Kathy Presents Lewis Mumford

 

Lewis Mumford

“The ultimate gift of conscious life is a sense of the mystery that encompasses it.” —Lewis Mumford

Jacquieʼs Email Hello Literary Ladies! A reminder that we will be meeting this Wednesday, June 5th at Carla's home to hear Kathy present on the intriguing theme from her birth year “1958/59 Fifty Years in the Realms of Gold (1908-1958)” for which she has chosen to present on Lewis Mumford, American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic, who, according to Wikipedia, is “particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture.” Unfamiliar with both the phrase “Realms of Gold” and the work of Lewis Mumford as I am, I will not deign to comment here but will leave it up to Kathy in her premier presentation to the Literature Club.

Carla will open her doors at noon for our now traditional and much loved not lunch, and I will have the honor of ringing the bell at 1pm to start our meeting, as both of our fearless leaders, Joanna and Laura, will be unable to attend. (I believe the birds of Iceland and a bunch of lawyers in Tivoli, NY are the attractions that draw them away—you tell me who will be having more fun...) Carla writes about coming to Greystone Apartments, “parking is tight, carpooling is bright!” The day looks like it will be a lovely one, so the walk on the OCA might also be a way to go.

I look forward to seeing many of you there! x Jacquie

Christine's Minutes On June 5th, 2024, eleven members of the Literature Club knew they had gone to the right place when they saw the sign reading: YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION, affixed to Carla’s door. Upon entering we were met with another set of exquisite Hudson River views. A delicious non-lunch, topped off with Carla’s signature clafoutis, was enjoyed by all.

In the shocking absence of both president and vice-president, Corresponding Secretary Jacquie rang the bell at exactly 1 pm.

The minutes of the previous meeting were read and accepted.

Our treasury still contains $427.73

Ideas for programs on next year’s theme -Letters and Diaries – were bandied about. Names mentioned were Kurt Vonnegut, Wilson and Nabokov, Madame Sévigné, Emily Dickinson, Vincent and Theo van Gogh. Lewis Thomas, Noel Coward, and others.

Kathy Sullivan, for her debut presentation, chose to revisit the 1958-1959 theme of “Fifty Years in the Realms of Gold” on account of 1959 being the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Literature Club. Kathy’s focus was on work of Lewis Mumford.

The theme’s title comes from “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” by John Keats. 

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Why Lewis Mumford? Well, for one thing, while it seemed that we had all heard of him, very few of us had actually read his work or understood his importance to American culture and architecture. But this was the man who, in 1926, set out to create the first canon of American Architecture, looking back to the very beginnings of the country.

Lewis Mumford was born in 1895, in Queens. He lived through the second wave of industrialization, and nuclear war. He died peacefully in his sleep in 1990.

Members read from Mumford’s obit in The New York Times, which hailed him as a philosopher, literary critic, historian, city planner, cultural and political commentator, essayist and perspicacious writer about architecture. (Most of us are lucky to manage just one of these occupations.) Though Mumford once said that if he specialized at all, it was as a “social philosopher.” The obit also referred to his opposition to Robert Moses’s expressway systems. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1986 by President Reagan.

Kathy explained that in his studies of cities, Mumford pioneered the method of studying the present condition and then looking for threads that would lead back to previous forms.

Kathy relied on The Lewis Mumford Reader, edited by Donald Miller, and well as Miller’s Lewis Mumford, A Life. She also found it useful to read from his New Yorker column, Skylines.

Mumford grew up on the West Side, went to public schools, and then entered Stuyvesant, where, Mumford recalled, “my interests widened, and my marks worsened.” He studied at City College but did not graduate. Instead, he took graduate courses at Columbia and at the New School.

After working as a radio technician in WWI, Lewis became associate editor of The Dial. His essays on housing and cities appeared there and elsewhere and began to attract attention. His first book, was The Story of Utopias, came out in 1922. In 1923 he was a co-founder of the RPA—Regional Planning Association of America (Note: back in the 1990’s, the RPA facilitated several meetings designed to help the village of Hastings on Hudson come up with a comprehensive plan for the waterfront. Alas, even the RPA could not fathom the insanity and inertia that characterizes Hastings’ waterfront.)

Meanwhile, Lewis married Sophia Wittenberg in 1921, and they lived in Sunnyside, Queens.

Members read several excerpts from Mumford’s The Golden Day: A Study in American Experience and Culture, in which Mumford makes the case for an American canon of writers: Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and Melville. He argued that because they all wrote before the social changes wrought by the Civil War, they were in touch with the core of what made Americans Americans.

For the 1939 World’s Fair, Mumford wrote the script for a film—with a score by Aaron Copeland—decrying the poor state of the cities and praising suburbia. (Thirty years later he retracted that opinion and said, “the suburb was as asylum for the preservation of illusion.”) Members saw a video of that film. We also read from “The Skyway’s the Limit,” one of his New Yorker columns.

One of Mumford’s many interests was how man was served by and controlled by technology, over time. As he got older, Mumford came to believe that a life filled with easy comforts and consumer goods required a Faustian bargain.

The more we learned about Mumford, the more we realized just how complex and all-encompassing this man’s vision was.

This was a fascinating afternoon that introduced Literature Club members to a remarkable and un-classifiable writer and thinker, a great debut program from Kathy.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary