Sharon Presents Jane Eyre and The Wide Sargasso Sea

Charlotte Brontë

 Jacquieʼs Email Hello Literary Ladies! The Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be meeting this Wednesday, November 5th at noon at Linda Tuckerʼs warm home to hear Sharon DeLevieʼs presentation: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. After luncheon at 1 PM, Joanna will ring the bell to begin our meeting.

One of the many things I love about this yearʼs theme is this idea of re-visiting great literature. For some of us this means re-reading books we might not have fully appreciated at the time of first reading. For others, itʼs tackling big books that are new to them. But with all of the great literature we are exploring this year, I believe thereʼs one thing we all have in common—the sparks of memory and various associations they help kindle in our minds. And, taking advantage of my role as corresponding secretary, this means you all must suffer the sparks and ramblings of mine! (You can certainly stop reading here. All pertinent information has been expressed above.)

I was so excited to learn that Sharon was going to be reading Jane Eyre for the first time. How I love that book! But then I realized I don't remember actually reading Jane Eyre, but I know I did. My Bantam Classic edition is on my shelf with my name written in it with “New York” and “1987” written on the title page. After college and living two blocks from the much-missed Shakespeare & Company on 81st Street, I took it upon myself to read many of the classics I hadn't in high school and college. ($4.50 for a paperback with lettering so small I would be unable to read them today.) The Brontës were top of my list, but it's the turbulent, romantic, and tragic Vilette, Charlotte Brontë's final novel I remember reading more clearly on a bench in Riverside Park. And yet—Jane Eyre!

I first encountered the story of Jane Eyre on channel WPIX where the 1944 Orson Wellsʼs classic film seemed to be on constant rotation, and I watched it through every time it was on. Forget the love story between Joan Fontaine and the still handsome Orson Wells. It was the tragic and intense friendship between Jane and Helen in Lowood that got me every time. How heartbreaking and formative it was for me to watch Jane cruelly lose her first and only friend so early in the film. It was just too much to bear—and I couldn't look away.

It was certainly the love story between Rochester and Jane that caught my imagination later with the book, and I eagerly sought out Wide Sargasso Sea to remain in that world. But I didn't get it! All of the allusions to the action of the book just made no sense at all. I just remembered a lot of churning and roiling sea water. Thankfully I will have Sharon to enlighten me. I still remember my confusion at the time because I felt so dissatisfied and at lose ends in my incomprehension of the book. I wanted the dirt on Berthe and Rochester! Don't cloak it!

But here's the kicker! Moments ago, I had an epiphany! I had gotten myself confused and for whatever reason, thought that Jean Rhys had also written the modern play Antigone which I had loved in my AP English class and was so eye-opening in exploring the power of tragedy. Wide Sargasso Sea was so dense. But I just looked it up and was reminded that Jean Anouilh wrote Antigone, not Jean Rhys, so, mystery solved! All these years later I can finally put that baby to bed! Another score for Lit Club!

Ed Young Day, which has consumed me for the past several months, begins in just a few hours, so I apologize for this very long and rambling reminder. I am just writing this out this morning, and even with the turning back of the clocks, I didn't have time to write a short, condensed version! (I know. When are they ever short and well-edited???!!!)

I look forward to seeing many of you on Wednesday, as well as this afternoon at the library to celebrate all things Ed! x Jacquie

Sharon in costume

Frances’ Minutes Twelve members met at Linda’s house. Our presenter, Sharon, came through the front door, barely, wearing a 19th century gown, puffed out below the waist by a hoop skirt and a petticoat. She admitted that it was unlikely Charlotte Brontë ever wore a hoop skirt but Sharon’s dress certainly set a Victorian mood.

President Joanna rang the bell at 1 PM. Lori gave the treasurer’s report: $113.12. We have given $200 to the Hastings Public Library to replace worn-out board books. Any money left is to be used for additional books for the Young Library, the children’s section named for Ed Young, a 30-year Hastings resident. He wrote and illustrated over 100 children’s books.

Recommendations Influenced by last week’s NYC Marathon, Frances recommended 2 books about walking or running, Hiroki Murikami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and The Santiago Pilgrimage, Walking the Immortal Way by Jean-Christophe Rufin. Joanna recommended Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, a story of two Ohio families spanning generations and decades. Joanna and Connie have both seen Ragtime, on Broadway, and add up votes to Laura’s previous recommendation. Joanna recommended, a documentary about the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, which can be streamed on Amazon Prime or Kanopy. Some of us didn’t know that Kanopy is a free streaming service provided by our Westchester public libraries. It’s wonderful, the film catalog is wide-ranging and huge.

To Sharon’s presentation on Jane Eyre and The Wide Sargasso Sea

Not one of us hadn’t read Jane Eyre. Sharon had read at 16, and now, at 62, she
was rereading it and listening to the audiobook. She thought Rochester a bully, then and now, but her assessment of Jane changed. She appreciated how strongly Jane claimed her right to independence. In the 19th century, this was a show of courage for a petite and impoverished 18-year-old without friends or family.

One could search for the origins of that courage in Charlotte Brontë’s life.

She was born in 1816, in Yorkshire, the daughter of an Irish Anglican minister. Her mother died when she was 5. At 8, Charlotte and three of her sisters were sent to a boarding school for clergymen’s daughter. Conditions were harsh; two sisters died there.

Brontë worked intermittently as a governess, work she found demeaning, writing in letters that she felt treated as “a piece of furniture.” She spent much of her adult life in her father’s parsonage. Her sisters Anne and Emily were also writers. In 1846, the three published a book of poetry, selling only two copies. Unfazed, the following year Charlotte published Jane Eyre, Emily Wuthering Heights and Anne Agnes Grey.

The joy of their success was overshadowed by death. Anne, Emily and their brother Branwell died between September 1848 and May 1849.

Brontë continued to write, publishing an additional three novels. Her emotional life remained fixed in the parsonage. In 1854, she married her father’s curate. She was pregnant when she died the following year.

Jane Eyre was an immediate success. The heroine’s demand for dignity and equality in love resonated with its readership. Brontë’s influence on other women writers was powerful. Virginia Woolf wrote “she had more genius in her than all of us. That shines from every page of her work.”

Sharon selected conversations between Rochester and Jane for us to read. Jane doesn’t see through Rochester’s deceptions but she stands up to his bullying. The madwoman in the attic, Brontë’s creation of genius, destroys Rochester. His desire to marry Jane is revealed as bigamy. The mad wife burns Thornfield Hall down. The fire blinds and maims Rochester.

Jane flees Thornfield Hall after she witnesses the confrontation between Rochester and the woman in the attic. She spends days wandering, hungry, cold until she’s saved by two sisters and their brother. After a couple of plot twists involving the brother proposing marriage to our heroine, Jane improbably winds up a rich heiress. Many of us couldn’t remember this part, probably because the psychological realism of the novel is jarringly suspended.

But we have come to love plucky Jane. With her direct appeal to us – “Reader, I married him” – we are back on Jane’s, and Brontë’s, side.

The woman in the attic, the Creole from Jamaica, haunted Jean Rhys. The Wide Sargasso Sea is her back story, both prequel and critique of Jane Eyre. We read from Edwidge Danticat’s introduction. Rhys was born on Dominica and emigrated to England. The screaming vengeful woman locked up in an English attic was born on a tropical island like Rhys’. Her name was Antoinette, although Rochester called her Bertha, as if Antoinette was too delicate a name for what she had become. She was a young woman when the British outlawed slavery. The plantation economy in Jamaica collapsed. Many English colonists like Antoinette’s family were impoverished. Antoinette’s early life in Jamaica was framed by a mentally ill mother, by a descent into poverty and by a social order that had imploded. Plus, reader, she married him.

Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg

Joanna Presents Revisiting The Crucible and John Proctor Is the Villain

Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! Please excuse this very late reminder that the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be meeting this Wednesday, October 22nd at Lori’s sublime home to hear Joanna present on “Revisiting Arthur Miller’s The Crucible: John Proctor is the Villain.” I was completely distracted all day, and I almost didn’t get my homework in on time!

      As per usual, we will be gathering at noon for what we know will be yet another delicious lunch. Joanna will ring the bell at 1 PM to lead our meeting, and then proceed to take us through a brilliantly conceived and unexpected examination of what this year’s theme is all about, turning the tables completely and revisiting high school reading we think we are familiar with, but through the eyes of actual 21st century high schoolers, not our more... mature 21st century ones. This year’s theme was Joanna’s brainchild, so I’m just heartbroken I will not be there to hear her presentation. I will just have to take comfort in the fact that I got to see Kimberly Belflower’s astonishing play with her, and that Frances will be taking notes. Have a wonderful meeting, and I’ll see you all next time! x Jacquie

Frances' Minutes Eleven members and two associates met in Lori’s home on a beautiful October day. Some of us lunched on the deck, some inside. Joanna rang the president’s bell at 1 PM. Lori gave the treasurer’s report: $313.12

We shared our most recent adventures in reading and viewing.

Barbara saw the revival of Hadestown on Broadway; not recommended. Laura recommends Ragtime, also on Broadway now.

Recommended Books Laura: Endling by Maria Reva, long listed for the Booker Prize. Carol reread, with admiration, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Joanna liked The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, an epistolary novel too late to be considered for 2024-25’s Letters etc. Connie’s favorites are Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, two Indian emigrants in the US, and Claire Adam’s Love Forms, about a Trinidad-born woman in London, searching a daughter she gave up for adoption.

Christine, on a trip to Colombia, wanted to read a novel by a local. Not easily done, but she found The Bitch by Pilar Quintana. We wondered if the Spanish title was as insulting as the English - was something gained in translation? Christine advised not reading the Novel Prize winner László Krasznahorkai, describing his work as dark and difficult. This is our member who read 1534 pages (Penguin edition) of Clarissa.

On the invasion of Artificial Intelligence, as told by Carol. Her friend’s book was copy edited by someone (most unlikely) or something (almost certainly) totally insensitive to the text’s meaning. Required days of labor by the author & his spouse to correct. Maxwell Perkins luckily isn’t around to witness this fresh horror.

To Joanna’s presentation: The Crucible by Arthur Miller and John Proctor Is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower.

If the measure of a classic is the ability to reveal truth long after its initial appearance, The Crucible is one. It is the most frequently produced of all Arthur Miller’s plays. Many of us were surprised – not Death of a Salesman or All My Sons? We then re-considered, considering how often it is performed in high schools, perhaps because of the quantity of girls’ and women’s roles.

The Crucible is an allegory about the search for communists in entertainment and government by HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) in the early 1950’s, with enthusiastic help from Senator Joe McCarthy. Miller uses the late 17th century Salem witch trials as an analogy. Both events took place during times of political upheavals and social anxiety. Both were about threats from groups whose power, if any, was inflated by hysteria and paranoia.

In The Crucible, a group of girls are glimpsed dancing naked in the woods, with the slave Tituba. Were they casting spells? Or were they under a spell? Salem is riven by the idea that witches are among them, that they are threatened by the Devil and his followers. The girls realize the efficacy of deflecting suspicion of their wild behavior: they have been bewitched. They know who the witches are. They have discovered power and are now using it against those who insulted, demeaned, abused or despised them.

Abigail is among the accusers. She was a servant in the household of John and Elizabeth Proctor. John and Abigail were lovers. He broke off their affair, apologized to his wife, dismissed Abigail. Abigail still wants Proctor; his rejection makes her vengeful. She names him a member of the Devil’s coterie.

John Proctor is brought to trial. Despite his innocence, he is found guilty. He will be hung – unless he admits his guilt and repents. He need only sign his name to a written confession.

He refuses: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang. How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name.”

Audiences of the 1950’s heard the echoes of witnesses in front of HUAC who named others who they attested were communists. Many were black listed in Hollywood; they either never worked again, worked under assumed names, or left the US.

Kimberley Belflower heard another story; an unexplored aspect of John Proctor’s act. Was it really heroism? He was going to leave his now reconciled wife Elizabeth a widow. Elizabeth was pregnant with their third child. John Proctor was protecting his name; what would happen to his family?

“We talked a lot in our rehearsal process that multiple things can be true,” Belflower said. “I think John Proctor is a good man and does all of these incredible moral things. But this other thing is also true. He was awful to every woman in the play.”

John Proctor Is the Villain takes place in a high school class in Georgia. Belflower’s play explores the sexual power plays between a charismatic teacher and his student, refracting John Proctor and his young servant Abigail. We read the play’s climax, the confrontation between Carter Smith, the charming, exploitative teacher, and Shelby, the girl he seduced and abandoned.

Belflower said she did not intend to “cancel” Miller’s play, she wanted to extend a conversation about it. She found an unexplored theme in The Crucible; her play is commentary on the tangle of sex and power lying underneath a classic assumed to be only about politics.

Respectfully submitted,

Frances Greenberg

Lori Presents Chinua Achebe

 Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! Just a reminder, next up on our syllabus is Lori Walsh's presentation on Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. We will be meeting this coming Wednesday, October 8, at Frances Greenberg's tranquil home. Luncheon will begin at noon, and our meeting will follow promptly at 1 PM.

I often find my thoughts wandering to the past, but this year's theme, as well as my high school yearbook which has found its way next to me at my desk, has been putting me into time sucking reveries. My senior year was the first time AP English was offered in my high school. It was a fantastic class, and next to typing, was the class that most prepared me for college. There were only eight of us in AP English, all girls. Seven of us were already friends. The eighth was Marcie McMahon, who was A CHEERLEADER and REALLY popular! Crossing the social divide as she did was a very unusual thing to do in Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappingers Falls, New York, but, to our collective biased surprise, she was terrific and funny and SMART. And she liked us too! She not only accepted us, but she helped raise our social status in the school. I'll forever love Marcie and be grateful for her bravery and her friendship, and the seemingly impenetrable barriers she broke down. Her behavior was the most memorable lesson of all.

And I distinctly remember sitting and taking the AP English Lit exam, and one moment in particular. After finishing explicating a poem and realizing I knew what I was doing and feeling really good about myself, I looked up from my desk to where my friend Maria was sitting diagonally across from me and becoming completely distracted by how pretty her hair looked that day. A perfect example of how erratic my thinking process was and still is. And it's SO high school. Sigh.

I can't wait to see you all on Wednesday! x Jacquie

Frances' Minutes At noon, eleven members and one associate assembled in Frances’ house. Sharon joined us at 1:30 PM, for a Lit Club historical first. She had been held in a lockdown at Sing Sing Prison. She had just begun teaching a class on reading short stories when a lockdown was announced. Her students returned to their cells. She was held in the classroom, without her cellphone, credit cards or money, all not permitted inside Sing Sing. She spent 3 ½ hours bored and hungry despite being within sight of vending machines.

President Joanna called the meeting to order at 1 PM.

Treasurer Lori gave her report: $313.12.

We have donated $99 to the Friends of the Library, who purchased books from the Barkin Library to give to the Yonkers Family Services.

Joanna proposed donating $200 to the Hastings Library. We will request the library replace deteriorating board books in the children’s library. The rest of the donation should be used for more children’s books. Motion passed.

Christine brought a British bookmakers’ list of possible winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with their odds of winning. Many writers were unknown to us, like Helle Helle at 24/1. Bob Dylan’s precedent put Paul Simon on the list, with the same odds as Stephen King, 49/1 and behind Margaret Atwood at 34/1. N.B. the next day, October 9, Lásló Kraszuaborkai, second on list at 6/1, won.

As usual, some book recommendations: Frances suggested A Fortnight in September by R.C. Sheriff. Jacquie suggested Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Both exquisitely written novels about the lives of ordinary people, both novels British, the drama low key but affecting.

To Lori’s presentation on Chinua Achebe.

She chose the Nigerian writer because in high school she had never read a novel written by a person of color. She asked how many of us had read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in high school; all hands raised. At university in Nigeria, Chinua Achebe also read the Heart of Darkness. The chilling, racist descriptions of Africans in Conrad’s novel deeply disturbed him.

We read a passage from Heart of Darkness. The narrator Marlowe describes an African sailor, feeding coal to the furnace which drives a steamer up the Congo River. The characterization is racism at its dismal worst.

Chinua Achebe was born in 1930, in Igboland, then as now, a part of Nigeria. The British colonization of Achebe’s homeland was thoroughly established during the 1890’s, the decade in which his novel Things Fall Apart takes place. Achebe was raised as a Christian; he was educated in English, from grade school to university.

Through his older relatives, Achebe knew Igbo history and culture unaltered by contact with the British. He knew that the Igbo had a rich oral literary tradition.

He wrote Things Fall Apart, he said, to oppose “the image of Africa as ‘the other world’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization.”

The novel had a cataclysmic effect on African writers. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize laureate and also Nigerian, said it was “the first novel in English which spoke from the interior of an African character rather than as the white man would see him.”

The novel is set in the 1890’s, when the Igbo were still resisting British control. Okonkwo, a man in his 30’s, occupies center stage in Things Fall Apart. He’s physically strong, the champion wrestler of his village. He’s prosperous and respected, he strives to differentiate himself from his ineffective father.

Things fall apart. We are witnesses to tragedy. We might attribute Okonkwo’s downfall to his arrogance, cruelty, overweening ambition, his toxic masculinity. In the Igbo religion, his chi, his spirit which guides his actions and determines his fate, would lead him to ruin.

Both Igbo and Anglo literature share an understanding of a tragic flaw.

Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg
Recording Secretary

Frances Presents Don Quixote

 Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies! It's Back-to-School time which means the first day of the 2025-2026 academic calendar year of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson is about to commence! This year our area of concentration is “High School Reading Re-Visited.”

Our first session is this Wednesday, September 17th at Joanna’s home. Lunch time will begin at noon, and hopefully the weather will cooperate so all the cool kids can hang out in the back. And to continue with this tortured gag, the bell will ring promptly at 1pm when all are expected to be in their seats with their thinking caps on.

Laura Rice will hand out our schedules for the upcoming year and all present will be asked to answer the question, “What I did on my summer vacation.” In addition, summer reading will be shared with all. After an oral report on our last session (the link to Frances’ blog is below for those who need to review what we covered last year) and a quick exercise with math, Frances will present on Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

Members, please let our hostess know if you will not be in attendance and can provide a valid excuse for your absence, and associates who are auditing, kindly confirm if you will be present.

I had the great good fortune of having excellent high school English teachers who shared their love for literature passionately, keeping me engaged whether it was first period 10th grade honors English with Mr. Audette at 7:40 AM or last period 12th grade AP English with Mrs. Wojtazek at 1:28. I wish I remember more of what they actually said and not just what they wore (Mr. Kennedy’s brown suits, Mrs. Evaul’s polyester power blazers...) but I do remember the feeling of being in their classes, developing a joy for a specific kind of inquiry that would stay with me always.

This should certainly be a banner year for our dear sorority! x Jacquie

Christine's Minutes On the seventeenth of September, 2025, while the world-as-we-knew-it appeared to be crumbling, disintegrating and/or deteriorating all around us, it was with enormous pleasure and a great sense of healthy camaraderie, trust, and the love of great literature, that fourteen members and two associates of the Hastings Literature Club gathered in Joanna’s balmy backyard for our first meeting of the 2025-2026 season, “High School Reading Re-visited.” Unlike our lunch fare back in high school, we dined on refreshing gazpacho and a scrumptious plum tart.

By way of demonstrating that we are not slaves to tradition, Madame President rang the bell at 1:10 PM.

Our treasurer, Lori, reported that we are flush with $488.66. Of that amount, $99.50 will be given to the Friends of the Library for books. Joanna suggested that as our gift this year, we give them $100 for board books.

Fresh from all that leisurely summertime reading, several members had books to recommend:

Endling Maria Reva
The Accompanist Nina Berberova
The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Veong
Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
Isola Allegra Goodman
The Cara Black Mystery series with investigator Aimée Leduc
Kristin Lavransdatter Sigrit Undset
Your Steps on the Stairs Antonio Muñoz Molina
It Can’t Happen Here Sinclair Lewis
Mansfield Park Jane Austen
Memory Piece Lisa Coe

Linda shared with us the syllabus of her daughter’s AP English class at the Williamstown High School in Massachusetts. The reading list was exceptionally well-chosen and wide-ranging and there was general agreement that we would all have enjoyed, and learned much from, the class.

Vocabulary-wise, we had the dubious pleasure of learning the definition of kakistocracy: government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state. The word was coined in the 17th century and comes from the Greek words: kákistos and kratos.

To begin our year of filling in the lacunae of our early years’ reading, what better way to start than with Don Quixote, the masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra? Frances began her presentation by pointing out that while one may not have actually read Don Quixote, most everyone feels that they know him, his sidekick Sancho Panza, the valiant steed Rocinante, and their adventures “tilting at windmills.” Many of us could sing the songs from the Broadway musical, The Man of La Mancha. And we all use the eponymous adjective ‘quixotic.’

Frances happily discovered that in 1952, Vladimir Nabokov, while a visiting professor at Harvard, was compelled to teach Don Quixote. His first reaction to the book was quite negative, because of all the violence. Correctly so, as the novel is full of violence and cruel mockery. But over time and multiple readings, Nabokov came to admire the lively dialogue, and his collected lectures are now canonical.

Published in 1605, Don Quixote is considered to the first modern novel, and one of the longest. Though at 430,269 words, it does not approach the voluminous verbiage of Clarissa, with its 950,000 words. (Enough of such quibbling and braggadocio.) The novel was an immediate success. It was translated into English in 1612, and we know that Shakespeare read it.

Cervantes’ life was itself the stuff of adventure novels. He was born in 1547, to a moderately prosperous family. His father was a barber-surgeon, and his mother came from rural landowners. At some point the father gave up barbering and looked for other work. He spent time in debtors’ prison – as Cervantes himself would later do.

Cervantes was living in Madrid when, at 19, he published four poems. But as any poet can tell you, that did not pay the bills. Thus, he worked as a household manager for a Roman cardinal, enlisted in the Spanish Army, and in 1571 fought in the Battle of Lepanto, where he was wounded, and ultimately lost the use of his left hand. While sailing back home to Madrid, his ship was captured by Barbary pirates, and he was sold into slavery in Algiers. After five years in captivity, he was ransomed. Back in Spain, Cervantes continued to write and held various government positions. However, financial ‘irregularities’ landed him in debtors’ prison for a year. He wrote that it was during that year that he conceived of the idea of Don Quixote. (Recalling Dickens’ Micawber, I am wondering if there were a few delusional characters in that prison to provide inspiration.) He was 58 when he published Don Quixote. And 68 when he published the second part.

On the enduring fame and relevance of Don Quixote, Frances’ pointed to Quixote’s desire to ‘do good.’ Living in a time of a morally and ethically corrupt government as we do, readers find his idealism is a beacon. It may be that our own idealism could be described as quixotic.

What exactly was the nature of Don Quixote’s madness? With the pure intentions of a (fictive) knight errant, he manages to cause a lot of grief and trouble for others. Having read the romances of knight errantry, Quixote polishes his great grandfather’s suit of armor, saddles up Rocinante and departs pleasant La Mancha in search of occasions to do good. Along the way he hires Sancho Panza, as he realizes that all knights errant need a loyal squire.

Like his squire, Don Quixote, Sancho Pancho is a comic creation of genius. Faithful, realistic, and unencumbered by fantasies of knight errantry, he remains loyal to the end. He can see clearly that the helmet of Mambrino is in fact a barber’s basin, and that the fierce giants are windmills, but Quixote is immune to such naysaying.

Quixote also decides that, as a knight, he must be devoted to a noble and pure woman, and he fixates on Dulcinea. She is a woman from his village whom he does not know, and so finds it possible to imagine her very imaginary beauty and virtue.

For readers, it is a sad comeuppance when, after many bungled adventures, Quixote goes home, and there his niece and housekeeper, along with the village priest and barber, pull all the culpable volumes of knightly adventure from his library, and burn them. Then they completely wall off his library, so that upon waking, Quixote is shocked to find that his library has disappeared.

Members read aloud from Guy Davenport’s introduction to Nabokov’s Lectures on Don Quixote, from Nabokov’s lecture, and from the novel itself: classic scenes of the windmills, of Mambrino’s helmet, of the blanket-tossing and more. The combination of humor and pathos was powerful. Frances chose to use the much-praised 2003 Edith Grossman translation, which we all appreciated.

It was an afternoon to remember, especially when we need an antidote to our so-called reality.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, substituting for Frances Greenberg

Carla Presents Letters of MFK Fisher

Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! A gentle reminder that the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be holding their final meeting of the 2024-2025 thematic year this coming Wednesday, May 21st at Christine's spectacular home. Unfortunately, it is a little early in the season for a dip, but that will hardly put a damper on the gathering.
    As usual, luncheon will begin at noon. Joanna will ring the bell at 1PM for our

meeting, after which, in what has become a beloved Lit Club tradition, Carla Potash will be giving the final presentation of the season, this time on the “Letters of MFK Fisher.”

    Members, please let Christine know if you will not be attending, and associates, please let her know if you will.

    Since we won't be meeting again for a while, I've included the link to Frances' blog below so you can re-live some of the highlights from the club's past and not feel too forlorn. Unfortunately for me, I will not be able to join you all, as I am currently in Oklahoma City with my sister, preparing for our first bookstore presentation of our new book, Flower Girls: A Story of Sisters. I'll be in Chicago on the 21st, before heading on to Salt Lake City, and then home next Sunday. We have four store presentations and 11 school talks throughout the week, so it should be a blast, but I am sorry to miss Carla's presentation and all of you.

    But I hope to see many of you at the Friends of the Hastings-on-Hudson Library Annual June Gala on June 8th. I'm sure Joanna will give you all the details on Wednesday. It's going to be a wonderful evening.

    Have a terrific meeting! It's been quite a banner year for Lit Club. Now to start thinking about next year...x Jacquie

Frances' Minutes Twelve members and one associate met for the last presentation of our 2024-25 season of “Letters, Journals and Diaries” in Christine’s gracious mid-19th century home. We have fully emerged from pandemic mode of not-lunch. Outstanding in Christine’s delicious lunch was a blueberry soup, made from her homegrown blueberries, harvested at full ripeness last summer, aged to perfection in the freezer. Several of us copied down the recipe, aware that sourcing the blueberries may be our biggest challenge to duplicating the soup.

President Joanna rung the bell at 1 PM

Treasurer’s Report: from Lori $548.26

Joanna announced the Friends of the Hastings Library would hold its Annual Gala on June 8 at 5:30 PM. Supporting the Hastings Library is one of the Lit Club’s objectives; many of us will attend. We will donate $150 to the Hastings Library for the purchase of books. We will contribute $150 towards to purchase of children’s books from the Barkin Bookstore, to be donated to the reading program of the Family Service of Yonkers.

Book and film suggestions: Laura suggested Peter Hessler’s books on his time in China, as a teacher, and a parent of children attending Chinese schools: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. After attending a tribute to Martin Amis at the 92ndSt Y, Christine was inspired to read The War Against Clichés, a collection of his book reviews. Thinking of food, as we were while having a good lunch and looking forward to an afternoon discussing a food writer, we thought of our two favorite food films: Babette’s Feast and The Taste of Things.

Joanna suggested we consider, as a topic, books about New York City. She was inspired by The NY Times Book Review’s interview of writers on their favorite books about NYC. See:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/30/books/new-york-city-books.html

In what has become a tradition, but not part of our constitution, Carla gave the last presentation of 2024-2025, on M F K Fisher.

Carla discovered that Fisher did not keep a diary; however, she had an enormous circle of friends and close relations with her family. Her letters were kept, treasured, and ultimately published. She revealed her intimate feelings more in those letters than in the work published during her lifetime. Her literary gift was describing her experiences and her observations, looked at through the prism of food and wine.

In an interview in 1990, she said, “people ask me ‘Why do you write about food and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power…security… about love…’ They ask me accusingly as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft. The easiest answer is to say that, like most humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food, security and love are so mixed and entwined that we cannot think of one without the other. So it happens when I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love and hunger for it.”

M F K Fisher was born Mary Frances Kennedy, in 1908, in Michigan. She grew up in Whittier, California; her father was the owner and editor of the Whittier News. She said she was a reader and “scribbler” from an early age. After college, in 1929 she married Al Fisher, a doctoral student. They went to Dijon, France where he could complete his studies.

One can’t help but wonder what Fisher would have written if not for the formative experience of living in a French boarding house. Her landlady was stingy, the furnishings shabby. Her landlady produced meals from market cast-offs, but no matter, they were superb. Living in France was the start of her true education.

In the The Art of Eating, Fisher and husband ordered trout in a French restaurant. There was a large fish tank in the middle of the dining room. The waitress netted a suitable trout and killed it by smashing it against a counter. Fisher wrote that the cooked trout was as “fresh as clover.”

She also delighted in describing “ghastly” meals. On a cruise, she noted a fellow passenger who, when handed the menu by the waiter, would hand it back, with one word: yes. The woman was served everything on the menu and ate it all. On another cruise, in Mexico, Fisher discovered there were two kitchens. One for the American tourists; another, a country kitchen, for the crew. She asked her waiter for food from that kitchen. What she got, she said, was “the first thing that fed me.”

Fisher divorced the man with whom she discovered French food and wine, and whose last name she kept. She married two more times, divorced again and was widowed once. She died at 83 in Glen Ellen, California, in a home where she recreated the sensuous warmth of her written words.

Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg, secretary

Gita Presents the Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Jacquie's Email 

“The weather has changed—twice—since I wrote you so gloomily. First to cool, sunny and dry and now to damp again—fog-horn going, humidity 95 percent. But in the meantime, it has been a better week. I think the weather has a lot to do with one’s spirits if one is on the edge.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh to her sister Constance Morrow, July 16, 1955

Hello Literary Ladies! The sun is shining as I am writing this, lifting my spirits as I feel on edge, but unfortunately, I believe rain is forecast for the day of the penultimate meeting of The Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson on Wednesday, May 7th. But the day is always bright when we can be together, and it is always warm and cozy in Barbaraʼs beautiful yellow living room where we will be meeting. Yes! A change of location from our program book. Please take note! Barbara has graciously offered to host, while I will be providing lunch, which will begin at noon, as per usual.

   Joanna is once again in possession of the bell, which she will ring at 1 PM for our meeting. The sign-up sheet for next year will be available for those of you who haven't had the chance to pick a date or need to swap dates.

   And then to the main event: Gita will be presenting on the “Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh.” I did a tiny bit of advanced reading about the Lindberghs because I knew so little, and their story is a doozy! Anne herself seems to have been quite complex and sheʼs a very evocative writer, so Iʼm sure this is going to be a fun and interesting afternoon.

   Members, please let me know if you are unable to attend, and associates, please let me know if you will. I will forward that information to Barbara, so she knows how many chairs to put out. I will take no heed to the numbers and will probably make too much food.

   I look forward to seeing and feeding you all on Wednesday! x Jacquie

Frances' Minutes Twelve members and 2 associates met in Barbara’s sunny living room; most cheerful after 3 rainy days. We have unofficially resumed lunches, our not-lunches having grown robustly. President Joanna rang the bell at 1:05 PM. We began by considering our topic for 2025-2026, “High School Classics Reread or Classics You Wish You Had Read.” Joanna had sent us, from The New Yorker, how the New Criticism had changed high school English teachers’ concept of a classic. Did we think it true? Lori had asked the teens she works with what they read in class. Report: nothing like what we had read—except Shakespeare. Make of that what you will.

To our business:
    Lori’s treasurer’s report: $528.06

    We need to allot $175.00 to cover printing cost of our brochure. Joanna proposed we donate $150 to the Hastings Library to purchase books for the Yong Room (the renamed Children’s Library). We could purchase up to $150 of children’s books from the Barkin Bookstore to be donated to the Family Service Society of Yonkers’ literacy programs in Westchester summer camps. TBD.

An aside - from June 20, a report from Constance on the donation of children's books:

So you know, today the books we are purchasing from the Barkin bookstore were picked up, and will be taken to summer literacy programs in Ossining and Tarrytown run by the Family Service Society of Yonkers.  This year we donated 199 books to the program.   It is very gratifying to put those books to such a good purpose, and I always like to think that some of them may go to the children and grandchildren of the many hardworking people who wash cars, do yard work, and clean homes in our town and the surrounding areas.   

Thanks to everyone for your support, and especially to Mary, Carol, and Jacquie.  I really couldn’t have organized it without them!

Members’ recommendations: lots of plays. Carol loved The United States Versus Ulysses (at the Irish Arts Center). Christine and Sharon were floored by Sarah Snook playing 26 parts in Portrait of Dorian Gray (at the Music Box). Carol also recommends: Pirates! The Penzance Musical and The Mistake (about the development of the A-bomb). Books: Christine recommended The Tobaccionist by Robert Seethaler; Jacquie recommended The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (note, do not confuse this with the film) and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Lori recommended Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Gita began her presentation on “The Letters and Diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh” by passing around a photo of the young and beautiful writer. Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born in 1906 in Englewood, New Jersey. Her father, Dwight Morrow, a partner of J. P. Morgan, was immensely wealthy; the $1 M estate taxes paid upon his death moved the budget of the state of New Jersey out of the red. Her mother, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, was a poet, a women’s education activist and a president of Smith College.

Anne was a student at Smith College when she met Charles Lindbergh in 1927; they were introduced at a Christmas party held in the American Embassy in Mexico City. Earlier that year, he had made his famous cross Atlantic solo flight. For her, it was love and hero worship at first sight.

(FYI – minutes will refer to him as Lindbergh, her as Anne)

Her life, first as Lindbergh’s fiancé, then his wife, changed completely. She had been bookish and shy; at his side, she stepped into the glare of celebrity. She learned to handle that, as well as to become an aviator and radio operator. She adored him, she adored the adventure of flying. She was 7 months pregnant when she and Lindbergh set a transcontinental flight speed record. Under constant scrutiny by the press, she learned to keep up a polite conversation without saying anything revealing; in addition to her other skills, she learned to be a savvy public figure. In her letters to her family, she said what she could not say publicly.

She and Lindbergh flew around the Pacific, starting in Long Island, going to Washington state, hugging the shoreline, landing in small towns from Alaska to Siberia to the Aleutian Islands to Japan and finally, China – where they crashed in the Yangtze River during a take-off. She rarely complained except for noting that after months of brushing her teeth with boiled water, she swallowed gallons of muddy Yangtze River water during the crash.

After the birth of the Lindbergh’s first child, they bought a house in NJ, near Anne’s parents. That house was where they became the victims of what the newspapers of 1932 called “the crime of the century.” Anne and Charles’ 20-month-old son, Charles Jr., was kidnapped. Waiting for news of their baby, pregnant with her second child, Anne wrote a letter every day to her mother-in-law. She tried to remain hopeful and to pass the hope on, by doing what had become her way of being: writing.

When the child was found, dead, she wrote that it was a finality, and that finalities can be accepted.

She may have found her special voice in the letters to her mother-in-law that she wrote during the terrible period between the kidnapping and the discovery of the child’s body. She re-read those letters years afterwards, noting how she tried to keep hope alive for herself and for her mother-in-law. The book of her essays, Gift from the Sea, is filled with hope fighting despair. It was received enthusiastically when it was published in 1955, resonating strongly with her readership. It remains in print.

Her style is confessional but never self-pitying. Writing from her heart, she revealed commonalities with women of her own generation and generations that followed. She wrote of certain “springs that are tapped when we are alone” and of the need to find “the still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships.” She acknowledged the “inevitability of change in love and marriage, devotion and companionship.”

The Lindberghs never divorced although the marriage was deeply troubled. They were no longer living together when Lindbergh died in 1974. Anne died in 2001.

Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg, Recording Secretary

Kathy Presents Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

Jacquie’s Email Hello Literary Ladies! Happy Easter, to those who are celebrating, and happy gorgeous it’s-finally-spring to you all!

    It’s field trip time again as the next meeting of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be held on Wednesday, April 23rd at Laura’s beautiful Ossining aerie. We will begin with lunch and a view at noon, and then Joanna will ring the bell at 1 PM to begin our meeting. Rumor has it we might even learn the results of our vote for next year's topic!

    Kathy will then present “Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz,” which is sure to enthrall. Members, please let our hostess know if you will not be able to attend, and associate members, please let her know if you will. 

     As parking is tight, car-pooling is recommended. Joanna still has one empty space in her car and Sharon has two spots, “if people don't mind two in the back.”

    I've also included the link to our blog, so wonderfully kept up by our new recording secretary, Frances. I, for one, am most thankful for this wonderful record of our meetings. It's a rabbit hole I go down happily and often.

    I look forward to being with many of you on Wednesday and to bask in the company of Georgia OʼKeeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. It looks like the weather will be quite fine to do just that! x Jacquie

Carla’s Minutes Our caravans to the north country arrived safely at Laura’s lovely Ossining aerie where 10 of us were treated to a bird’s eye view? Eye view of birds? and a delicious picnic lunch on the terrace.

    

Georgia O'Keeffe painting

During the business part of our meeting, the topic for 2025-2026 was announced: “Classics that We Haven’t Read (or Humiliation) or Books from Our High School Years.” Minutes of the last meeting were read. While new Recording Secretary, Frances Greenberg, wasn’t there in person, her minutes received applause and laughs—a fine beginning!

    On to the presentation, with Kathy telling us all about artist Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz, accompanied by visuals of their works. She introduced them as a “boy meets girl” story, except that it was the girl’s work at first. After her friend had shared some of O’Keeffe’s charcoal and pastel sketches with Stieglitz, the 23-year-old art student wrote to him. Her inquiry about her work was ingenuous and frank and his reply very positive—“surprise and joy” was his reaction. A promising beginning to what would become a long and complicated relationship.

    O’Keeffe was a Wisconsin-ite born in 1887 (d. 1986) to a large farming/business family. Talented at art, she took lessons starting at age eleven and won high praise and honors. Her parents both died in 1915, and she struggled to support herself, with some help and encouragement from her mother’s sisters. She attended classes at SAIC and the Arts Students League in NYC. O’Keefe became a teacher in 1911, taking courses at Columbia Teachers’ College, then taught in South Carolina, West Texas and New Mexico (1916,]

    

Alfred Stieglitz photo

Stieglitz was born 1864 (d.1946) in New Jersey into a German-Jewish family, the oldest of six children. After attending technical schools in Berlin, 1882‐1890, he became interested in the new photography. Returning to the U.S., he opened a gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue in 1892, which is where O’Keeffe’s work was first displayed—without her permission! While she was very pleased that Steichen liked her work, she was “appalled” at having her feelings exposed publicly. Her protestations were met with his reply that he had a “higher authority” to share her work. His 1907 photograph “Steerage” is considered a signature work, representing his first “modernist photograph.”

    Although Stieglitz had been married and had a daughter, O’Keeffe was attracted by his “energy and soul,” his good looks and his value of life. The correspondence between them over a two-year period reflected her view of “the terrible fineness and intensity of him” and his “value of life”. His was a combative personality. He believed that women had “spiritual superiority” but “intellectual inferiority.” After two years of correspondence, they moved in together, sharing work and living space (1918-1928). Kathy showed images of Stieglitz’s cloud photos and O’Keeffe’s abstract work of New Mexico from that period. She was his object of both adoration and control, noted Kathy.

    In 1905, the gallery (known as 291) was recognized for its role in legitimizing photography as a fine art, for bringing attention to unknown and talented photographers, and for introducing new artists including Matisse, Rousseau, Cezanne, Picasso. A 1921 exhibit of Stieglitz’s work was a great success. His work, which included innovative nude photos of O’Keeffe and drew acclaim for his “texture and shading” and notice of a “cult of personality.” It also brought comments of sensationalism. For O’Keeffe, it resulted in her distancing herself from critics and the public.

    Over their lifetime, they exchanged more than 5,000 letters, a sampling of which we read. Indeed, through the letters they started to fall in love before they had even met. O’Keeffe questioned whether using similar words really reflected similar feelings, experiences. Their letters were often rapturous and extravagant in mutual admiration. But life was to be lived on his terms. O’Keeffe made trips on her own, to Boston and to Maine, realizing she enjoyed her own company. They married in 1924, he not wanting children—she seeking new direction in art, both wanting “total devotion.”

    Their relationship changed in 1929 when Stieglitz began an adulterous affair with 21-year-old Dorothy Norman. O’Keeffe left for a 4 month stay in New Mexico which left Stieglitz “unhinged.” He wrote to her from Lake George, a family vacation home, decrying the situation, blaming himself for robbing her of her faith, but encouraging her to discover new things for herself. They did get back together but he had emotionally destroyed her. An incident involving murals she was to do for Radio City Music Hall ended badly and contributed to her hospitalization 1931-33.

    A new relationship developed with Jean King who became her lover, but Stieglitz was still in the picture. He was happy for her successes, including a show at the Museum of Modern Art. Deep and strong forces kept them together, concluded Kathy.

Respectfully submitted,
Carla Potash, Secretary for the day