Diana Presents Bailey White

Jacquie's Email 

 

Jan 9, 2021 Hello Literary Ladies! How truly apt this cartoon is will become more apparent this Wednesday at 1pm when Diana presents on Baily White in her own dulcet tones. Diana will be sharing her screen for readings, so no need to let her know if you will be attending, but if you are unable to join us, please let Fran know so that she can start the meeting once we are all assembled. Until Wednesday! Jacquie

Barbara's Minutes

After our Zoom chat that included Christine Lehner’s challenges devising a unicorn horn to fasten to a tiger’s head for her granddaughter, and a recommendation for dark chocolate to alleviate depression, members of the Literature Club settled in for the minutes (accepted as read), the treasurer’s report ($181.52), and to discuss some library business. We voted to contribute $125 to the Hastings Library. Jacquie Weitzman volunteered to speak with librarian Debbie Quinn both about a book to be given in memory of May Kanfer (perhaps a children’s book of fables or fairy tales), and books, ebooks or other, that the library might like to add to its collection with our $125 gift.

Presenter Diana Jaeger began by commenting that she read her author, Bailey White, last summer when she was down in Mississippi – her Mama had a couple of Bailey White books from the library. They would constantly laugh out loud while reading. Diana noted that Bailey White is a Southern writer who does a very good job of capturing some of the eccentric characters who live in rural parts of the South; at the same time, she captures universal themes.

She may be best known as a commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She read one of her short stories on NPR every Thanksgiving for 20 years: from 1991 – 2011. Bailey White ended up getting more mail from listeners than any other NPR commentator. Most of the mail came from Southerners who said she reminded them of their Grandma. And her voice does sound old on the radio:

"Something about a microphone makes me sound 93 years old," she wrote in an NPR publication. “I get nervous when a microphone is aimed at me. My vocal cords clamp up, my breath comes in gasps and spit rattles behind my molars. When I meet NPR listeners face to face, they fall back, drop their mouths open with horror, and shriek, 'You're not old and wise!'''

Among the stories we read aloud and laughed over were “What Would They Say in Birmingham?” (one of White’s Thanksgiving stories from the collection Nothing With Strings) and stories from Mama Makes Up Her Mind.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary

Lori Presents Political Satire

Jacquie's Email Notice 

Nov 15: Hello Literary Ladies! How prescient of Lori to choose such a relevant topic for her upcoming presentation: Political Satire: Catch-22, Brave New World, and Slaughterhouse 5. We will be meeting this Wednesday, November 18th at 1pm on Zoom. Lori will be sharing the readings on the screen, so no need to let her know if you will be attending. Until then, enjoy the GOOD news! Jacquie

Barbara's Minutes 

Before Fran Greenberg rang us to order with her president’s bell, Literature Club members on Zoom on November 18 chatted eagerly of their relief at Biden’s election, recommended books, among them John Berger’s To the Wedding and Alex Ross’s Wagnerism, and shared personal news. We welcomed as guest Sharon DeLevie, who later helped us out of a technical glitch. At our business meeting Jacquie Weitzman’s insightful minutes were accepted as read, and the treasury reported at $181.52. We asked Connie Stewart to choose a book from her list of science books for kids to give to the Hastings Library in memory of Susan Korsten, and we deferred to a later meeting choosing a book in memory of May Kanfer. We also need to decide on an amount to contribute to the Hastings Library.

In her sweeping presentation on political satire, Lori Walsh ranged from influential cartoons by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Nash to Stephen Colbert’s eerily prescient 2012 book America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t and Christopher Buckley’s 1995 novel The White House Mess, and then moved on to classics of the genre like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5.

Lori defined political satire as a critique of social conditions that makes us laugh.  Its main ingredients are ridicule, sarcasm, and exaggeration. The Onion has reported that this is why it’s been hard to satirize Trump – how do you exaggerate what is already far beyond norms? A lot of what has happened over the past four years has been very unfunny, yet humor has thrived.  Shows like “Saturday Night Live,” Steven Colbert, “The Daily Show,” “Full Frontal,” among many others, as well as comedians like Randy Rainbow and Sarah Cooper have helped us to laugh about things while we simultaneously cry, protest, and shout with rage.

Lori commented that back in 1961, Catch-22 tried to warn us about the dangers of unchallenged authority and the tendency of government bureaucracy to obscure the reality right in front of us.  In the 90s and early 2000s, comedy shows like “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” warned us about the increasingly partisan Fox News and the more and more extreme views of the conservative movement.  And here we are in 2020, after four years of a president who makes Stephen Colbert’s conservative caricature look––reasonable and who is asking us not to see the reality right in front of our eyes. It hurts, but we might as well laugh. After all, humor is one of our best weapons in the fight for self-preservation.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording secretary

Louisa Presents Screwball Comedies of Hollywood (1934 to 1942)

Jacquie's Email Notice

Dear Literary Ladies: With all the crazy that we've been witnessing over the past weeks since last we met, I think an afternoon of hearing Louisa present to us " The Writing Behind Screwball Comedies" is just the remedy we need! 

So, we will be meeting this Wednesday, October 21st on Zoom at 1pm. Christine will be hosting the Zoom, so expect to receive the link from her. Connie will be hosting the meeting virtually, (I'm trying not to think of the delicious poached salmon we will not be eating together at her home this year... sigh...) as Fran is unfortunately unable to be with us that day.

I apologize for the lateness of this email, but members, so Louisa can assign readings, please let Louisa know if you will NOT be able to attend. Associate members, please let Louisa know if you WILL be joining us and would like to read. Louisa will be sending readings to download and print out. Laura has volunteered to deliver printed texts if you are unable to download and/or print them out, so please contact her if you need any assistance with the readings.  Louisa has asked me to "tell our lovely members that I look forward to seeing them Wednesday." As do I! Best, Jacquie

Below: Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday

Barbara's Minutes 

First the credits: Jacquie Weitzman illustrated the meeting reminder with a picture from His Gal Friday; Christine Lehner sent out the Zoom invite; Connie Stewart acted as President and led the meeting; Barbara Morrow’s minutes were accepted as read; Associate Member Jennie Goodrich was warmly welcomed back. We decided to give a book to the Hastings Library in memory of May Kanfer, perhaps a volume of Louise Glück’s poetry. We will also make sure a kids’ science book goes to the library in memory of Susan Korsten.

Then the action began, with Louisa Stephens presenting a talk on the writing behind screwball comedies.

Goofy, wacky, zany, effervescent, fun, witty, high jinks, implausible, uninhibited—these were some of the adjectives Louisa used to describe screwball comedies, a film genre that flourished from 1934 to around 1942. She used as examples two of her favorites, Ball of Fire, written by Billy Wilder, and My Man Godfrey, written by Morrie Ryskind. She noted the rapid-fire dialogue, the verbal comedy, and the high energy of these films. Screwball comedies also drew from slapstick and vaudeville, with sight gags and quick timing.

These movies acted like a tonic during years of Depression, Prohibition, and censorship. They were an endorsement of love, but, as Louisa pointed out, they contained subversive subtexts as they revealed social and economic inequities, corruption, and greed. They could be subversive in their view of sexuality as well, and in their realignment of traditional hierarchies.

Louisa focused on three screenwriter/directors, the prankster Ben Hecht, who created the Hollywood we know; Preston Sturges, who knew how to push a story as far as it needed to go; and Billy Wilder, whose films ranged from Double Indemnity to the romantic comedy Ninotchka. We then read excerpts from Pat McGilligan’s Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age as well as from other books and articles.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary

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

Humor, Comedy and Satire: Program 2020-2021

"...a fear of being trapped by domesticity and baby carriages..."

This year's booklet cover is an illustration by James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960), from Pelham, New York. He was a contemporary of the Literature Club's founders, who first met more than a century ago and who might have agree with the sentiments expressed in his cartoon.

We chose this year's topic knowing well what a difficult year this was going to be.

This winter, we are foregoing the usual rounds of parties and family get-togethers in the interest of not being COVID spreaders. The days are short, it's cold and we're lonely. We are meeting on Zoom (see photo in post Dec 14 2020: Social Distancing, Masks, Quarantines). We are being consoled by writers of comedy, humor and satire, and by hearing each others' presentations. 

Here's who's doing what, in the program year 2020-2021:

                    Laura: Betty MacDonald, Shirley Jackson, Tina Fey: Laughing While Living (Sept 16)

Frances: E.M. Delafield: Motherhood, Work, Laughter (Sept 30)

Louisa: The Writing Behind Screwball Comedies (Oct 21)

Christine: Samuel Becket plays (Oct 28)

Lori: Political Satire: Catch 22, Brave New World and Slaughterhouse 5 (Nov 18)

Diana: Bailey White (Dec 9)

Barbara: Shakespeare's Fools (Jan 6)

Joanna: Uncommon Writer: Alan Bennett (Jan 20)

Carol: James Thurber (Feb 3) 

Jacqueline: Neil Simon (Feb 24)

Annual Meeting (Mar 10)

Constance: Dawn Powell (Mar 24)

Linda: Roz Chast: Existential Angst (Apr 14)

Gita: Peter Mayle (Apr 28)

Carla: Calvin Trillin (May 12)

 

 

 

 

 

Reading List from 2020 Annual Picnic

We met on July 29, under a large black walnut tree in the field behind Christine's house. Christine warned us that direct hits by falling walnuts was possible. Nothing fell, there were no injuries. The day was hot, the view of the Palisades was spectacular. Christine sent us home with flowers from her garden.

Our tradition at the picnic is to talk about the book we're reading. The upside of the pandemic’s social distancing requirement may be that we have more time to read.  Following, a list of books read and recommended:

 

Connie:

Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

House: A Graphic Novel by Josh Simmons

 

Laura

The Visitation by Frank Peretti

March A Graphic Novel by John Lewis

 

Linda

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Rodham: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

Trace Elements by Donna Leon

…and too many short stories to list

 

Laura

Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

Mysteries by Jane Langton, Patricia Cornwall and Deborah Crombie (particularly Crombie’s Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James series)

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

 

Fran

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Assistant by Robert Walser

The Provincial Lady Goes to America by E. M. Delafield

How Fiction Works by James Webb

 

Carol

mysteries by Donna Leon

Half the Way Home by Adam Hochschild

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

 

Joanna

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, audiobook read by Colin Farrell

My Favorite Things Are Monsters, A Graphic Novel by Emil Ferris

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Hastings Library’s webinar, Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury led by Sharon DeLevie

 

Jacquie

An American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Rodham: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

You Think It, I’ll Say It stories by Curtis Sittenfeld

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

How Much of the Hills Are Gold by C Pam Zhang

Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Apeirogon by Colin McCann

 

Lori

The Plague by Albert Camus

Nancy Mitford’s books (all)

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

 

Carla

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump, PhD

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

 

Connie

The Overstory by Richard Powers

Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo

 

Christine

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

The Graduate by Charles Webb

Shirley Jackson’s short stories

A Children’s Bible: A Novel by Lydia Mollett

The Forty Days Of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel

Diana (who missed the meeting but let us know what she’s been reading)

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

The Overstory by Richard Powers

One Fine Day and Good Evening, Mrs. Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes

Quite a Year for Plums by Bailey White