Sharon Presents Suzan-Lori Parks

Suzan-Lori Parks

Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies! Just a reminder that we will be meeting this coming Wednesday, April 19^th in the Orr Room for Sharon's presentation on the work of Suzan-Lori Parks. As per usual, the doors will open at 12:30pm. Connie will ring the bell at 1pm.
     I have never seen or read any of Suzan-Lori Parks' work, so I am very excited for this introduction. Here is a link to a reading from Topdog|Underdog in the Greene Space to give us all a sense of the sound of the language of this particular play.  — Until Wednesday! Jacquie

Christine's Minutes On a lovely but chilly April day, fourteen members of the Literature Club meet, again, in the Orr Room.

President Constance rang the bell at precisely 12:58 PM. She thanked all the library volunteers who have been so helpful in arranging for us to use the library’s facilities, during the Covid era, while we are trying to stay distanced.

The minutes were read. There was a slight correction regarding the rollout of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Our treasury is flush with $409.20.

We discussed what the club should do for our late member, the distinguished writer, Helen Barolini, and it was decided that we would send flowers to the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, where her memorial service will be held on May 1, 2023.

Joanna announced that the schedule for next year would soon be ready. The topic will be whatever the topic of a member's birth year was. She questioned whether anyone would object to revealing her birth year. No one seemed to object.

Then without further delay, the curtain rose on Sharon’s program about Suzan-Lori Parks.

Suzan-Lori Parks (hence to be referred to as SLP, following Sharon’s usage) was born in 1963 in Fort Knox, Kentucky, where her father, an Army officer, was stationed. She later lived in Odessa, Texas, while her father was in Vietnam, and then in Germany. Her experience as an Army brat, moving so frequently, would have an impact on her writing.

SLP was a terrible speller, and somewhere along the way, her advisor suggested that becoming a writer might not be a good idea. Taking this to heart, SLP studied chemistry at Mt Holyoke. But chemistry made her miserable. Then she read To the Lighthouse in an English course, and she knew that she could only become a writer. (Meanwhile, spellcheck has rendered her lexicological problem obsolete.)

Members read SLP writing about her experience being accepted into James Baldwin’s creative writing class, where she couldn’t help but read her work aloud in a very animated way. Baldwin asked SLP if she had ever considered writing for the theater. She had not. But she started the next day. By the end of the class, Baldwin called SLP “an utterly astounding and beautiful creature”.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Mt Holyoke in 1985, SLP spent a year in London studying acting, and then moved to New York City, where she worked as a secretary to support her play-writing habit. Her first full-length play, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (note that my spellcheck objected to the word Mutabilities.) won an Obie for Best New Play. Critics praised her original language and imagery.

Meanwhile, George C. Wolfe, head of the Public Theater from 1993, noticed her work, which had affinities with his own, especially his 1986 play, The Colored Museum. Thus began her long – and ongoing – relationship with Joe Papp’s Public Theater, where she is now Artist-in-Residence. The America Play introduced the notion of a black man who works as an Abe Lincoln impersonator. This idea – too good not to resuscitate – later recurred in Topdog/Underdog.

One aspect of SLP that became clear throughout the program, was her unbelievable energy. The range of her interests and projects is vast. She has written nineteen plays, she fronts a band and writes songs, sings and plays guitar. She has also written a novel. She writes about a variety of topics: from a 19th century Khoosian woman called the Hottentot Venus, to a homeless woman with 5 children, to a riff on The Scarlet Letter with an abortionist heroine, called Fucking A. For this play she created a special language, in which the phrase “die Abah-nazip” means abortion. It is uncanny and disturbing just how relevant the play is today.

Members read a selection from Fucking A.

Father Comes Home from the War, Parts 1,2 and 3, is an epic play set during the Civil War, with allusions to the Odyssey.

Members read a variety of selections, playing the characters, Leader, Second, Hero, Old Man, Homer and Penny. The names alone speak to SLP’s special talent for adapting classic literature to current issues.

SLP’s most famous play is unquestionably Topdog/Underdog. When she won the Pulitzer for the play, twenty years ago in 2002, she was the first Black woman to win. At the time, she was praised by The Guardian and named one of “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave” by Time magazine. Just this year Time named her one of the “100 Most Influential People of 2023.” And the tributes and acclamation keep pouring in.

In 2001, SLP married Paul Oscher, a blues-guitar player 16 years older. He was the only white guy in his band. They divorced in 2010, but remained close. In 2017 she married Christian Konopka, a German musician. They have one child.

In 2002 SLP decided to write a play every day for a full year. This was her first foray into tiny plays written in succession. 365 Plays/365 Days has been produced in 700 theaters all over the world, in venues as varied as street corners and opera houses.

SLP returned to this mode of writing with 100 Plays for the First 100 Days, about Trump’s first 100 days in office. She has adapted the opera Porgy and Bess for the theatre, and written a new play, Sally + Tom, about Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson.

During Covid, SLP became even more energetic, if that was possible. She hosted a free online hour, called Watch Me Work, where writers could gather to write and ask questions of SLP.

Starting on March 13, 2020 she wrote Plays for a Plague Year, one every day.

Members read 21 of the more than 300 very short playlets that comprise Plays for a Plague Year. They included: Hiatus; A Play for Dr. Li Wenliang; A Play for George Floyd; A Play for James Baldwin; Boo; Happy Topdog Day; Breathe; and I Will Always Be Your Pumpkin Pie.

I think many of us would have happily gone on to read hundreds more.

The meeting adjourned a little after 3 pm, when many members dashed home to get their tickets for Plays for a Plague Year at Joe’s Pub.

Respectfully submitted,

Christine Lehner, Recording secretary

Linda Presents Stephen Sondheim

Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! Greetings from Eppley Airfield outside of beautiful Omaha, Nebraska! I'm so sad I will not be with you all on Wednesday, March 29^th when Linda presents on Stephen Sondheim, but perhaps it's all for the best since I would be unable to keep myself from bursting into song every time our presenter mentions any one of his masterworks, or I would talk your ear off with musings about everything I love about Sondheim and my experiences with his work. Some topics I'd feel compelled to share, but luckily for you I won't be there to talk your ear off! See end of blog*

The overture will begin at 12:30pm in the Orr Room and the first act will begin promptly at 1pm. 

Have a lovely time being in each other's COMPANY!! x Jacquie

FYI great article on Sondheim and Hirschfeld.

Christine's Minutes Ten members of the Literature Club gathered once again in the Orr Room at the Hastings Library. Two members joined us via Zoom.

President Constance rang the bell at 1 pm. The minutes of our previous meeting were read and accepted. Absent the treasurer, there was no treasury report.

Harking back to our discussion two weeks ago, Constance informed us that the charter school in Yonkers does not accept any book donations, except for graded books. Other possibilities for getting books into the hands of children in need are being looked at.

Meanwhile, the tension in the room is only becoming more and more palpable.

Finally, will all due ceremony (bugles, trumpets, court jesters and the like) Vice President Joanna Reisman announced that our topic for the coming season, 2023-to 2024, will be…..

The Literature Club Topic from the Year You Were Born. In other words, referring to the list of all Literature Club Programs from our founding in 1909, members can find the program given when they were born. Given that our seasons follow the academic year, each of us will have two possible topics to choose from. Unless we want to be pettifogging quibblers and insist that the topic chosen also correspond to the month of a member’s birth.

With that momentous announcement behind us, members were at last allowed to settle in for an afternoon of musical theater, and Linda Tucker’s much anticipated program on Stephen Sondheim.

Linda began by telling us that for the past decade she has been voting for Drama as our topic. Yet when that finally came to pass, she did not choose to present on Lillian Hellman, thankfully, but instead landed on Stephen Sondheim, because she and her grandson Sam share an abiding love of all things Sondheimian. Not only that, but Sam already owned several large tomes about Sondheim. The choice was clearly meant for the big stage.

Our first reading was from the 2021 New York Times obit by Bruce Weber, who called Sondheim a “songwriting titan, whose music and lyrics reset the artistic standard for the American stage musical.”

Stephen Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930 in NYC. His parents, Etta and Herbert, were the children of Lithuanian and German Jews. An only child, he lived on the Upper West Side until his parents divorced, when he moved with his mother to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. This outcome was not an easy one, as Stephen hated his mother and the feeling was reciprocated. On the night before going in for heart surgery, she wrote him a letter stating that her only regret was having given birth to him.

Etta’s friendship with Dorothy Hammerstein, wife of Oscar, was perhaps the only upside in their relationship. Stephen was friends with their son Jamie, and Oscar became a surrogate father and mentor. After telling young Stephen that his first musical, written while still in prep school, was terrible, Oscar then set out a program for him to follow: 1. Adapt a good play into a musical. 2. Adapt a flawed play… 3. Adapt a story from another medium…and finally, 4. Write a musical from your own original story. Sondheim followed these precepts all the way through Williams College, where he studied harmony with Robert Barrow.

Sondheim explained that lyrics exist in time – that is, you only hear a lyric once, maybe twice, thus they must be simple and they must go with music, as well as lights, costumes and everything else happening on a stage.

His first Broadway gig was as a lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy. He did not love writing lyrics without the music, but Hammerstein encouraged him, and he learned working with the greats.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was the first show for which he wrote both music and lyrics. He never looked back. But it was not initially a success with out-of-town audiences, until Sondheim wrote a new first number, “Comedy Tonight”, following Hammerstein’s wisdom about the importance of an opening number. When the show came to New York, it was a smash hit.

As an aside that is especially significant on account of the Literature Club’s very own crossword puzzler, Linda, Sondheim was himself a fan and even created cryptic puzzles for the New York Magazine.

Under Linda’s direction, members examined three shows, in chronological order. So as not to interrupt the lyrics and rhythm, each reader read the entire song…musically if possible.

There was also musical accompaniment. Before launching into A Little Night Music, 1973, Linda played “Send in the Clowns”. Set in Sweden and ‘suggested’ by a film by Ingmar Bergman (a dour Swede not usually associated with musical theater), it presents the various romantic complications that ensue during a weekend in the country. Members read the “Now”, sung by Frederick, then “You Must Meet my Wife”, and then the finale of Act 1, “A Weekend in the Country”. In Act 2, we read “It Would Have Been Wonderful”, a duet by the 2 lovers of Desirée, Frederik and Carl-Magnus. Next was Sondheim’s most famous song, “Send in The Clowns”, in a stirring rendition by our own Sharon DeLevie. The play ends happily.

As another not-quite-aside, Linda made sure we noted Sondheim’s many remarkable rhymes, such as glacier with Chateau, sir, denied with abide, vicious with delicious, and penchant with trenchant. This last required a footnote regarding the British pronunciation of penchant.

Next up was Sunday in the Park with George, 1984, based on George Seurat’s iconic pointillist painting that hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago (and graces 45% of the themed tchotchkes sold in their gift shop). First, we heard “Finishing the Hat” sung by Mandy Potemkin and Bernadette Peters. Members read the opening number, “Sunday in the Park with George”; then from Act 2, “Sunday in the Park”, “Finishing the Hat”, “Children and Art” (in which he rhymes rapturous with capture us), “Lesson #8” and “Move On”.

For our last act, Linda presented Into the Woods, from 1987, a kind of mash-up of Cinderella, Jack in the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and a quest tale. Again, we heard a tape of the song, “Into the Words.” Members read from Act 1.

Linda told us, “I feel that Into the Woods is an existential show about what life is really like. Everything is OK, and then one day a giant steps on you.”

Much as I would like to end on those words of wisdom, a few more rhymes must be noted: I hate to ask it, but do you have a basket? cried and mollified, and finally, I’ll tell what I tell kings and queens, Don’t mess with my greens, Especially the beans.

The meeting was adjourned at 3 pm, and exeunt omnes, humming.

Respectfully submitted,

Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

*Topics Jacquie would have discussed if she'd been at the meeting

• The first album I ever owned was Company, which I received for Hanukkah when I was nine after my mother was told I had borrowed it too many times from the Adriance Memorial Library and others needed a turn. I remember that night so clearly because my father had also gotten us a new stereo to take the place of our old Victrola, and he set it up on the floor in the living room. We all huddled around it to hear those first distinctive chords, and then marveled as the voices emanated from alternating speakers as they sang "Bobby!"
• Angela Lansbury delighting and heartbreaking as Mrs. Lovett
• Glynnis Johns as Desirée with that otherworldly and world weary voice and hearing "Send in the Clowns" for the first time
• Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters marveling themselves at the extraordinary harmony they created together in "Move On" as the audience marveled along with them
• Chip Zein and Joanna Gleason delighting in Into the Woods, and my being unable to move after sitting through it for the first time, my theater companion turning to me gravely and declaring, "he's dying." Luckily for us all this was not to happen for another 34 years
• Waiting on line for hours three nights in a row at Playwriters Horizon with the hope of getting a ticket to Assassins and giving up on the third night when I was the second person in line and still didn't get in, but then seeing the excellent revival with Michael Cerveris and Neal Patrick Harris at Studio 54
• Trying to understand why Sondheim and Lapine thought Passion was a good vehicle for a musical, but haunted by the story and music nonetheless
• Spending hours listening to songs that were cut from shows and attempting to mimic the sound of the perfect Sondheim soprano with my wobbly alto
• Loving The Frogs on vinyl and hating The Frogs on the stage
• Wishing I had seen Pacific Overtures staged
• Wishing I hadn't seen Follies with an obstructed view

Constance Presents August Wilson

Jacquie's Email: Attention Literary Ladies! Due to unforeseen circumstances, the role of Meeting Place at this Wednesday's performance of Constance's presentation on August Wilson, will be played by Sharon DeLevie's Living Room. Seats are available in the Zoom section, with partially obstructed views. Reservations are requested. Thank you for your attention and enjoy the show! — Jacquie

Courtesy the Estate of August Wilson

Christine's Minutes On the Ides of March, twelve members of the Literature Club met in Sharon’s lovely spacious living room. It was lovely. It is marvelous not to even write the words Orr Room (grateful as we are to the library). One member joined us via Zoom.

Constance rang the bell with all due solemnity.

The minutes were read and accepted.

The treasury contains $129.50, and will soon be bursting at the seams once all the dues have been paid.

Old Business: Constance informed the club that our idea for getting books into the hands of young people in Hastings in need, will not work as imagined, because in fact the Youth Council is already doing that. She pointed out that there is a charter school, just over the border in Yonkers that could use books, and perhaps we can work with them.

Joanna announced that that choices for next year’s theme have been painfully whittled down to a mere seven, and that members were asked to vote for their top three choices. The seven choices were: Children’s/Young Adult Literature; High School Required Reading Revisited; Literature Club Topic from the Year You Were Born; Literature of Canada; Nobel: Obscure Recipients or Noble, but Nobel-less; Rags and Riches: Wealth (or absence thereof) in Literature. The winner will be announced at the next meeting.

And then without further ado, the curtain rises, and have entered the world of August Wilson. But first, our presenter, Constance, wisely begins by raising a subject that is emblematic of the ways in which we all have to rethink how we read and discuss literature. August Wilson’s play are written in the vernacular of the time, and the N-word is often used, always by Black characters interacting with other Black characters. Constance asked: How do we – members of the Literature Club – feel about saying the N-word aloud when it is part of the text? There was no consensus. Several members said they would be willing to say it in the context of the play. Another member asserted that, in all her work at diversity conferences, she has learned that as far as the Black community is concerned, there is absolutely no situation in which it is acceptable for a white person to say the N-word. Going forward with the program, members either did or did not articulate the N-word, depending on their feelings/ beliefs.

August Wilson’s greatest achievement is his series of plays known as the Century Cycle, ten plays, each set in one decade of the twentieth century, most of them set in the Pittsburgh of Wilson’s youth, specifically the Hill District, known as Little Harlem.

We quickly learned that Constance who grew up in Pittsburgh, has long been a fan of Wilson’s plays. She showed us a beautiful boxed set of the entire cycle, with an introduction by John Lahr (Son-of-the-Lion).

Frederick August Kittel was born in 1945, the fourth of the six children of Daisy Wilson and Fritz Kittel, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant who was a brilliant baker, with a vicious temper. The parents divorced when August was 12, and Daisy eventually married David Bedford, who became Wilson’s beloved stepfather. Daisy cleaned houses for a living, raised her children, planted flowers in the back yard, where she also set up a card table. (A scene which will seem eerily similar to the sets of many Wilson plays.) August was her brightest child. He was sent to the Central Catholic High School, famous for its football team, but not its drama department. Already not a fan of school in general, August then went to a vocational school, then briefly to Gladstone High school, until he walked out one day. He spent the next 3 years reading at the library. (Was Carnegie – the great endower of libraries – from Pittsburgh?) His mother was not happy about her brightest child dropping out. At only 17, he scored second-highest on the Officer Training School Exam, but you had to be 19 to be an officer, so he quit the army.

Wilson returned to Pittsburgh and began to interview all the older Black men and attended all the local funerals. In 1964, at the age of 29, he bought a used typewriter for $29. He had decided to become a poet. He wrote constantly, wherever he was. He was briefly married to Brenda Burton, with whom he had his first daughter. Later he moved to St Paul, Minnesota and married Judy Oliver, a white social worker. The fact of living somewhere with so few Blacks, awoke in him an awareness of the specificity of Black voices and language. Wilson was very influenced by music, and this can be heard in all his plays.

His first play, Jitney, was finished in ten days. After it was rejected by the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, he returned to his first effort, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and this was accepted by the O’Neill.

By the time Ma Rainey made it to Broadway, Wilson had written Fences, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. At that point, it was clear to him that each play focused on issues specific to specific decades of the twentieth century. Thus was born the Century Cycle.

Members read scenes from various plays (but sadly, it was impossible to read from all ten.):

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set in a 1927 Chicago recording studio

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in a Hill District boarding house in 1911

The Piano Lesson, set inside a home in the Hill District, in 1936

Seven Guitars, set in a Hill District back yard, in 1948

Radio Golf, in a Hill District realty office, in 1997

Many of us were surprised and intrigued to learn that Wilson disapproved of ‘color-blind casting’. One can only wish he were still with us, and to hear his take on the current staging of many plays, from Shakespeare to Stoppard to the newest play we haven’t yet heard of. But alas, August Wilson died of cancer at the age of 60, in 2005.

Respectfully submitted,

Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

Annual Meeting

Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies! It's that time of year again – time for our 2023 Annual Meeting! It's hard to believe that our 2020 Annual Meeting was the last time we met together in the before times. We've come a long way, baby!

Our beloved President has set the agenda as follows:

• The nominating committee will announce the choices for Treasurer, Recording Secretary, and Corresponding Secretary
• Discussion of how to ensure diversity in the authors and topics of the books we donate to the Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library
• Discussion about our residency policy: how/when to extend membership beyond Hastings-on-Hudson
• Discussion of the resumption of our traditional meeting format -- meeting in members' homes, with luncheon served
• Begin our discussion of next year's season, err... our topic selection for next year (!)

Please let Constance know if you have any additional items you'd like to add to our agenda.We will be meeting this Wednesday, March 1st in the Orr Room of the Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library at 12:30pm, and Constance will ring the bell at 1 PM. Until then, enjoy the weather?  –  Jacquie

Christine's Minutes: For the momentous occasion that is our Annual Meeting, twelve members of the Literature Club met on March first, in the library’s august Orr room. Two members joined us via the miracle of Zoom.

Our president Constance Stewart rang the bell at 1 PM. Christine read the minutes of the February 1 meeting, featuring G B Shaw. Frances Greenberg read her excellent minutes of February 15, starring Tom Stoppard. Lori Walsh, our treasurer, reported that our treasury contains $129.50. (Am I the only one who misses those pesky eleven cents?)

And onto our annual business items:

1. Constance suggested raising our dues to $20 to enable us to give more money to the library. All agreed.

2. It was suggested that we leverage our donation to the library to help bring books to families in need, and yes, there are families in need in Hastings. One excellent idea is that we buy children’s books from the Friends’ Book Shop, for distribution to families, and thereby, also benefitting the Friends.

(As a diversion, as we deliberated, one member, with that admirable and possibly obsessive need to tidy, brushed away the cobwebs under the seat of the stool upon which rested that computer which is Zooming the meeting.

3. Pres. Constance thanked the nominating committee, for their Ho-Hum-No-News slate. Christine has agreed to stay on for another term as Recording Secretary; Jaquie has also agreed to continue as our inimitable Corresponding Secretary, and Lori will continue to maintain the audit-proof accounts as Treasurer. President Constance and Veep Joanna have another year of their term to go.

4. Then we arrived at the question we’ve been waiting to discuss. How do we get more diversity into the books we donate to the library? Should we defer to the needs of this specific library, as seen by Debbie Quinn? Given the fungibility of money, can we just assign our donation to whatever books by women and writers of color the library acquires? It would be nice to have our bookplates in books by women.

Linda sagely pointed out: We are not exactly diverse ourselves. It was agreed we don’t want to micromanage this. Sharon will liaise with the Friends, and Carol will speak with Debbie.

(Break. Admire the barge going upriver. And perhaps enjoy the exceptional banana bread brought by our president.)

5. Residency policy. Do we have one? Is it flexible? A careful reading of our Constitution, as amended in 2004, either clarifies or mystifies. There is exactly nothing is the constitution regarding who shall be a member of the club or where they should reside. (Nor does it specify the gender of members.) Perhaps we might want to amend the constitution* to reflect the current situation, and our current de facto policy:  members should live in Hastings, or have lived previously in Hastings, or have some strong connection to Hastings.

6. Then comes the question we keep revisiting and presumably will continue to revisit until the coronavirus is a dead issue. Members decided that for the remainder of our 2022-2023 season, we will continue to meet in the Orr Room, or outside whenever possible. On days when the Orr Room is not available, and the weather is not agreeable, we will meet in the living room of any member whose living room is sufficiently large to allow for some distance. As for the fall: we will have to decide later when we see what’s happening, Covid-wise.

It is agreed that no one should do anything they are not comfortable with.

7. Now for the fun part: deciding on next year’s theme. We read and discuss the preliminary ballot distributed by Joanna, in order to decide what we can delete. We did manage to delete 3 or 4 topics, and perhaps added only one, so the list is somewhat reduced. One new idea was to visit the archives and see what the Literature Club was discussing 100 years ago, or what the topic was for the year of one’s birth. For instance, in 1952, the program was titled "The Genius of Eve"– for the first time a year was devoted to writing by women. Yet curiously, one presentation focused on G B Shaw’s Saint Joan!

8. Meeting adjourned at 2:35. Some lucky members took home some of Constance’s excellent banana bread.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

Christine Presents Tom Stoppard

Jacquie's Email Dearest Literary Ladies! Full confession: I have never seen nor read a Stoppard play, although I have seen eight of the 12 films he is credited with writing, including at least 138 viewings of Shakespeare in Love. I am not proud of this fact -- the not seeing or reading a single Stoppard play. I'm fine with the Shakespeare in Love viewings stat. It's a truly great film.
   Luckily for me and the rest of you who have, without a doubt, both read, viewed, and possibly even studied many of Stoppard's works, Christine will be presenting on the playwright this Wednesday at our meeting at the Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library. Doors will open at 12:30pm; performance will begin promptly at 1pm.
   Until Wednesday! Jacquie

English Playwrights above: Simon Gray, David Rudkin, Harold Pinter, Alan Ayckbourn, Trevor Griffiths, Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard; by Al Hirschfeld in NY Times 7/10/77

Minutes It was an uncommonly warm day, 60° F the February day we met. We gathered on the terrace outside the Hastings Library’s Orr room. We chatted, nibbled on cookies, enjoyed the view of the Hudson and the Palisades, discussed whether we could stay outside for the meeting and remain unmasked. The sun was bright, the terrace warmer than the ambient air. We reluctantly agreed, though, we’d get cold sitting still. We masked up and went inside. The door remained open.

President Constance was absent (ill with a nasty GI bug); VP Joanna rang the bell, calling 10 members to order. Recording Secretary Christine passed on reading the minutes from the last meeting; she said she’d be talking a lot about Tom Stoppard. She didn’t know what our limit might be, hearing her talk. She didn’t want to test it. Our treasurer, Lori, was absent; no treasurer’s report. We spent no money since last meeting, so whatever it was on February 1, it’s the same.

Christine’s fascination with Tom Stoppard began with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a performance she saw in prep school, with her English teacher and several other students. Afterwards, she and her friend Becky walked Boston’s Back Bay, questioning each other like the two soldiers of Hamlet. She explained that no special effort was needed to dress like Stoppard; he was notoriously casual, and his hair has remained shaggy and hardly combed to this day (he has thinning hair but he’s not bald). Christine’s usually bound hair was let loose (but neither shaggy nor uncombed); she wore a long scarf, pants and a jacket, studiously mismatched. For biographical information, she relied on Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee.

We entered quickly into Stoppard’s work, with an exchange between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. A snappy reading was done by Jacquie and Joanna. An excerpt:

Ros: What’s the matter with you today?
Guil: When?
Ros: What?
Guil: Are you deaf?
Ros: Am I dead?
Guil: Yes or no?
Ros: Is there a choice?
Guil: Is there a God?

Tom Stoppard was born Thomáš Sträussler in 1937, in Zlín, Moravia, Czechoslovakia to Martha and Eugen Sträussler. His parents were assimilated Jews; Eugen, a physician, was employed by the B’ata shoe factory. The owners were socially conscious; they provided many employee benefits, including unusual, for the time, a 5-day work week. In 1939, they transferred many of their Jewish employees to branches outside of Europe when Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia was imminent. The Sträusslers went to Singapore, and fled there soon after to escape the invading Japanese. Dr Sträussler enlisted as a volunteer in the British Army; he died in 1942. Mrs Sträussler, Thomáš and a younger brother, Petr, fled to India. Their mother enrolled them in an American school in Darjeeling. She married Major Kenneth Stoppard in 1945; the two sons took his family name and anglicized their given names. All moved back to England in 1946; he and his brother were enrolled in school there. Stoppard believed that his transformation into an English school boy was a life altering stroke of good fortune.

Stoppard left school at 17, began working as a journalist. He enjoyed the work, although later regretted not going to university. He did an extraordinary amount of research for his plays, perhaps as compensation. In the early 50’s, he began writing radio plays for the BBC. In 1957, he saw Waiting for Godot. His reaction: the play “kept you amused, absorbed, occasionally puzzled and seemed to do so without really having any cards to play.” In 1958, the Bristol Evening Standard offered him a position as feature writer, humor columnist and second drama critic. In 1960, he wrote his first stage play, A Walk on the Water which was successfully received, but it was the Old Vic’s 1966 staging of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which made his reputation.

Stoppard wrote more radio plays, more stage plays, and for television. He wrote screenplays, the best known are Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Shakespeare in Love, for which he won an Oscar. He was immensely productive, enjoyed his growing income. He entertained, he bought a large and charming old house in Dorset, the Rectory. He married three times, divorced twice, had 4 children (2 sons each with first and second wives). He was generous to friends in need. His current wife is Sabrina Guinness, once romantically linked to King Charles III and a member of the wealthy and prominent Guinness family.

Christine noted Stoppard was “a voracious reader and researcher, and the evidence is in all his plays, dealing with subjects such a mathematics (Fermat’s last Theorem), landscape design, English poetry, brain studies, the Velvet Revolution, rock’n’roll, A E Housman, 19th century Russian intellectuals and revolutionaries and more.”

The success of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was followed by Jumpers, in 1972 (concerning moral philosophy and gymnasts). Stoppard was able to draw parallels among the least likely subjects. In 1974, Travesties was produced; although one of Christine’s favorites, time prevented her from giving us anything more than this tantalizing description: “Travesties combines Stoppard’s defense of artistic standards with a satiric dismantling of the revolutionary mindset. Two kinds of revolutionaries, the Dadaist Tristan Tzara and the even more absurd Vladimir Lenin, were in Zürich during the war. Travesties is an inquiry into the slippery nature of memory and a withering comic attack on both Tzara’s and Lenin’s value systems.”

Stoppard was politically conservative, he was a supporter of Margaret Thatcher. He was the old-fashioned kind of conservative, one with a heart and ethics. He was knighted in 1997.

In the 1980’s, Stoppard translated several Czech plays. He befriended the Czech playwright Václav Havel, who later became president of Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution (1989). In 1982, Stoppard wrote The Real Thing, creating a role, Anne, for his romantic partner at the time, the actress Felicity Kendall. The male lead, Henry, a middle-aged playwright, philosophizes about writing in a way that suggests Stoppard is speaking directly through him.

In the 1990’s, Stoppard had two successes with Arcadia (1993) and The Invention of Love (1997). The early 2000s brought two more plays: The Coast of Utopia, a 9-hour play performed in 3 parts, at 3 different times – the characters were Russian intellectuals speaking endlessly. Rock ’ n’ Roll (2006) moves between Czechoslovakia, from 1968 to 1989, and Cambridge.

Stoppard confronted his family’s Jewish roots in his work late in his career. His mother had kept her Jewish identity secret; he was aware that his father’s family was Jewish. He learned that all four of his grandparents were Jewish from Czech cousins in 1993. His grandparents, as well as many of the extended family, died in concentration camps. This tragedy informs his last play, Leopoldstadt (2020). The fate of an assimilated Jewish family, prosperous, living in Vienna in 1893, is traced up until 1955. They descend, from full citizenship in the Austro-Hungarian empire, to the status of subhumans in the Nazi regime. Few survived, most died.

Stoppard has suggested that would be his last play, but it is hard to believe a writer of his talent and energy could stop.

Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg, substituting for Christine Lehner              

Carol Presents George Bernard Shaw

Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! What an incredible season it has been thus far. Luckily there is still so much more to come!
   This Wednesday, February 1st, Carol will be presenting on George Bernard Shaw in the Orr Room of the Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library. As per all our matinees, the doors will be open at 12:30pm and the pre-curtain discussion will begin promptly at 1pm.
   Where does one begin with George Bernard Shaw??? There's the fact that there seems to be a relevant Bernard Shaw quote for every occasion, such as:

"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."
"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

   And, since these reminders ARE all about ME, I have to mention my first live performance of Bernard Shaw in 1974 – Diana Rigg and Alec McCowen in Pygmalion. Sigh. I remember it vividly. We were sitting quite close and to the left, and I just remember looking up at Diana Rigg – how long and beautiful she was, the palpable charisma of Alec McGowen, the humor of the language, and, of course, the indignation and confusion I left with since it doesn't end the way the musical does! Where was the romance I was infusing into every line and action???!!! That's the power of the theatre – to be left with such intense memories, even after 48+ years.
   It is certain to be another wonderful afternoon of drama this Wednesday. I look forward to seeing you all! Until then, Jacquie

Christine's Minutes On the first day of February (rabbit, rabbit), thirteen members of the Literature Club met, yet again, in the Orr Room. (If you are tired of hearing this venue in the minutes, consider how tired I must be repeating it every fortnight. How I long for the opportunity to describe a member’s rococo living room and wax eloquent about a certain member’s cold salmon...)

But do not despair: we were greeted by the marvelous Shavian costume of our presenter. There, in front of the rather serene Hudson River, was Carol Barkin, in a flared skirt, a velvet embroidered wine-red jacket, over a classic ruffled poet blouse complete with ruffled cuffs. This perfect ensemble was topped with a straw hat beribboned with a flowered scarf. She did Eliza Doolittle proud.

