Gita Presents Peter Mayle

Jacquie's Reminder Email 

April 26 Hello Literary Ladies! A note to remind you that we will be meeting this Wednesday, April 28th at 1pm, when Gita will delight us with the musings of Peter Mayle. Although we won't be together to also enjoy what few in the South of France would call "a little nosh" I hope you all will treat yourselves to something special before or during our virtual meeting/travels. Until Wednesday, Jacquie

Christine's Minutes

Thirteen members and one associate met for our meeting via Zoom on April 28, 2021. As usual, we engaged in our pre-meeting exchanges of news, books, and cultural happenings. Most significantly, on this occasion several sightings of the rogue yellow tulip were noted. This yellow (though sometimes blushing to red) tulip has appeared in the gardens of several members, in places where no tulips were planted, and where no tulips were expected to survive the ungulate depredations. Yet, there it was.

At 1:35 President Fran Greenberg rang her bell, and the meeting commenced. Minutes of the previous meeting were read and accepted. Our treasury remains unchanged at $396.52.

Then, with all due fanfare, Connie announced that our program next year will be: "Biography. "A distant second and third were "Drama," and then "Russian Literature. "The 2021-2022 season will begin on September 22.

We have made our annual donation to the Hastings Library, of $129.00, which was used to purchase several books including Hamnet, Klara and the Sun, and others enjoyed by our members.

Then it was time to visit the beautiful south of France with Gita, and Peter Mayle. The books consulted for our trip were A Year in Provence, a collection of vignettes about the author’s adventures renovating his house, and Toujours Provence, short stories about life in Provence. 

Peter Mayle was born in Brighton, England in 1939, but grew up in Barbados, where the family moved for his father’s work with the Colonial Office. Mayle was married three times, the last one being a success. He began his career writing sex education books for young people. In the 1980’s he moved to Luberon, in southern France. His books about France have been enormously successful. In 2002 the French government made him a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor) for coopération et francophonie, which sounds to me like he was given the award for speaking French so well.

Members first read an excerpt from A Year in Provence, in which was described a lunch on New Year’s Day. Some listeners may have developed francophone hunger pains at the excruciating detail: the meal started off with three homemade pizzas of anchovies, mushrooms and cheese; then came pâtés of rabbit, boar, thrush and saucission; then duck with wild mushrooms; then a casserole of rabbit civet; followed by a green salad, goat’s cheese, and an almond and cream gateau. The digestifs were made, mais oui, following an eleventh century recipe.

In Toujours Provence, members met the plumber who played the clarinet, and the builders who came to demolish the kitchen, otherwise known as the assault troops. We also learned the merits of rabbits, and heard of the architect’s prospective job designing a new brothel in Cavaillon. For any of us planning a visit to Aix any time soon, we learned the de rigeur of café deportment: first arrive in a red Kawasaki; second, keep your sunglasses on when entering; third, engage in ritual kissing; fourth, keep wearing sunglasses.

Our most pleasant sojourn in France ended with some Provençal wisdom regarding the use of lemon to keep away ants. Mille mercis a Gita.

Respectfully submitted, Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

Linda Presents Roz Chast

Jacquie's Email Reminder

April 11, 2021: Dear Literary Ladies,Well, thank GOODNESS there is no such thing as this miracle book! If there were, where would that leave us?!?! Just a quick reminder that on Wednesday, April 14th at 1 pm, Linda will be sharing more of Roz Chast's infinite wisdom with us.  Until then, I hope you don't experience every emotion known to mankind! Jacquie

Christine's Minutes

On April 14, 2021, fourteen members attended the meeting of the Literature Club, via Zoom, a program in which we are all becoming quite competent. President Fran Greenberg called upon members in their screen order, and we heard the good news of members becoming fully vaccinated, of grandchildren finally returning to in-person school, and of Linda’s “post-vaccine gallivanting ways”.

Our president rang the bell at 1:34 (an exactitude completely reliant upon the computer which hosts our meeting). The minutes of our previous meeting were read and accepted. Our treasury is ample with $396.52. Much of that will be donated to the library, as usual.

And then, even while separately inhabiting our rectangles on screen, we travelled together, guided by Linda Tucker, into the very weird and comical world of Roz Chast. It must be noted that Linda was more than competent in her use of Screen-Sharing: she has become a master of the medium. The theme of the program was Roz Chast and Existential Angst. Existential, as in existence. Angst, as in a gloomy often neurotic feeling of generalized anxiety. How profoundly appropriate for our pandemic times! Since these minutes will not avail of screen sharing, nor – alas - will they be illustrated by your secretary, mere words must be relied on to spark your memory of certain cartoons. So, we began with Lots of Ducks, then Little Things, Chast’s first cartoon to be accepted by The New Yorker, and Linda’s favorite, Reading the Obits while calculating the ages in relation to oneself.

Following the categories listed on Roz Chast's website: Fairy Tales, Fear and Loathing, Kids and Family, and Unclassifiable, Linda shared with us a wonderfully curated selection of cartoons. Just to name a few, we saw "Gregor S’s Further Adventure,;" "Kant at Camp," "The Delusional World of Free-Range Chickens," "Ralph Nader’s Children," "Our Friend Algebra," "Rebels Without a Magic Marker," "Radiator Cooking."

Roz Chast was born in 1954 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, the only child of two educators. She received a BFA from RISD in 1977. She sold her first cartoon to The New Yorker in 1978, and had her first cover in 1986. She has written and illustrated numerous books, including a memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? which won several awards and struck a chord with so many of us with elderly and aging parents. In addition to The New Yorker, she has published cartoons in journals as varied as the Village Voice and the Harvard Business Review.

In a 2014 interview with Steve Martin at The New Yorker festival, Chast discussed her cartooning routine. She generally draws between 5 and 7 cartoons a week, and once something is bought by The New Yorker, she will redraw it and tidy things up. She loves to draw interiors, especially wallpaper and lamps, inanimate objects. She said that her mother “believed in the conspiracy of the inanimate”.

We all enjoyed spending the afternoon in the wonderfully offbeat and idiosyncratic world of Roz Chast’s imagination.

Respectfully submitted, Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary