Carol Presents James Thurber

Jacquie's Email 

Feb 3 Hooray! It's only been a few days, and yet we get to meet again this Wednesday, February 3rd at 1pm for Carol's presentation on James Thurber! Good luck with the snow! Jacquie

Barbara's Minutes 

Poketa, poketa, poketa went the keys of the computer. The minutes seemed to be coming smoothly, when suddenly QUEEP, QUEEP—coreopsis was setting in, and only the proud and disdainful writer could stop it. “To hell with the handkerchief, give me a fountain pen!” she cried, inscrutable to the last.

Or something not remotely like that. What the writer of these minutes should be noting is that it was stole weather, as Joanna Riesman’s grandmother would have said, for the February 3, 2021, meeting of the Literature Club, and during our chat time members recounted their recent adventures in the snow. Connie Stewart’s tale of her car so stuck in a snowdrift in her driveway that even the rescuers from AAA could not pull it out was the most dramatic. After President Fran Greenberg rang the business meeting to order, the minutes were accepted as read and the treasury reported at its customary $181.52. A nominating committee consisting of Carla Potash, Connie Stewart, and Joanna Riesman was formed to present a slate of candidates for the offices of two secretaries and a treasurer, to be voted on at the March 10 Annual Meeting. Connie has arranged for the children’s science book Bat Count to be donated to the Hastings Library in memory of Susan Korsten. Carol Barkin will follow up on a book for the library in memory of May Kanfer, and Jacquie Weitzman will continue her discussions with librarian Debbie Quinn on our donation of $125. At the end of our session, we voted to accept Fran’s smaller version of a Literature Club book plate to go in donated books.

Presenter Carol Barkin interwove the life and work of her author, James Thurber, noting how often in his stories he rang changes on the theme of the dominating wife and the henpecked husband. As sources, she pointed us to Thurber’s mother, the practical joker Mame; Thurber’s socially ambitious first wife; and his second wife, who ran every aspect of his life while also editing the magazines Flying Aces and Sky Birds. Her two expert topics were aircraft and machine guns. Carol also stressed the unhappy effects of a childhood accident in which Thurber lost his left eye, and the positive and nurturing creative influence of The New Yorker and its founding editor Harold Ross and writer E.B. White, on both Thurber’s life and work.

Among the stories we read and laughed our way through were “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Macbeth Murder Mystery.”

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary