My first thought, “OMG! My Lit Club presentation is in two and a half weeks, and I haven't begun to write!”
After some deep breathing to calm my rapidly beating heart and the realization that it was not yet morning, I attempted to get back to sleep, but my mind began to race with thoughts both existential and mundane. I won't bore you with the specifics, but luckily one of those thoughts included calculating what day it was and remembering I had to send out my reminder about this week's upcoming meeting. (And not to worry - I'm all set with the menu for my Yom Kippur evening meal...)
It is, somehow, mid-September and the inaugural meeting of the 2023-2024 Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson's season is set for this Wednesday, September 20th. Our theme this year: Literature Club Topics from the Years We Were Born (or topics inspired by the year a member was born.) *
Our first presenter is Barbara Morrow who will bring us back to 1944/45 and the World at War: Rebecca West. We will be meeting at 12:30pm, hopefully in Frances' lovely back garden. Our meeting will officially begin at 1pm.
The weather forecast currently calls for a sunny 74 degrees, so bring your hats and blankets! If the forecast should change, we will be meeting inside.
Unfortunately, we will not be Zooming or recording the meeting, but, as always, if you are unable to attend, Chirstine's meeting minutes are certain to be a delight in and of themselves.
I look forward to seeing you all soon! x Jacquie
Christine's Minutes For the first meeting of this 2023- 2024 season, in which we board the Wayback Machine to the Literature Club programs from the years of our birth, thirteen members gathered around the pool at Christine’s house. Perhaps for a last taste of summer, but not necessarily. Our esteemed presenter, Barbara Morrow, came accompanied by her spousal and most distinguished Sherpa, George, always ready to help the cause of Literature.
President Constance rang the bell a little after 1 pm.
Christine read the not-really-minutes from our summer gathering. Laura read her minutes from the last meeting of last year, in which Carla presented on Kurt Weill. All approved.
In the absence of our treasurer, Constance reported that we have $170 in the treasury, and told us of the very satisfying–if logistically challenging–delivery of 50 books to Yonkers.
Since the Hastings Library seems to already have copies of all Helen Barolini’s books, we continue to contemplate an appropriate gift in her honor. We will check if the library has a copy of her excellent cookbook, Festa.
Revisiting a topic we had all hoped was dead and gone, and given the current unfortunate resurgence of COVID, we have decided that for the rest of this year, we will have our meetings outdoors whenever possible, or else inside, masking optional.
Several books were recommended by members:
My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Short Stories, by Kate Atkinson
The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese
Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck
The Girl with Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Our presenter, Barbara Morrow, started our year with a fascinating program about Rebecca West. She explained her not-entirely-usual reason for this choice: on her shelf was a venerable 1943 edition of West’s famous (though often unread) tome about the Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Barbara admitted that she, too, had found it not quite necessary to finish the book, though she read sections with great interest, and shared them with us.
In 1947, Rebecca West was pictured on the cover of Time magazine, and declared to be the world’s “Number One Woman Writer.” Yet who reads her now? It is question we will keep asking.
In 1892, the writer we know as Rebecca West was born as Cicely Isabel Fairfield, in London, into an intellectual and liberal household. Though her journalist father left the family when Cicely was only 8, she surely acquired from him an early passion for abstract ideas, though her feminist vision would diverge from his. Her mother, Isabella, was a pianist, and West grew up surrounded by music, literature and good conversation. But not much money.
In 1912, H.G. Wells was 46 years old and one of the most famous writers in the world. He was both a supporter of women’s rights, and a well-known libertine. Rebecca West was 20. A snide-ish comment in her review of his novel, Marriage, provoked Wells to invite the young reviewer to lunch with his wife and himself. Thus it began. She found him ‘most interesting’; they talked for hours. He later said he was struck by her “curious mixture of maturity and infantilism”.
Their son, Anthony West, was born in 1914. Until his teens he believed that Rebecca West was his aunt, and H.G. Wells, called Wellsie, was a family friend. (Note: this fiction did not end well.) Anthony’s relationship with his mother went from cool to terrible.
Enough gossip. (As if there is ever enough.) It is her work which will last. Her first novel, The Return of the Soldier, about a returning shell-shocked soldier, came out in 1917. In 1981 it was made into a film starring Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson and Julie Christy.
Meanwhile, the stress of her relationship with Wells, her two residences and binary existences, caused West to suffer from various ailments, including skin problems.
Her second novel, The Judge, came out in 1922. In 1923, she visited the US for a lecture tour, and met numerous literary luminaries, including Glenway Wescott and Alexander Wolcott.
West met Henry Andrews in 1928, at a party given by Vera Brittain - who would later write Testament of Youth. West and Andrews married in 1930. Having lost his job in banking, but then inheriting significant money, Henry Andrews became a scholar, and ‘something of a pedant’. West regarded Andrews as being, like herself, a perennially ‘displaced person.’
In 1936, while lecturing for the British Council in the Balkans, West fell in love with the region, and with the Serbs in particular. She returned again and again. Her ginormous tome, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (which I have variously called Black Falcon and Black Lamb, Grey Lamb and Black Falcon, and so on.) was published in 1941. The New Yorker called it “as astounding as it was brilliant.”
During WWII, West started writing for The New Yorker, particularly about criminals and traitors. Harold Ross later assigned her to cover the Nuremberg Trials. It was an intense time. Her best-loved novel, The Fountain Overflows, quite obviously autobiographical, came out in 1957 and was a best-seller. Understandably so. The Christmas scene we read aloud should be a classic of the genre. The fifties should have been a glorious time for her. But that was not to be the case. Her son, Anthony, with whom she had always had a fraught relationship, published his novel, Heritage, in 1955. The novel was a thinly disguised autobiography in which the mother is vilified. West succeeded in stopping it from being published in Britain until after her death. Despite occasional reconciliations, her relations with her son continued to pain her, and he was not with her when she died in 1983.
In 1959, she was created a Dame of the British Empire. West continued writing and traveling extensively, and being active socially, with such friends as Martha Gellhorn, Doris Lessing and Warren Beatty. Her health began failing in the seventies, and Dame Cicely Fairfield died, bedridden in 1983.
Members read from Victoria Glendenning’s biography; from Black Lamb and Grey Facon; from West’s essay, “Greenhouse with Cyclamens,” about the Nuremburg trials, collected in A Train of Powder (she was underwhelmed by the efficiency of the so-called security); from Andrea Barrett’s introduction to The Fountain Overflows; from the critic Elizabeth Janeway’s review in the New York Times. All the readings were much enjoyed.
West studied to be an actress, though that was not to be her métier. But she loved the theater. She was 18 when she wrote her first theatrical review, of a play by Gorky. Her reviews were not mealy-mouthed or anodyne, as she quickly made manifest. The strength of her opinions was such, that in order to allay her mother’s fears for notoriety, at 19 Cicely Fairfield began using the name Rebecca West, a character drawn from Romersholm, by Ibsen. She later claimed that she chose the name in haste and liked neither Ibsen nor the character.
As Rebecca West, she continued reviewing and writing on a multitude of social issues. She was well-informed, funny, and unrelenting.In 1912, H.G. Wells was 46 years old and one of the most famous writers in the world. He was both a supporter of women’s rights, and a well-known libertine. Rebecca West was 20. A snide-ish comment in her review of his novel, Marriage, provoked Wells to invite the young reviewer to lunch with his wife and himself. Thus it began. She found him ‘most interesting’; they talked for hours. He later said he was struck by her “curious mixture of maturity and infantilism”.
Their son, Anthony West, was born in 1914. Until his teens he believed that Rebecca West was his aunt, and H.G. Wells, called Wellsie, was a family friend. (Note: this fiction did not end well.) Anthony’s relationship with his mother went from cool to terrible.
Enough gossip. (As if there is ever enough.) It is her work which will last. Her first novel, The Return of the Soldier, about a returning shell-shocked soldier, came out in 1917. In 1981 it was made into a film starring Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson and Julie Christy.
Meanwhile, the stress of her relationship with Wells, her two residences and binary existences, caused West to suffer from various ailments, including skin problems.
Her second novel, The Judge, came out in 1922. In 1923, she visited the US for a lecture tour, and met numerous literary luminaries, including Glenway Wescott and Alexander Wolcott.
West met Henry Andrews in 1928, at a party given by Vera Brittain - who would later write Testament of Youth. West and Andrews married in 1930. Having lost his job in banking, but then inheriting significant money, Henry Andrews became a scholar, and ‘something of a pedant’. West regarded Andrews as being, like herself, a perennially ‘displaced person.’
In 1936, while lecturing for the British Council in the Balkans, West fell in love with the region, and with the Serbs in particular. She returned again and again. Her ginormous tome, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (which I have variously called Black Falcon and Black Lamb, Grey Lamb and Black Falcon, and so on.) was published in 1941. The New Yorker called it “as astounding as it was brilliant.”
During WWII, West started writing for The New Yorker, particularly about criminals and traitors. Harold Ross later assigned her to cover the Nuremberg Trials. It was an intense time. Her best-loved novel, The Fountain Overflows, quite obviously autobiographical, came out in 1957 and was a best-seller. Understandably so. The Christmas scene we read aloud should be a classic of the genre. The fifties should have been a glorious time for her. But that was not to be the case. Her son, Anthony, with whom she had always had a fraught relationship, published his novel, Heritage, in 1955. The novel was a thinly disguised autobiography in which the mother is vilified. West succeeded in stopping it from being published in Britain until after her death. Despite occasional reconciliations, her relations with her son continued to pain her, and he was not with her when she died in 1983.
In 1959, she was created a Dame of the British Empire. West continued writing and traveling extensively, and being active socially, with such friends as Martha Gellhorn, Doris Lessing and Warren Beatty. Her health began failing in the seventies, and Dame Cicely Fairfield died, bedridden in 1983.
Members read from Victoria Glendenning’s biography; from Black Lamb and Grey Facon; from West’s essay, “Greenhouse with Cyclamens,” about the Nuremburg trials, collected in A Train of Powder (she was underwhelmed by the efficiency of the so-called security); from Andrea Barrett’s introduction to The Fountain Overflows; from the critic Elizabeth Janeway’s review in the New York Times. All the readings were much enjoyed.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary
Recording Secretary