President Constance rang the bell at 1 pm sharp. The minutes were read and accepted. Lori reported that our treasury remains at $129.50. Via Zoom, Diana introduced her mother, who is joining us from Mississippi, where Diana is visiting.

Recollected by the clear view of the iconic Hastings’ own water tower, Christine mentioned seeing an exhibition of Bernd and Hilla Berner’s photographs this past week at SF MOMA. The German husband and wife photographed industrial structures, focusing solely on their shapes, and the images are compelling and magical. Kathy mentioned seeing the show at the Met last year, and also loving it.

Speaking of magical, Joanna saw Orlando last week, in London, with Emma Corrin, who identifies as non-binary, most aptly cast as Orlando, themself.

Then the curtain rises, and we enter the world of George Bernard Shaw.

Carol began by explaining why she had chosen to dress as Eliza rather than Shaw himself: George was 6’4”, rail thin and sported a large red beard. (Unlike Carol.) And he generally wore plus-fours (a style made popular by Prince of Wales before he was Edward VII, an article of clothing Carol does not have in her closet.)

Shaw has been an interest of Carol’s since she saw Saint Joan with Joan Plowright, on the London stage. Then in college she saw The Devil’s Disciple, and she was hooked. She wrote her senior thesis on George Bernard Shaw.

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. His father was an alcoholic businessman; his mother Lucinda “Bessie” Shaw, came from a wealthy family, but little of that money came to the Shaws. She was a beautiful singer and neglected young GB Shaw, who suffered as a result. Bessie’s singing teacher, George Lee, with whom she had been involved before Shaw was born, also lived with them. In the same house. Shaw suspected that this other George was his biological father, but it was never proved. Between the ages of 9 and 15, Shaw attended four different schools, and hated them all. So, he left school for good, worked in real estate (perhaps good fodder: exposure to many human frailties and foibles), moved to London and spent hours educating himself at the British Museum Reading Room – the safe haven and the petri dish of so many great and not great English writers. Around this time, he became a vegetarian, largely for financial reasons.

In the mid-1880’s, Shaw became a socialist and joined the Fabian Society. Founded by Thomas Davidson, it was becoming England’s most important intellectual organization, and Shaw was its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw was also writing novels, and reviewing music and theatre. He reviled melodrama and admired Ibsen. Biographers write that Shaw was a pioneer of “intelligent” theatre, in that he asked his audiences to think.

Shaw was 38 in 1894, when Arms and the Man was produced. It was a greater success with the public than with the critics, and it made enough money that he was able to stop writing reviews. The Devil’s Disciple was his first big success in New York.

He was 40 when he met Charlotte Payne-Townsend at the Webbs’ country house. In his first letter to her, he advised her to not fall in love. Naturally, they were married the next year. It was not a perfectly happy marriage.

With the twentieth century came several critical and popular successes for Shaw: Major Barbara, The Doctor’s Dilemma, Caesar and Cleopatra, Major Barbara. In 1914, he wrote a pacifist pamphlet, arguing that both sides were at fault for the war, and this proceeded to make him rather unpopular in a time of rah-rah patriotism. Still, it could not go unnoticed that Shaw was good at writing propaganda, and in 1917 the government sent him to the Western Front. His report described the solders’ lives and the human cost of war and was well-received.

After only 500 years of dithering, defensive sophistry and petty politics, the Catholic Church canonized Joan of Arc in 1920, prompting Shaw to write his masterpiece, Saint Joan, in 1923. He was awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature; the citation notes his “idealism and humanity.” He spent the next four years writing his magnum opus, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, which went on to become a best-seller. It is still in print and selling. (Your secretary still has her grandmother’s 1928 copy, much underlined.)

Shaw continued to care deeply about politics, but lost faith in Fabian-style change. In the early 30s he wrote favorably of both Mussolini and Hitler, but still his plays got produced. His 1938 screenplay for Pygmalion won an Academy Award. When Charlotte died in 1943, he was surprised by how much he missed her. He lived on quietly in Hertfordshire, and died at 94 from complications suffered in a fall while pruning a tree.

Shaw wrote about a wide range of subjects, and often used humor to great effect. He had a way of getting his audiences to see things anew, from a different angle.

Aided by Carol’s brilliant bib/nametags for the characters (soon to be a Literature Club prop staple) members read two scenes from The Devil’s Disciple, and three scenes from Pygmalion. Carol explained Shaw’s preference for his ending, the ‘real’ ending, in which Eliza marries Freddy and not Higgins. Thankfully, he never saw Hollywood’s My Fair Lady. The plays continue to give much pleasure, and also much to think about.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

Photo: The Hastings Water Tower, published in The Buzzer, the newspaper of Hastings High School on March 23, 2021.

Diana Presents Edward Albee

Jacquie's Email 
Hello Literary Ladies! We will be meeting this Wednesday, January 18th in the Orr Room of the Library for Diana's presentation on Edward Albee. Small talk begins at 12:30pm - confrontation beings at 1pm. Diana promises loads of drama, but alas, with our masks on, the sloppy drinking will have to be done in private and without an audience.
Here's a little something to whet your appetites. Even though our prior readings have proven our group's excellent acting chops, no one can emote with their forelocks quite like Liz and Dick! On YouTube: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Elizabeth Taylor (Martha), Richard Burton (George)  –  the boxing match scene. 

Christine's Minutes 

On a blustery January 18th, thirteen members of the Literature Club gathered again in the Orr Room of the Hasting library, home to hard uncomfortable chairs graciously made comfortable by Jacquie’s collection of cushions.

President Constance rang the ceremonial bell at 1 pm. There were a few announcements. Joanna, in her library hat, reminded us of the upcoming documentary, The Automat, and discussion to follow, and then wearing her Arts Council hat, she told us about “Drinking and Drawing,” in this very same Orr room with which we are so well acquainted.

Meanwhile, Jacquie made sure that we were recording the meeting for Sharon, who is in Florida. Most importantly, we all welcomed. Gita back from her illness and recuperation – we are all so glad to see her again.

The minutes of our previous meeting were read and accepted. Having recently written a large check to the library, our treasury now holds $129.50. Recommended books included Trust, by Hernan Diaz, The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, and The Golden Compass trilogy by Philip Pullman.

And now the curtain rises on our much-anticipated program on Edward Albee, by Diana Jaeger. Diana explained that, unlike some past presenters, she had not seen fit to dress as Albee. She did something rather creative and unusual: she placed next to her the perfect prop, a bottle of Maker's Mark, Albee’s favorite whiskey.

Lest anyone was still expecting to hear about Horton Foote, Diana explained that having read through Foote’s oeuvre, she decided it lacked sufficient drama. Additionally, one of his plays had been scathingly reviewed by Stefan Kanfer, husband to our own late member, May Kanfer.

The biographical information in this program comes from Mel Gussow’s Edward Albee: A Singular Journey (2000) Gussow was not only an important critic, but also a good friend of Albee.

We could just glide over the next part, Albee’s almost classic alienated childhood of the artistic son of rich parents, but as has been noted elsewhere, everyone gets their very own particular and peculiar unhappy childhood.

Edward was born in 1928 to a single mother, in Washington DC. The biological father was nowhere to be seen. The babe was then adopted by a wealthy childless couple in Larchmont, New York, the Albees, in need of an heir. They named him Edward Franklin Albee III.

Reed Albee, a successful theatrical producer, was rather short but loved tall women. Frances, his much younger-wife, called Frankie, was six foot two inches, and had worked as a model. Also in the household were Frankie’s alcoholic sister, and her mother.

Frankie, described oxymoronically, as a “genial anti-Semite”, was not maternal. The young Albee did not even eat meals with his parents.

In 1932 the story of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby gripped the nation. There was no escape from lurid coverage of the event. The young Albee became very fearful and slept with a bow and arrow under his pillow.

In the classic trope of rich clueless parents, Albee was financially pampered, given legions of toy soldiers, tennis lessons, dancing lessons, boxing lessons and lavish birthday parties.

But there were two loving women in his life: Nanny Church, who encouraged his interest in the arts, and took him to museums and Broadway shows. And Grandma Cotter – she lived upstairs in the large house, and was isolated there with her asthmatic Pekinese dogs. She was an Albee play before there was such a thing as an Albee play. And then there was. Albee wrote The Sandbox  –  a 12-minute play –  about her.

But back to the miserable childhood. Albee was first sent to Rye Country Day, though in the winters he was pulled out and sent to a private school in Palm Beach, because his parents wintered there. After failing at RCD, he was sent to Lawrenceville, where he had his first sexual experience. He was tossed out again, and sent to Valley Forge Military Academy. Not surprisingly, he hated it. Lastly, he went to Choate, where he had a successful academic career.

He spent three semesters at Trinity College, before leaving for Greenwich Village, and his real life. By this time, he knew he was gay; he said he had known since he was twelve. Initially he lived at home in Larchmont, but in 1948 he had a serious break with his parents, and left the nest. When he was 21, he inherited money from his grandmother, which gave him $25 a week. It helped, but he still needed to work. He held a series of odd jobs; his favorite was Western Union, where he worked from 1955 to 1958. He said that he liked the flexible hours, the interesting people he met, and lots of walking. He also liberated one of their typewriters in order to start writing plays. And he did. He dashed off The Zoo Story in three weeks, and it was produced off-Broadway in 1959. He was suddenly the darling of the New York theater world. The plays kept coming: The Sandbox in 1960, American Dream in 1961, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1962, A Delicate Balance in 1966. He wrote several plays in the seventies and eighties, but they weren’t his best. Then in 1991 Three Tall Women came out. The play was a huge hit, and Albee won the Pulitzer.

Albee’s first serious love was William Flanagan.

From 1959 to 1963, he had a relationship with Terence McNally, but they split after four years because Albee was unable to be open about his sexuality.

Then, in 1971, Albee met Jonathan Thomas and they were together until Thomas died in 2005.

In 1989, Frankie Albee, his mother, died, having changed her will to exclude Edward. This left him free to write about her. He found his adoption papers and contacted his birth mother. And to exorcise his demons, he wrote Three Tall Women (1990); there were only three characters and they were all variations on his mother.

According to Albee there are only 2 things to write about: Life and Death. Albee died in 2016 at the age of 88.

And now for some real drama: members read selected scenes from A Delicate Balance. This was an excellent choice, as it has six very vivid characters: Tobias and Agnes, a wealthy older couple; Julia, their fourfold-divorced daughter just come home; Claire, Agnes’ alcoholic sister; and their soi-disant best friends, Harry and Edna. In reading certain scenes across the whole play, we felt we had experienced the whole messy, emotional, theatrical, familial show.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary