Fran Presents E.M.Delafield

Jacquie's Email Notice 

Sept 25 - Hello Literary Ladies! I know this is what I plan on wearing for our Zoom meeting on Wednesday, September 30th at 1pm for Fran's presentation, "Motherhood, Work, Laughter: E.M. Delafield." How about you?

Fran will be sending pre-assigned readings ahead of her presentation, so please let her know if you are NOT able to attend. (This will cut down on the number of emails Fran will receive.) Have a lovely weekend! Jacquie

Barbara's Minutes 

Query: Could a Zoom meeting, like the Literature Club meeting of September 30, be re-created as a comedy of manners? The writer of these minutes wonders how the Provincial Lady, the leading character in the novels in today’s presentation, would have managed it. Perhaps she might have made a note to self about how lovely Diana Jaeger looked wearing a fascinator, but with a rueful acknowledgment that if she got one, the effect might not be the same. Or could she have developed something out of the list of books we recommended during our book chat, which ranged from Anna Karenina to the new collection of stories by Edwidge Danticat? Surely, she would have passed over in silence that the minutes were accepted as read and the treasury was again at $285.67.

Fran Greenberg captured in her presentation the light yet observant touch of the English writer E.M. Delafield, who created in Diary of a Provincial Lady an immensely charming character, whose life was filled with mishaps that she faced with an unfailing sense of the comic. As Fran said, the Provincial Lady confesses to the petty emotions which really drive our lives. She finds her children baffling and sometimes annoying, her husband a silent enigma; she is intimidated both by her cook and by the know-it-all Lady Box; and she struggles to conceal how tiresome she finds many of her neighbors.

The Diary of a Provincial Lady was serialized in the left-leaning, feminist magazine Time and Tide, and published as a collection in 1930. It was an immediate best seller. Delafield followed it up with three more volumes, but Fran commented that the only Provincial Lady that rivals the liveliness of the Diary is The Provincial Lady in Wartime. Delafield influenced other writers who wrote about the domestic front, including Shirley Jackson, whom Laura Rice presented at our previous meeting.

Fran shared details of Delafield’s not always easy life, and of her literary output, which included serious novels and criticism. We then delighted in reading passages from Diary of a Provincial Lady.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary

Laura Presents Betty MacDonald and Shirley Jackson

Jacquie's Email Notice

Sept 9: Hello Literary Ladies! It is with great pleasure that I welcome you all to the first email reminder of the inaugural meeting of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson's 2020-2021 season. When choosing our theme for this year, "Comedy, Humor, and Satire," we were still in the early days of this annus horribilis, but now I think we can all agree that we are certainly deserving of a few laughs, snickers, and even some guffaws, so let the games begin!

First up is Laura Rice who will be presenting on Wednesday, September 16th at 1pm via Zoom on "Betty MacDonald, Shirley Jackson, Tina Fey: Laughing While Living." One thing to do and one thing to know: Please let Laura know if you will be attending so that she can assign readings. Early next week she will send out the file. You can then choose to print it all out, print just your part, or have the text available on another device. So fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night,* but one I believe we will all enjoy together! See you next week on the big screen, Jacquie 

 

*That came out of nowhere. See Tina Fey meme above.

Barbara's Minutes 

The first Zoom meeting of the Lit Club for this program year began with brief updates from members. Some of us have recently visited our families for the first time during the pandemic, and many of us have children and grandchildren just returning to school, remotely or not. A few find refreshment in birding, and several are engaged in writing postcards to get out the vote. All are anxious about the political situation.

President Fran Greenberg rang the meeting to order and began by thanking VP/Program Chair Connie Stewart for this year’s splendid booklet. She welcomed Isabel (Izzy) Stephens, Louisa Stephens’s daughter, as a guest to our meeting. The minutes were accepted as read and the treasury reported at $285.67. Soon the Club will vote on an amount to donate to the Hastings Public Library.

Presenter Laura Rice revealed to us that the humorous autobiographical tales of the American authors Betty MacDonald and Shirley Jackson were her introduction to adult literature at the age of 11, when she found Jackson’s memoir Life Among the Savages (1953) and MacDonald’s Anybody Can Do Anything (1950) and The Egg and I (1945) among her mother’s books. 

Each in our Zoom bubble we settled down to read selections from these works, beginning with Jackson’s account of her son’s early school days, when he proved himself a spellbinding story teller, and her hilarious trip to a department store with her young daughter and her daughter’s five imaginary friends. Then we turned to MacDonald’s chronicle of all the jobs her sister Mary thought up for her, culminating with Mary triumphantly maneuvering her into writing her first book. We concluded by reading from that book, The Egg and I, her bestselling memoir about her early married life on a chicken ranch in Washington State, where she learned that the hen is the boss.

Laura called her presentation “Laughing While Living,” but how can I capture Laura’s laugh in these minutes? As if she were hearing these stories for the first time, she laughed in hearty, exuberant bursts, and she made us feel for a time that the world was right side up after all.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary