of poems—is through our senses. Very fine storywriters can make you feel their stories’ realities almost as though those realities were your own. They put you inside a sensory experience that is almost beyond thought. Elizabeth Strout accomplishes this sensory effect in “The Piano Player” from Olive Kitteridge, and I will try to describe that effect, and how it is achieved, at the beginning of our first meeting. And I will talk about another of the stories in O.K. at the second meeting—I just haven’t decided which one yet.
Olive Kitteridge as a novel: Probably the most straightforward approach to the book-as-a novel will be to track Olive’s story from beginning to end. Question #5, below, treats this dimension of the book, considering the order of the stories about Olive, and also the ways our impression of her story might be influenced by its being interspersed with stories about other residents of Crosby, Maine.

Okay, so that’s The Plan. Below are some questions to help us execute it.

Question #1: Each Discussant Collecting Four “Special Small Things” from Individual Stories

Okay, here’s some work, very uncomplicated, not too time consuming, possibly even fun, to do at home, which will help us stay close to individual stories.

Please go back through the book and select four “small special things” that seemed to you especially resonant, striking, moving, telling, suggestive, what have you, from Olive Kitteridge. Have these four small special things come from four different stories—-so, one detail per story (this means you’ll be coming to discussion with four stories represented by this exercise.) Please write brief accounts as to why these small things impressed you. Consider the life of that small thing within the story in which it appears. Also, perhaps this “small thing” matters somehow to another story in the book. How does it do so?

I realize the term “special small thing” is ridiculously vague. (I actually think I may have picked it up from all the smarmy, italicized-text, butterfly-‘n-sunrise Mother’s Day cards I read at Target this morning.) But I insist on that vagueness so as to invite the many ways Strout writes well, which is just about every way I’m aware of, at least from the kind of fiction she seems to be writing--a Chekhovian kind of fiction, and I’ll say more about the term “Chekhovian” when we meet. Also, the open-endedness of the term invites many kinds of reader response—and we are many kinds of reader. So, the term, “special small thing,” means pretty much anything that’s small: a cameo character, a detail of setting, a short exchange of dialogue, a particular phrasing or felicity of diction, a physical description, a tricky thing that happens with time—-what have you. And, so as to make my meaning concrete, I’m going to supply, right here, two of my own “small things.” My hope is that these two examples of “small things” should help you in the selection of your own.

So, here are two “small things” from Olive Kitteridge that seemed to me remarkable.

**First of Emilie’s “Small Things”

From the first story, “Pharmacy”:

I find myself very interested in the first paragraph of Olive Kitteridge, in the story, “Pharmacy.” And I find myself especially interested in it now that I’ve read the book through to the end. The paragraph describes Henry Kitteridge’s memory of his drive to work at his pharmacy. Here is the paragraph:

“For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summer-time roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy. Retired now, he still wakes early and remembers how mornings used to be his favorite, as though the world were his secret, tires rumbling softly beneath him and the light emerging through the early fog, the brief sight of the bay off to his right, then the pines, tall and slender, and almost always he rode with the window partly open because he loved the smell of the pines and the heavy salt air, and in the winter he loved the smell of the cold.” (Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge, 2008, Random Trade Paperback edition, p. 3)

Why this paragraph now seems to me remarkable—now, it should be re-emphasized, that I have read the book through to the end—is because the notion of Henry having a secret, a secret his wife, Olive, presumably knew nothing about, complicates the emotions I experienced while reading the last page of the book. Those emotions—the ones inspired by the last page--had to do with Olive’s recognition that one should honor one’s spouse while he or she is still with you, that one should honor the love in your life while it’s still “available.”

“No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.” (270)

This is what Olive understands as she lies down next to Jack Kennison, a man who, in a wonderful contradiction to the “lesson” Olive seems to be learning, even leaving with her reader before she departs—Love Your Spouse--is not, of course, Olive’s spouse. Olive’s is a powerful insight, one we take away as we close the book—or, I do. But isn’t it remarkable that a book that should close with the bittersweet remembrance of the lost opportunity of spousal love should open with the spouse-of-that-spouse’s bittersweet remembrance of his lost “secret world”--a world recognized for its beauty, morning after morning—such was Henry Kitteridge; a world not squandered, rather regularly praised; and a world about to open onto another extra-spousal love affair, which would be Henry’s with Denise. It is a paradox like this one--resolute, irreconcilable, un-smooth-out-able--that seems to me distinctly Olive Kitteridge.

**Second of Emilie’s “Small Things”

From the story, “The Piano Player.”

This “small thing” is a character in “The Piano Player,” a peripheral one whose name is Walter Dalton. Walter, as you may remember, is at the bar every night that Angie plays piano. He is gay--Malcolm Moody refers to him as a “fairy”--and he is a career drunk. It would appear that he and Angie enjoy an affectionate, respectful relationship.

Walter struck me as a small-but-special presence in the story for a couple of reasons. One reason I’ll include here is that he seems to care for Angela in a respectful and “decent” way, a decency Angela recognizes, and appears to draw encouragement from, at the end of the story. Yet while Angie may be able to recognize that decency, Walter, being a drunk, and being a gay man in a world largely hostile to gay men, may not. This is why he seems to me a “telling” character. He seems a potentiality—a way Angela might end up if the many contingencies at play upon her life—drink, a history of abuse, loneliness, age--fall together unfortunately. Walter is an outline waiting for Angie to fill it, one among many. And yet—and this element of his character complicates things wonderfully--he seems happy with his lot, content. In trying to illuminate the many dimensions to Walter’s character and to his relationship to Angie, I wish to demonstrate how pressing at a small part of a good short story will often mean pressing at all of it.

Question #2: Strout’s fiction as character fiction: Being Led in the Writing Primarily by the Idiosyncrasies of Character

One of the things I admire about Olive Kitteridge is that it doesn’t make generalizations about life—-it doesn’t try to put forward one reading of existence that’s true for all of us. It describes dilemmas and characteristics many of us share, but it doesn’t have one, stabile, once-and-for-always, “true” lesson to teach us. (And already I can see, as maybe you can too, how these last two statements might be wrong.) If one can reasonably speak to a writer’s spirit—and of course one cannot!--Strout’s seems large and flexible enough to accommodate many kinds of human personality—-all kinds, it would seem. In this way her fiction most resembles, for me, the fiction of Anton Chekhov. Both writers are led in the composition of their stories by character—-by what is unique and irreducible in character personality, and by the material and social context (s) which influence character personality: class, money, gender, institutional background, economic and social opportunity (or the lack of it), and so on. (Race belongs on this list, but I’m not aware that Chekhov wrote about race, and if Strout has done so, I’m not yet familiar with that element of her fiction.) In Strout’s writing one senses that there isn’t a prevailing view or conclusion, except--and these are profound currents in Strout--respect for the dignity of all human beings, and belief in the powers of inspiration and love.

What are your thoughts, here? This is my first encounter with Strout’s fiction, so I could be totally wrong. Please support your observations with evidence from Olive Kitteridge.

Question #3: A complication to the last question: Talking together about the “profound insights into the human condition” offered by Olive Kitteridge

In the last question I proposed that Strout is led in her writing by character, rather than beliefs about people in general which she then imposes on her characters. (And there are a lot of writers working today proffering essentially one conclusion about human nature, or, to be fair, human nature in a particular time and place; and some of these are very good writers. But I for one don’t see the value of one-conclusion writing.) On the other hand, I do notice a couple of themes that seem to unify the stories in Olive Kitteridge. Do you? If so, what are they? In the blurb on the back cover of the book, for instance, it is said that, “Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition—its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.” What, for you, are those insights?

And yes, the hope here, in asking questions that nearly totally contradict one another, is to create a real mess.

Question #4: Pleasure

I know I experienced a lot of pleasure reading this book. I loved reading it, missed it when I wasn’t, and at various points had to put the book down for a good cry. Was the experience similar for you? Which stories especially moved you, which characters? If this book was a pleasure for you, how was it so? Please be specific to the book in your answer. This question may be totally fuzzy and un-focused, but I include it to create a space in discussion for our pleasure in the fiction we love.

And if this book was not a pleasure for you, let’s talk about that, too.

Question #5: How is Olive revealed across the book? And, how does the order of the stories influence our impression of her?

The book depicts a lot of different people, some of whom know one another, many of whom do not. If the book is unified in terms of narrative, it’s through the title character, Olive Kitteridge. You might go back and look at, first, how Olive is revealed--how, and in what order, information about her comes to you. And you might also contemplate how it is that her life and her responses to it ready her for the understandings she’s capable of by the end of the book. In pursuing these developments, you might look at the order of the stories and how that order effects your impression of Olive. For instance, it’s remarkable that the first story is not about Olive but about Henry, and that we won’t really get to know Olive-on-her-own-terms until story #4, “A Little Burst.” We’ll then encounter her in the next story, “Starving,” but not as a central character, rather as a cameo or peripheral one. And the way she behaves in story #4 (“Starving”) is very different from the way she behaves in story #3 (“A Little Burst”) or story #1 (“Pharmacy”). This question is meant as an invitation to do three things: A) to view Olive as an impression arrived at cumulatively, B) to view her story as a whole and to marvel at the distances she travels across it, and C) to marvel at the deliberations of a good writer who is trying to affect you in myriad ways, among them through the order in which she releases her information.

Question #6: The vision of the book: Individual and Communal/ Democratic at Once

How is your experience of Olive’s story influenced by its being situated in and among all the other stories in Olive Kitteridge? The vision here manages to be individual and democratic at once, this because of the form of the book: linked stories, the “link” being the town of Crosby, Maine. What is the effect of Olive’s story being interspersed with those of so many other people, some of whom she knows well, and some of whom she hardly knows at all? This question seems to overlap with Question 3, about the “insights into the human condition” offered by the book as a whole. What are your thoughts here?

Also, did Olive Kitteridge remind you of other works of fiction about whole towns: Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio; George Eliot’s Middlemarch; Rick Russo’s Empire Falls; some of Alice Munro’s novella-length stories, like “The Love of a Good Woman”? (There are other linked collections about places or towns, but at the moment none is coming to mind.) (Oh yes, Tracy Winn’s wonderful Mrs. Somebody Somebody.) Each of these works lets you look at single individuals against other individuals whose stories hold the same “weight” or “intensity” as those around them, this because the “bigger” story is the town, is the place-we-all-share (which somehow becomes the “world” we all share, which somehow then becomes the “condition” we all share…very tricky, this.) In a way, any collection of short character fiction, one character treated per story, no one story holding precedence over the others, will, by its form, offer this democratic view. This form also offers the modern urban person obligated by the structure of his or her life to share space with strangers the chance to share fictional space with fictional strangers, and with the aid of authorial insight and/or compassion.

A development to this question: Thoughts about the narrator, her relationship to you, the qualities of her posture toward you and toward her characters.

Also, it’s interesting to think about how you-as-reader are implicated in the “vision” of the book. The only mind privy to all of the lives in Olive Kitteridge is yours—-yours, and the narrator’s. You and the narrator alone bear the responsibility of omniscience. There’s a particular (fill in the blank) poignancy to this responsibility? Is poignancy the right word? And while we’re at it, is responsibility the right word? Does being alone with the narrator in this comprehensive knowledge result in a kind of (fill in the blank)…loneliness? If the feeling is like loneliness, is it a loneliness that’s also somehow consoling? Or maybe there’s nothing like loneliness here, precisely because we get to share these understandings with the narrator. This notion then occasions reflection upon the narrator, upon the quality of her sympathy, the quality of her regard, the decisions she’s making, beneath your awareness, as to the aspects of her story she’s going to reveal, versus those she’ll leave un-said, etc. What are your thoughts, here?

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday,

Emilie

Upcoming offerings

Tahani Sticpewich — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:44:49 -0400

Dear All Souls Book Group,

Thanks for a good meeting last night about J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey.

Below is some information concerning upcoming offerings of the Book Group.

I. Salinger meetings: First off, my apologies for the misinformation as to meeting times in the April edition of the "Cathedral Connection." I was not aware of this misinformation until last night. The "Connection" says that the first Salinger meeting is the 22nd, which would be this Thursday. This is incorrect. The first meeting was last night, April 19th, and the second meeting will be this coming Monday night, April 26th, at 7 p.m., in the Warner Building. I will not be at this coming Monday's meeting as I will be in New England visiting my family.

II. Group Picks: At our meeting this coming Monday night (the 26th, in the Warner Building) we will be selecting books to read for the summer, when I will be away. If you have a book you'd like to read with the group, of any genre, please bring to this Monday's meeting the author and title, along with a brief description as to why you think it would make good material for our group.

III. Study Questions for Franny and Zooey: For those who are not aware of the study questions for Franny and Zooey, or who would like to review them before this coming Monday's meeting, please go to the following website: http://www.allsoulscathedral.org/connect/groups-and-committees/book-group

This is the Book Group page at the All Souls Cathedral website. Once there, you'll see at the bottom of the page a link that says, "Click here for Emilie's Notes and Questions." Once you click, you'll find that three documents will come up, one of them for Franny and Zooey. Click on it, et voilà.

IV. For those wanting to read more about the Glass family: Salinger wrote other stories about the Glass family. "A Perfect Day For Banafish" concerns Seymour's suicide, and was published in Salinger's Nine Stories (1953). And there are two more novella-length stories about the Glasses collected in Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). From what I'm able to learn on the Internet, it looks like these two stories were written concurrently with "Franny" and "Zooey" (though collected together and published in a book two years after the publication of Franny and Zooey.)

V. May Olive Kitteridge meetings:

In May we will be reading Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of linked stories, Olive Kitteridge, published in 2008. The meeting times and locations for Olive Kitteridge are as follows:

Monday, May 10th, 7 p.m., the first floor conference room of the Warner Building
Monday, May 17th, 7 p.m., the Parish Hall

Copies of Olive Kitteridge are now available at Accent on Books, on Merrimon Avenue, at reduced cost, thanks to parishioner Lewis Sorrells.

Below is the description of Olive Kitteridge from the back cover of the Random House trade paperback edition.

“At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life—sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition—its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.”—from the back cover of the Random House trade paperback edition of Olive Kitteridge

Thanks to Bill Turner and to Jean Dunbar, who provided last night's poem and prayer respectively. And thanks again for a good meeting.

Sincerely yours,

Emilie White

Franny and Zooey, Questions and Proposals

Tahani Sticpewich — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:53:36 -0400

Dear All Souls Book Group,

Enclosed are some questions and proposals about the book we will be discussing this coming Monday night, J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. That meeting will take place Monday, April 19^th, 7 p.m., in the Parish Hall. Our second meeting about the book will take place the following Monday night, April 26^th, again at 7 p.m., in the Warner Building.

Copies of Franny and Zooey are now available at Accent on Books, at reduced cost, thanks to parishioner Lewis Sorrells.

Before I get to the questions, though, let me tell you about our future meetings.

In May we will be reading Olive Kitteridge (2008), the Pulitzer Prize winning collection of linked stories by Elizabeth Strout. Several of you have recommended the book to me; the other night I read the first story and liked it very much. Olive Kitteridge is currently on order at Accent on Books, and I will e-mail you when it’s in for sure.

Our Olive Kitteridge meeting times and locations are as follows:

Monday, May 10, 7 p.m., The Warner Building
Monday, May 17^th, 7 p.m., The Parish Hall

GROUP PICKS: Our next opportunity to select “Group Picks” will be Monday, April 26^th, which is our second Franny and Zooey meeting. If there’s a book you’d like to read with the group, of any genre, please be prepared to speak about it for a minute or so on April 26^th. And if you’d like to nominate a book but can’t be there at the meeting on April 26^th, feel free to e-mail me the title and author, along with a brief description.

So, now to the questions for J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey (1961).

Below are different kinds of questions for different kinds of readers, questions which, in their variety of orientation, are designed to help you to reflect upon Franny and Zooey in that particular way (or ways) that are most natural or interesting to you. As was true of the questions for Marilynne Robinson’s Home, these are also organized into two sections, the first about the book’s forms, the second about content, theme, character. You’ll also notice that Section Two concludes with a few questions for personal consideration. We will begin discussion with these questions, so please answer at least two of them, and with consistent reference to the text, before our meeting on April 19^th. Franny and Zooey holds personal meaning for lots of readers—or, so is my impression—and so I’d like to invite personal comment while still, if possible, staying close to the book.

Page numbers: The page numbers below refer to the mass market paperback edition of Franny and Zooey, published by Little, Brown and Company, in 1991. This is the edition currently available at Accent on Books—meaning, the edition presumably most of us are working with.

Section I: Describing the Structure and Language of Franny and Zooey

1. Two stories rather than a novel

Franny and Zooey is not a novel, rather two stories, the second one considerably longer than the first--and we could call the second one a novella. All I want to do here is to indicate that this book is comprised of two stories that, A) stand independently, and B) combine to form a larger story.

Publication history: “Franny” and “Zooey” were published respectively in 1955 and 1957 in The New Yorker, and then published together as Franny and Zooey, the book, in 1961.

2. The different narrative points of view of the two stories

And here I just want to point out that the two stories, “Franny” and “Zooey,” are told in two different points of view. The first story, “Franny,” is told by a narrator whose identity we don’t know—a third person, omniscient narrator. The second story, “Zooey,’ is told differently—in this instance, by Buddy Glass, older brother to Franny and Zooey. Buddy identifies himself as the narrator of “Zooey” in its first pages, on pages 47-50. Question #4, below, will treat the unusual narrative point of view of “Zooey.”

3. What is the effect of the two stories standing separately, one about “Franny” and one about “Zooey”?

Another way to ask this question would be to speculate as to why Salinger published the book as two stories, rather than integrating the two stories into a novel. But let’s leave that question aside—if Salinger’s intentions can be recovered, I don’t know how to recover them. More useful to us would be to describe the effect of the structure of the book-- the emotional effect, on us. And my proposal as to that effect is as follows (I offer it as a way to invite your own proposals):

In being in her own story, by herself, in the first part of the book, in a world of Lane Coutells, Yale games, “section men”, “ego,” and so on, Franny’s vulnerability is intensified. What she’s up against she’s up against more vulnerably in not being able to face it with a Glass sibling at her side. That Franny is alone in the first story is for me part of the success of the book entire—-part of its poignancy, part also of what the book has to say about the influence of family—particularly when the family is a loving one. (And who knows, maybe for you the Glass family is less than loving…if so, I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts when we meet.)

Also, the difference in narrative point of view between the two stories, which I described in Question 2, perhaps intensifies for us our sense of Franny’s “aloneness” in the first story. To repeat, in that first story she’s being narrated by an unnamed consciousness, someone who is not connected to her. Then, when she is with her family in the second story, she’s being narrated by a member of that family--her older brother, Buddy, someone who knows her, believes in her, is rooting for her.

(Please note that the word “vulnerability,” to describe Franny, is my extrapolation. Nowhere, to my awareness, does the word appear in either story.)

What are your thoughts, here? Am I making too much of the book’s structure; am I being too fancy? Do you agree with what I’ve said above? Disagree? Please support your observations with reference to the text.

4. The narrative structure of “Zooey”--the only one of its kind, to my knowledge, in American fiction

In this question, I just want to underscore the strangeness of the narrative point of view of “Zooey.” To repeat: The story starts out as told by a first person narrator who identifies himself as “Buddy,” older brother to Franny and Zooey. Then, by the fourth page of the story, this “Buddy” tells us that “from here on in,” he’s going to refer to himself in “the third person.”

“We will [. . .] leave this Buddy Glass in the third person from here on in. At least, I see no good reason to take him out of it.” (50)

What in the world do you think is going on here? What a convoluted, head-bending, plausibility-straining way to write a story. Yet it’s the way Salinger writes it. He could have done it much more simply; he could have told both “Franny” and “Zooey” from the point of view of an unidentified, omniscient narrator. Why do you think Salinger took the more difficult course? It’s amazing, but “Zooey” is actually a first person story…all the way through!

To me, that Buddy narrates this story, but in a way that renders him impalpable, is, well, very important, and I’ll say why I think it’s important when we meet. In the meantime, what do you think?

5. The resemblance of both stories to long scenes in a modern play.

In both “Franny” and “Zooey” there’s a lot of talk about the theater. Also, both Franny and Zooey have acted, and/ or are actors. There’s also a script in “Zooey,” on p. 71, which we read as though from Zooey’s perspective. I find it interesting, perhaps telling, that the form of these stories resembles a play. What do you think about this resemblance? Do you notice it too, or is it just me?

6. Both stories feature a lot of writing, or text-within-text. What do you make of this?

In both stories you have a lot of text-within-text. Here are the five examples I see:

a) the two fully excerpted letters. In “Franny,” there is a letter from Franny to Lane, which Lane reads at the beginning of the story. In “Zooey” there’s the very long letter from Buddy to Zooey, which Zooey reads at the beginning of the story.

b) Again, the script Zooey reads in the bathtub, on p. 71

c) the excerpts from world literature transcribed by hand on the white beaverboard in what had once been Buddy’s and Seymour’s bedroom. These excerpts are on pp. 177-179.

d) The longish footnote at the bottom of pages 52 to 53 in “Zooey.” This is not an example of text-within-text; I include it because, like the examples above, it heightens your awareness that you are reading, and that this story is a written artifact.

e) Seymour’s journal entry, from Feb. 1938, written on shirt cardboard, which Zooey takes out of the desk in Seymour’s and Buddy’s bedroom, on p. 182.

Question: Why do you think F and Z is so focused on reading? Is this focus simply to show the highly literary culture of the Glass family? Or is something deeper going on here? Maybe something is being said about reading, about living your life inside of prose, or of recording, or of remembering, your life, in prose.

7. There is glamour to this story, and there is beauty to this story, and they’re different things

What do I mean by glamour? Partly it has to do with the way the characters talk—so cleverly, so gracefully, and so (for us) entertainingly. They’re funny, smart, well read; they know so much, and are moreover so responsibly aware of the problem of knowing so much, they almost qualify their sentences out of existence. And then somehow those sentences land supply on their feet. Who talks like this? I wish I could talk like this. And then there’s how talented they are—these children are so intelligent they have to be on the radio! And then there’s the physical beauty of Franny and Zooey. And the attractiveness of their class, and of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and of coming from that class, and of living in that neighborhood, yet still getting to wear your housecoat every day. There’s how enviably literary the family is, that it’s just a given that you’ll major in English at an excellent college and date a Yalie who hangs out with readers of a sensibility to refer to Rainer Maria Rilke as “that bastard.”

And then there’s the beauty of the story, which is, from my perspective, different than the glamour of the story.

Sometimes as I re-read Franny and Zooey I find myself wondering if the glamour isn’t somehow meant as a distraction from the beauty—as a red herring, in a way. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita works in a similar way—and indeed Robbin Whittington raised this very question when we read Lolita a couple of years ago. I even wonder if this glamour-as-distraction problem isn’t a part of Zooey’s and Franny’s problem, or confusion. Thoughts?

8. The spirit of the book: “Were most of your stars out?”

The writer Adam Gopnick had a lovely remembrance of Salinger in the New Yorker soon after Salinger’s death. Gopnick concluded this remembrance with a line from another of Salinger’s long stories about the Glass family, this one entitled, “Seymour: An Introduction.” Here’s Gopnick:

In “Seymour: An Introduction,” Seymour, thinking of Van Gogh, tells Buddy that the only question worth asking about a writer is “Were most of your stars out?” (Adam Gopnick, “J. D. Salinger,” The New Yorker, February 8, 2010.)

What a great question, a great image: “Were most of your stars out?” (I love “most of.”) For me, “most of” Salinger’s stars were definitely out. How about for you? Why, or why not?

Section II: Content and Theme Questions

1. What kind of “person” or “sensibility” is narrating the “Franny” story? (And, is the sensibility narrating “Franny” similar to the one that narrates “Zooey”?)

Go back and have a look at the way the narrator of “Franny” sees and narrates Franny and Lane. What sorts of things does this narrator notice? What is this narrator’s attitude toward Lane and Franny and their particular story? The narrator here could hold lots of different attitudes toward Lane and Franny, their milieu, their moment in life, etc. That’s an obvious observation, yet one worth holding in view. There’s a certain narrative posture here that’s very special; and I’d like to talk about it when we meet.

One example of this “posture” that strikes me every time I read F & Z comes toward the end of “Franny,” when Franny is in the ladies’ room at Sickler’s. She’s in her enclosure, and without an “apparent regard” for the “suchness of her environment,” has sat down. She then places her hands over her eyes and presses, “as though to paralyze the optic nerve and drown all images into a voidlike black.” The following is the image I’d like to underscore:

“Her extended fingers, though trembling, or because they were trembling, looked oddly graceful and pretty.” (22)

What sort of personality might notice this particular detail of Franny at this particular moment? Her eyes are shut, she’s presumably in a kind of crisis; and what this narrator sees is not just her fingers, and not just that her fingers are trembling, but that, trembling, they look “oddly graceful and pretty.” Also, note the qualification, “or because they were trembling,” which effectively sets the whole image trembling, reminding us that despite the wisdom of this narrator and of his way of looking at the people he writes, there is only one of him, one, limited, mortal encounter, author to authored. The gaze here, the delicacy of consideration is…well, as I say, special, and vital/ vitalizing to this story and this book. (I’m being vague so as not to bias your sense of this narrator with my own.) How would you describe this narrator? And, is this gaze/quality of regard like the one in “Zooey”?

2. What sort of trouble is Franny in? Is she genuinely in it?

To me, Franny seems in real trouble. The trouble, as I see it, has to do with the complexity of her awareness and self-awareness. How does she seem to you?

3. A Mystical Offering, or a Love Story?

The narrator of “Zooey,” who is Buddy Glass, says of himself at the beginning of his “home movie” that he knows “the difference between a mystical story and a love story.” He continues:

“I say that my current offering isn’t a mystical story, or a religiously mystifying story, at all. I say it’s a compound, or multiple, love story, pure and complicated.” (49)

How does “Zooey” bear out Buddy’s claim that it is a “love story, pure and complicated”? How is this a love story? I think it’s easy to forget that that’s what’s going here. What are your thoughts?

4. Are these stories (in part) about talking?

The book entire is made up of three very long conversations—athletically conducted, rapturously conducted, exhaustive and exhausting conversations. I’m going to leap ahead and say that it seems to me that what this book is mainly fascinated with is talking*--with the particular way the Glass family talks to one another, and, beyond the Glasses, with the way members of a particular class and/ or social environment talks, or talked, to one another, in the middle of the last century in the northeastern United States. (By the way, I’m not at all sure this second observation is correct.) What are your thoughts?

*To be fair, what the book seems to be fascinated with before anything else is this particular family and the way they care for one another and also navigate, together and alone, modern cosmopolitan life. But the medium through which Salinger pursues those fascinations is talk, conversation. And it’s always interesting to ask of a body of writing which came first, the medium, or the content (in this case, familial love, modern life, etc.) given expression by that medium. It’s not recoverable, which came first, but wondering at that question allows for the appeal to the artist of certain of life’s forms, for sounds, shapes, rhythms, patterns--forms that take hold within him or her and lead to understandings that could not have been attained any other way.

5. Zooey: What’s Going On With Him

For me, the 40-some page exchange between Franny and Zooey is one of the more delightful I am aware of in modern American literature. Yet for Franny and Zooey the exchange is often a painful one. On this reading I was more attuned than in readings past to Zooey’s experience, in particular to the confusion he expresses very near the story’s end.

“I don’t think I ever really meant to try to stop you from saying it [the Jesus Prayer]. At least, I don’t think I did. I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell was going on in my mind. There’s one thing I do know for sure, though. I have no goddam authority to be speaking up like a seer the way I have been. We’ve had enough goddam seers in this family. That part bothers me. That part scares me a little bit.” (195)

I also found myself more attentive than I’d been in readings past to Zooey’s placing his face in his hands twice while in Buddy’s and Seymour’s bedroom. These are two of the only moments of quiet in either story. I can’t tell if this is a useful question, but here goes: What is going on with Zooey in this story (“Zooey”)? It’s funny: He is the one who does all the teaching, and nearly all the talking, yet his may be the deeper anguish. (Anguish, btw, is not a word Salinger uses, or, it seems to me, would ever use.) What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Why?

6. Franny: What’s going on with her?

By the end of the book, Franny is smiling up at the ceiling, presumably in a state of peace. Does this image seem the right one for the end of this story, the right conclusion to Franny’s “pilgrimage”?

7. Why do you think Mrs. Glass is in “Zooey” to the extent that she is?

She could have taken up much less space in this story, yet is as fully realized a presence as either F. or Z. Why do you think she is?

8. Christian and Eastern spiritual teachings conflated in the book

Do you think they are? I sort of do, on this reading, but I could be wrong. What are your thoughts? Please be specific to the text in your answer. I guess I don’t finally feel that this is a book about Jesus or even about the Jesus prayer so much as it is about spiritual seeking, which, for some of the Glass children, has resulted in real peril. Where does the problem lie, then? With the world? What are your thoughts?

9. Zooey and Franny (and the other Glass children) “funnel-fed” religious philosophy

“Funnel-fed” is Zooey’s description of the manner in which Seymour and Buddy taught the younger Glass children religious philosophy (both Christian and Eastern.) What’s the effect of this education on Franny and Zooey? Is it helping? What does the book propose is the alternative? Does the book propose an alternative? Am I thinking about this issue correctly/ in a way that’s faithful to the book? This is sort of the same question as # 8.

10. Seymour’s suicide haunts the story

Does Seymour’s suicide haunt this story? The Glass family’s apartment feels (to me) haunted in lots of ways. Does it feel that way for you? Please be specific to the text in your answer.

Section II continued: Questions for Personal Consideration

11. Does this seem to you like a young book, somehow, a book that’s more likely to move you when you’re young?

I don’t at all mean the book seems lacking in some quality it “should” have, that it’s naïve or jejune (I’m actually a huge fan of this book.) Yet still the book feels as though written for a Franny or a Zooey. What do you think?

12. Does this story remind you of your own family? How, or how not?

13. Does Franny and Zooey mean something different to you, now that you know how Salinger led his life?

14. Have you ever said a prayer continuously, or tried to meditate continuously?

Was the prayer the Jesus Prayer? Or, maybe you tried doing something similar, like meditate all day every day for several days in a row. What was (is) the experience like?

15. Why did you come to Franny and Zooey on this reading? Did you get what you had come for?

The first time I read this book I read it for spiritual guidance. Now I read it differently. What have you found in the book? And if you did take spiritual or religious guidance from it, what was that guidance/understanding? If you did not, what did you take instead? Or, maybe this is too flat-footed a way to think about this book (or any good book)—too utilitarian. Thoughts?

Looking forward to seeing you Monday,

Emilie

Remembering Becky Stallings

Tahani Sticpewich — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:47:07 -0400

Dear All Souls Book Group,

As many of you may know, April 1, 2010, would have been Rebecca Stallings' 58th birthday. Rebecca--or Becky, as most of us knew her--had been a parishioner at All Souls for decades before her unexpected death, along with her guide dog and devoted friend, Nasha, in a car accident on March 15th of last year. She was also a regular member of our book group.

For those of you who didn't know Becky, Becky was one of those amazing people you only read about until you actually meet one. Blind from childhood, she earned a Bachelor's Degree, in Psychology and English, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then going on to earn a M.A. in English Literature, and second M.A. in Deaf and Blind Rehabilitation. She then went to work here in Asheville for the North Carolina Division of Services for the Blind, where she remained for thirty-one years. At NCSB she served in many positions: Social Worker; Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor; Children's Program Consultant and, lastly, as Counselor-in-Charge in the Asheville District Office. A faithful parishioner at All Souls, Becky gave constantly as a volunteer: as a Lay Reader; as the Chair of the Outreach Committee; Member of the Vestry; Stewardship Committee; an All Souls Book Group member; and as a volunteer with Loving Food Resources. Becky laughed easily, loved music, reading, and the outdoors. I think anyone who knew her could see that she loved life.

The last time I was supposed to see Becky was Monday, March 9th of last year, when she was to attend a book group meeting about Emily Dickinson. She wasn't there; the next day I received an e-mail saying she had meant to come, only had "needed to be outside," as it was "just so pretty." This would be the last Monday of her life. And the last time I saw Becky was another pretty evening later that week--I was in my car, and she was walking through West Asheville with Nasha. I was too far away to say hello. As some of you may know, Becky took long walks with Nasha nearly every day.

Enclosed are four poems culled from my shelves that seem to me to speak to Becky's spirit, and/or to the experience of losing her. Included also is a poem offered for the occasion by Janet Shaw--thank you, Janet. I miss Becky, as I imagine many of you do as well.

All best,

Emilie

1.

Journeying On

Toward morning, Death,
a barred owl, settled into our maple tree.
From our window, I could see
the cloak of brown feathers,
the wise eyes, and hear the soft call,
"Come, now. Come, now."

So I left my body behind
and went to the roof peak
where my owl waited for me.
I wasn't afraid to follow her into the light.

--Janet Shaw

2.

1540

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away--
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy--
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon--
The Dusk drew earlier in--
The Morning foreign shone--
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone--
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

--Emily Dickinson

3.

SONG

My heart, my dove, my snail, my sail, my
   milktooth, shadow, sparrow, fingernail,
     flower-cat and blossom-hedge, mandrake

root now put to bed, moonshell, sea-swell,
manatee, emerald shining back at me,
    nutmeg, quince, tea leaf and bone, zither,

cymbal, xylophone; paper, scissors, then
   there's stone--Who doesn't come through the door
    to get home?

--Cynthia Zarin

4.

I explained it to St. Peter,
I'd rather stay here
Outside the pearly gate.
I won't be a nuisance,
I won't even bark, I'll be very patient and wait,
I'll be here, chewing on a celestial bone,
No matter how long you may be.
I'd miss you so much, if I went in alone,
It wouldn't be heaven for me.

Unknown Poet

5.

THE WAKING

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close behind me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

--Theodore Roethke

Marilynne Robinson’s Home

Tahani Sticpewich — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:56:55 -0400

“Reading, done properly, is every bit as tough as writing.” —Zadie Smith

“As soon as you generalize, you are in a completely different universe than that of literature, and there’s no bridge between the two.”—Philip Roth

Dear All Souls Book Group,

Enclosed are several questions about the novel we’ll be discussing this coming Monday night, Marilynne Robinson’s Home. The meeting will take place Monday, March 15th, 7 p.m., in the Parish Hall.

And our second meeting about Home will take place Monday, March 22, 7 p.m., the Warner Building.

Then, in April, we will read J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, meeting to discuss it twice: on Monday, April 19th, 7 p.m., in the Parish Hall; and on Monday, April 26th, 7 p.m., the Warner Building. Copies of Franny and Zooey are now available at Accent on Books, on Merrimon Avenue, and at reduced cost, thanks to Lewis Sorrels.

As agreed upon last time we met: The entrance fee for Monday’s discussion is to answer at least two of the questions below, and to be prepared to support your answers with evidence from the novel. You will see that there are more questions than I usually write (and how), and you will also see that they are organized into two sections: the first section, Section I, which is oriented toward formal description; and a second section, Section II, oriented toward content and theme. And, prefacing Section 1 is a brief essay on the advantages to be gained from the descriptive approach to literature.

A Brief Essay on the Descriptive Approach to Creative Literature

Over these last several months I have talked a lot about close reading, but not in a long time have I specified what I mean. Largely this has to do with the context in which we meet (not school), and also with the variety of individuals comprising our group. Some of us have a background and/ or education in literature, some do not; some are looking for an intensive literary experience from the book group, some are not. And each of us is valuable to the group. For those of you who are interested in learning more about close reading, I recommend several excellent books: for fiction, Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, basically anything by James Wood, basically anything by Lionel Trilling, Joshua Landy’s How to Do Things with Fictions (forthcoming), Charles Baxter’s Burning Down the House, Robert Boswell’s The Half-Known World, several of the essays in Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners, Anton Chekhov’s letters, and Vivian Gornick’s The End of the Novel of Love. For poetry, I recommend any criticism by Helen Vendler, Mary Kinzie, James Longenbach, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Heather McHugh, Thom Gunn, Philip Levine, John Berryman, Richard Hugo, Robert Hass, Tony Hoagland, Marianne Boruch, and Louise Glück.

In the meantime, for those of you who don’t have time to pursue the titles/ writers listed above, these study materials, right here, provide several questions oriented toward formal description. These questions are intended to help you describe the novel’s forms—-describe them, if possible, apart from content. (I’m not at all happy with distinguishing between form and content, but for now to do so seems the clearest way to proceed.) The hope here is to help you cultivate the practice of studying a work of creative literature really as though it were a foreign world -- a world whose “meanings” exist at all because of a unique formal arrangement that made those meanings possible. Describing in this way will help you avoid falling into (mere) generalization, (mere) reaction, and also mere judgment, or worship, of the novel’s characters, or of the author. As I explained to members of the book group during our pot-luck last November, my art history professors would begin discussion this way—-by asking students simply to describe the work of art under consideration, a photograph of which would be projected on a screen at the front of the room. Sometimes that was all we would do, in a two-hour seminar—-describe the work of art, just simply sit there and try to put into words what it looked like, and how it appeared to have been made. Of a painting by Mark Rothko, for instance, Student A might say: “It looks like the green field was put down first.” Then would elapse a fairly excruciating silence during which the other students would be checking their observations against that of Student A. And then Student B would venture forth. “Yes,” she might say, “the green field does look to have been put down first, but the fuzzy brush work in the red field seems to be confounding the notion of ‘sequence,’ of first, second and so forth.” So laborious an address, and toward an object potentially so inspiring, may sound boring, and sometimes it was. It’s work. Yet this sort of work must be in place before we can speculate an author’s intention, which is when, in my experience, inspiration takes place—-when we feel “spoken to,” and when we may begin to sense ourselves as (marvelously) adequate to hearing what has been said.

Description effectively seats authority with the work, rather than with the reader. And if the encounter, reader-to-work, is happening in a group, description allows interpretation to proceed democratically. Anyone can describe. It doesn’t matter whether you have a background in literature; and indeed, in my however many years of teaching, I have often found that the more innocent approach—and, along with innocence, the mindful approach, even the self-watchful approach—yields the deeper the insight. Indeed, someday I would hold a seminar with the All Souls Book Group on the similarities between Mindfulness Meditation and close reading. It does seem as though analogies of this sort—to the visual arts, to meditation—-basically to media/ disciplines other than literature--can help.

But, back to the page: All that matters is that we stay with it, that we, to quote Joshua Landy again, “get out of the way” of the work, “efface” ourselves before it. This means quieting ego—hard to do, sometimes--and it also means resisting the understandable inclination to interpret to the work according to bodies of knowledge the work is not--“templates,” as Betsy Gardner has called them. (In our discussions these “templates” have included various branches of psychoanalysis, the Enneagram, feminist theory, Other Works of Literature, theology, and all kinds of online research to find out “what the experts think.”) As we have reminded each other many times in our five year life together, a superior work of literature will incarnate within the mind an entirely new “template,” if you will, one that exists at all only within that particular work, and exists at all for the reader only when she or he is reading it. So just focus on the work, even if doing so feels like being back in elementary school. Increasingly I will try to model this sort of address both in my questions and in discussion.

Here, then, are some formal elements of Marilynne Robinson’s Home to describe.

Section I: Descriptive Questions/ Form Questions

1. The Point of View/ Perspective

From whose point of view, or perspective, is this story told? In Robinson’s Gilead, we learn everything there is to know from one point of view, which is John Ames’s. Our experience of Ames’s family, of Gilead, of the Boughton family, and, most decisively for our experience of Home, of Jack Boughton, is filtered through the perception of John Ames.

Not so with Home. Home is told from the perspective of an outside narrator. Often, very often!, that narrator appears to be experiencing the story from Glory’s point of view. (But not always.) Here’s a very pointed question: Why is an outside narrator, who seems, at almost every point in the novel, to be Glory, the right kind of narrator for the story of Home? Please answer this question with consistent reference to the text.

Interesting: The point of view from which this story is told changes dramatically during the very last two paragraphs. How so? What’s happening during those paragraphs?

Another important aspect of the novel’s point of view to remember: The only mind we occupy in this novel is Glory’s. We never go into Jack’s mind, or Robert’s, or anyone else’s.

2. The language/ diction/ prose

In what kind of language does this narrator cast the story of Home? Here’s a different way to ask this question, different in substance: How is the narrator’s language adequate to the story of Home?

Another perhaps helpful way to think on this question: Marilynne Robinson is not a writer of a prevailing or signature “style.” The way she writes changes from novel to novel. This has to do, I think, with the respectfulness of her address toward her subject matter. She finds a “style” adequate to the particular character/ story she’s writing, and that’s that. I find this remarkable. How is the writing here different from that of Gilead? For those of you who’ve read Housekeeping, how is it different from Housekeeping? Why must the prose/ language/ diction/ in Home be as it is for the story to sound “true?”

3. Where the story goes (or doesn’t go) in space and time

This is not a story that satisfies for its plot-twists or its newfangled management of time. This is a story that moves slowly, that focuses intensely on only three people, and a story which also tends to stay in one place—-basically in one house (sometimes in the back yard of that house), occasionally venturing into the streets of Gilead, or to the Ames’s home, or, once, into the countryside beyond Gilead. You’ll also notice that the characters tend to talk about the same things again and again, energetically, for sure, but also exhaustively. So many ways to tell a story, aren’t there. Just think of all the many ways Robinson could have told this one. She could have, for instance, included scenes of Glory’s life away from Gilead. She could have introduced more characters into the story—-a relief for her reader, maybe, and maybe even a relief for Robinson. But she didn’t do these things. If, for you, the choice she made is the right choice—-to stay essentially in one house for three hundred pages, having the same three characters enter and reenter the same conflicts again and again--why is it the right choice?

4. How is this story told?

Most of this story is told through dialogue—through people talking to one another. There’s exposition here as well, and that’s important. But for now I want to emphasize the prevalence of dialogue in Home. How is this choice the right choice for the story of Home?

(And as a once-upon-a-time fiction writer, I want to say that dialogue is hands down the hardest kind of fiction to write, because that’s when you lose control over your characters. That’s when they’re at their most complex, when they’re revealing dimensions you hadn’t anticipated when they were just “thinking”--or when you, as their author, were thinking about them. I for one very much admire Robinson for the energy it must have taken her to stay with Jack and Glory and Robert as they toiled for three hundred pages just trying to talk to one another. The only reason, as I see it, more novelists don’t write novels this way is because the other ways are easier.)

5. Details, and what they say that isn’t (can’t be? won’t be? could never be?) said in words

What are for you the novel’s most revealing details? What I’m asking for here are those details suggestive of an emotion or significance that isn’t said in words, this because the characters perhaps don’t “know” that emotion yet, at least not consciously. For me, Robert’s hair possesses this sort of life. Same with Jack’s clothing. Same with Jack’s laugh. Same with the picture of the river Jack keeps in his room--and which Glory gives to Della before Della leaves. You might look for details that recur, also for phrases that recur. Which, for you, are the especially revealing details in Home? What are they “saying”?

6. How Jack is shown/ How the novel knows Jack/ How we know Jack

This question overlaps with those above it, but I’ll accord it its own because the Mystery of Jack—-is he good? is he bad? can he be saved? was he born to this? what’s at the source of his “sadness,” his “loneliness”? what comprises his “soul,” and while we’re at it, what are we talking about when we say ‘soul’?--is central to the novel, and to the lives of just about everyone in it. Do attend to how Jack’s character is revealed in Home. Remember, at no point do we go inside his head—-in either novel, Gilead or Home. Also note that we’re not with him for certain crucial scenes, crucial to him. Think of all the letters he’s written to Della—-we don’t read a single one. Think of that painful night in the barn—-we only hear about it afterwards. We never go up to his room with him; we never come down from his room with him. The ways Jack is revealed, for most of the novel, are two: A) though the speculations of other characters, and, B) through dialogue—-through what he says. He’s also revealed, to a lesser extent—maybe encrypted is a better word!--through the objects in his room, or rooms (house and barn); and also through the revelations of the last pages of the novel. But he’s never revealed decisively. So again, describe. What do you actually, experientially know of this man, and how do you know it?

7. The Tempo of the Novel

In an essay on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the critic James Wood describes Anna Karenina as having the “ample lento of life as we live it from day to day.” (See James Wood, The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel, p. 102.) I don’t know if “ample lento” is how I would describe the tempo of Home—ample sounds spacious to me, whereas in Home I feel enclosed—-but there is a slowness to Home which this randomly encountered observation of Wood’s helped me to recognize. How would you characterize the novel’s tempo? If that tempo seems instructive to you, how does it seem instructive? Please be prepared to support your observations with evidence from the text.

8. Last, Hardly Least, Maybe First: How is Glory Shown?

Lastly, how is Glory shown? We tend to think of the novel as Jack’s. And how could we not; everyone is always talking about Jack, including Jack. But what if this is really Glory’s story? The last pages of the novel seem to suggest that it is. What do you think? Please refer to the text in your answer.

Section Two: Content/ Theme/ Issue Questions

1. Being ‘good?’ Or being seen as ‘good?’

This problem-—Am I being good, or am I acting this way rather to be seen as good—-is central to the novel. We hear about it right away on page 6:

“They were attentive to their father all those years later, in part because they were mindful of their sorrow. And they were very kind to one another, and jovial, and fond of recalling good times and looking through old photographs so that their father would laugh and say, “Yes, yes, you were quite a handful.” All this might have been truer because of bad conscience, or, if not that, of a grief that felt like guilt. Her good, kind, and jovial siblings were good, kind, and jovial consciously and visibly. Even as children they had been good in fact, but also in order to be seen as good. There was something disturbingly like hypocrisy about it all, thought it was meant only to compensate for Jack, who was so conspicuously not good as to cast a shadow over their household. They were as happy as their father could wish, even happier. Such gaiety! And their father laughed about it all, danced with them to the Victrola, sang with them around the piano. Such a wonderful family they were! And Jack, if he was there at all, looked on and smiled and took no part in any of it.” (Marilynne Robinson, Home, p. 6)

Consider this dilemma—-Am I being good, or am I acting this way, even feeling this way!, so as to be seen as good--as it pervades and shapes the life of the Boughton family. Obviously, the problem occupies Glory very differently than it does Jack, or than it does Robert. Please be prepared to support your considerations with evidence from the text.

2. A controversial proposal having to do with the inadequacy of prescribed righteousness to the real thing

Sometimes as I re-read this novel I see it as a story of the inadequacy of religiously prescribed righteousness to the real thing, to real righteousness. Yet equally as much the novel seems fundamentally sympathetic to religious life, even praising of it, certainly “at home” with it. Or, maybe if there is praise here, it is of the Lord. Maybe it is the Lord who is being praised, or glorified. Please, as you articulate your own sense of the problem, open the book and support your reflections with evidence from the text.

3. Race

The struggle for African American racial equality is central to the life of the Ames grandfather in Gilead, and to Jack Boughton in Home. Yet the problem of race takes up surprisingly little space, in both books. It is off to the side, talked about, and almost always according to the agenda of characters that were not involved in it directly. Why? Think about all the many ways this particular struggle could have figured in these stories. Robinson could have placed those stories in the foreground. She didn’t. Instead the stories come to us mediated by the perspective of other characters, sometimes even suppressed, or distorted, by that perspective.

It seems to me that in Home, the reason the civil rights movement takes up as little “space” as it does is because the patriarch of that novel, Robert Boughton, won’t accord it the attention it deserves. And Robert gets his way, doesn’t he? Here’s a controversial proposal: In ourselves not attending to the decisive importance of race for the lives both of the Ames and the Boughton families, perhaps we unwittingly collude with the culture embodied by Robert Boughton—-with his close-mindedness, inattention, and failure of regard. That’s right, I do mean to get your back up here—but in a way that will demonstrate just how high the stakes are in these “quiet” novels.

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Please be specific to the novel (s) in your answer.

4. Gender

What if Glory had been a woman? The novel asks this question, explicitly and poignantly, on p. 20. Indeed the novel’s very structure is founded on Glory’s being a woman, on being the one to receive a man’s story, rather than the one to have, or to be, the story. That’s right, I do mean to get your back up here too—but again, in a way that will demonstrate just how relevant these books are to our lived lives.

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Please be specific to the novel in your answer.

5. Why Is Glory Named Glory (rather than the other options, which would have been Faith, Hope, Charity or Grace)

In accordance with the design of Robert Boughton, Mariynne Robinson had basically five Christian abstractions to choose from in the naming of her point of view character, which is Glory. She could have named her Faith, Charity, Hope, Grace, or, the name she chose, Glory. Why do you think Robinson chose Glory? How is Glory…glory? How does Glory…glorify? Once you look up the word “glory” in the Oxford English Dictionary you’ll see how very complicated a word—and phenomenon—it is.

Glory, OED: 1. Exalted (now esp. merited) renown; honourable fame. ME. 2. Adoring praise and thanksgiving, esp. offered to God. ME. 3. The splendour and bliss of heaven. ME. 4. Replendent majesty, beauty, or magnificence; a feature of resplendent beauty or magnificence, a splendour (frequently in pl.) Also, an effulgence of light; fig. an imagined unearthly beauty. lME. 5. Something which brings renown; a special distinction, a splendid ornament. LME 6. Extreme vanity, boastfulness obs. exc. in VAINGLORY. 7. A state of exaltation, splendour, or prosperity. E17 8. A circle of light, esp. as depicted around the head or whole figure of Jesus or a saint a circle or ring of light; a halo. m17 b. spec. A luminous halo projected on to a cloud or fog-bank by the sun an anthelion. E19 9 A representation of the heavens opening and revealing celestial beings

And here is Robinson on reading the Oxford English Dictionary:

“The Oxford English Dictionary lets me follow the roots of words into the loamy depths of language. It lets me feel the abiding, generative life in it, the mysteries of its persistence and renewal.” (Many thanks to Allan Campo for this quote.)

P.S. Hovering as we are over the O.E.D., it seems were back in Dickinson territory. How are the two writers, Robinson and Dickinson, alike? Do you see Robinson’s literature as honoring Dickinson’s, in any way? How so?

6. “Nothing to be done.”

There is a lot of very high-stake conversation in this novel--a lot of attempts, through talking, to right the past, to reconcile, to forgive. And, at many points in this novel, a character will say, at the end of one of these conversations, “Nothing to be done.” What do you think is being said with this refrain, “Nothing to be done”? This is perhaps as much a theological question as it is a plot/ story question (though how this question is theological is embedded within, really incarnated by, the particular story of Home.)

7. Psalm 139, What it Means to Jack, What it Means to the Novel

Please discuss the relevance of Psalm 139, in particular verses 7 – 12, to the story of Home, in particular to Jack. Jack quotes these verses to Glory on pages 287-288 in a conversation about what a “soul” is. It’s interesting that these are the verses Jack supplies in endeavoring to answer this question. How do you think they matter to him, and to the story generally? Please be specific to the text of Home in your answer.

8. The question of what a “home” is

The question of “home” is explored in multifarious ways across Marilynne Robinson’s Home. Please contemplate the many meanings of “home” for Robinson’s novel. In doing so, please take out pen and paper and list the various homes in the novel, both the actual ones and the imagined ones. Where, or what, is “home” for Jack? For Glory? What will it be for Jack? What will it be for Glory? What is it for Della? For Robert, Jack’s son? For Robert, Jack’s father?

9. The parable of the Prodigal Son

How is the story of the Prodigal Son present within, even given new life by, Marilynne Robinson’s Home? This is a huge question, yes. And you can make it even huge-r by expanding your answer to include Gilead as well. Please be intensely specific to the novel (s) as you answer this question.

10. “What makes the book ultimately so powerful is the Reverend Boughton, precisely because he is not the soft-spoken sage that John Ames is in Gilead.”

Recently I read a review of Home by James Wood that included several provocative responses to the novel, including this one.

“What propels the book, and makes it ultimately so powerful, is the Reverend Boughton, precisely because he is not the soft-spoken sage that John Ames is in Gilead. He is a fierce, stern, vain old man, who wants to forgive his son and cannot. He preaches sweetness and light, and is gentle with Jack, like a chastened Lear (‘Let me look at you for a minutes,’ he says), only to turn on him angrily.” (James Wood, “The Homecoming,” The New Yorker, September 8 2008).

Thoughts? Please be specific to the text as you organize them.

11. Outcast as Seer, Outcast as Bearer of Revelation

My husband made an interesting observation the other night about Marilynne Robinson’s fiction, which is that in all three of her novels, the characters that see, the characters that must bear revelation, are outcasts, and that the outcast state seems necessary for revelation. (Sounds like another story we know.) The next interesting observation my husband made was that Robinson seems to recognize 20th century American middle-class life as defined by deracination; and the next interesting observation he made was that in a world in which people habitually uproot themselves, moving from place to place, there is nowhere for revelation to go, nowhere for it to belong. What are your thoughts? Please be faithful to Robinson’s fiction as you answer.

On the other hand, maybe it’s misguided to see Robinson as writing about a contemporary phenomenon, such as deracination. Maybe her perspective is more a timeless one, encompassing of no time and of all time. Look at the following paragraph, for instance. Watch for how in a single sentence we move from destitution to restoration. It is the movement here we should attend to, rather than to a final kind of meaning of either one of these states.

“That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than what nature gives us. As if we are shockingly unclothed when we lack the complacencies of ordinary life. In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds it own home if it ever had a home at all.” (282)

12. Another interesting remark made by James Wood in his review of Robinson’s Home:

“Since the ego is irrepressible—and secular—it tends to bulge in odd shapes when religiously straightened.”

Thoughts? Please be specific to the novel as you organize them.

13. “Jesus never had to be old”: Robinson’s realism about life’s hardships and how that realism informs her theology

Robert makes this remark, toward the end of the novel, on p. 313. For me, the remark sums up Robinson’s commitment to measuring (testing?) the practice of Christian faith against the challenges of incarnate existence—in this instance, a challenge unimaginable even to Jesus, as “Jesus never had to be old.” With this proposal I am inviting you to consider Robinson’s realism, in both Gilead and Home, and how it seems to you to inform her theology, and vise versa. Thoughts? This question is big enough to warrant graduate study; maybe one way to make it more manageable would be to pursue it within the context of only one relationship, in either Gilead or Home. You could also pursue the question by contrasting Robinson’s “realism” against that of another fiction writer you admire.

14. Home and Gilead as anagogical literature, as “elevating” the spirit to “understand mysteries”

Persisting across the now five-year life of our book group has been the question of whether or not literature can habituate the mind to see the world from God’s point of view. (And here I am again referring to the video we watched of Stanford Professor Joshua Landy discussing, among other stories, Jesus’ parables. The video, entitled “The Role of Fiction in the Well-Lived Life,” can be viewed on the Internet.) Certain works of literature open onto this question more readily than others, and from my perspective, Home and Gilead (and Housekeeping) qualify as this kind of literature—as anagogical literature. “Anagogical” is defined by the O.E.D. as “spiritual elevation, esp. to understand mysteries.” To the credit of our book group, our conception of God has been a vulnerable one—vulnerable to being changed by experience, vulnerable to being renewed by it. And the medium of “experience” has been, for us, literature: stories, novels, poems, and essays. If you feel that Home has “elevated” you, or at least habituated you, to “understanding mysteries,” or to seeing the world from God’s point of view, how has it done so? And if Gilead has “elevated” you in this way, how has it done so? How have the two books worked together to elevate you in this way? What are you understanding now that you hadn’t understood before? This is a lovely question, but it’s also a huge and sort of floppy one, so please be specific to the novels as you answer it.

(I also want to add that in our group we have read many stories, poems and novels written by dedicated agnostic and/or atheist materialists—Philip Roth, Anton Chekhov, Kay Ryan, Elizabeth Bishop, several others—and we have, again to our credit, met those writers on their particular terms and in their particular worlds.)

15. The remarkable last line of Home

The last line of Home is as follows: “The Lord is wonderful.”

Is it possible that this is what the novel has been doing all along—praising the Lord, or glorifying Him? How has the story of Home praised the Lord? Or, and this is a very different question: How has reading Home put you in mind again of the wonderfulness of the Lord?

Also, and this will confuse us, I’m sure: I hear that last line chorally—I hear multiple voices in it. One of them is the author’s. I hear, in that line, something like authorial triumph. Do you? Or am I over-assessing?

Looking forward to seeing you Monday,

Emilie