Christine Presents Baron Corvo and A.J.A. Symonds

Jacquie's Email Notice

Let me tell you what I wish I'd known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

— George Washington in the musical Hamilton
(Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda)

In perusing the program choices listed in our beautiful, hot off the presses program book, the varied approaches to and interpretations of this year's theme “Biography” will certainly make for compelling listening, so let the meetings of The Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson 2021–2022 begin!

Our inaugural meeting will be this Wednesday, September 22nd at 12:45 pm to hear Christine introduce us to The Quest for Corvo.

There has been a slight change to the venue. If we are lucky enough to meet together in person outdoors we will be meeting in Fran's lovely backyard. Currently, the weather report predicts rain, so please check your email by 11 am for confirmation from Fran if we will be meeting in person or on Zoom. And please feel free to call Fran if you have any doubts about where or how we will be meeting.

There has also been a slight change to our food policy. If we are meeting outdoors, please feel free to bring a drink or snack for yourself. If we are meeting on Zoom, please attempt to snack off-camera as a courtesy to all.

Please do a rain dance; implore the gods; wish on a star, an eyelash, or grab a wishbone – whatever your modus operandi to alter the course of the universe – with the hope that we will be able to meet in person on Wednesday. No matter what, we will be together. Until Wednesday! Jacquie

Christine's Minutes and Her Presentation

Alas, the last sentence of the last minutes of last season has been rendered incorrect by the resurgence of the Delta variant the continuation of the pandemic. We are still not enjoying the delicious lunches prepared by members.

But we are meeting ‘in real life’, outdoors, whenever possible. And so it was that for the first meeting of our 2021-2022 season, our 112th season, we gathered in President Fran Greenberg’s back yard. Twelve members were present to enjoy the intermittent sunshine, the camaraderie, and the dissonant obbligato of the power tools next door. 

The meeting was called to order at 1:10pm. Fran thanked Connie for our elegant booklet featuring a “Cubist Woman” by Jean Metzinger on the cover. Members also enjoyed the switch to the Garamond font, with its distinctive small eye on the “e”, and the extended leg of the capital “R”. 

The minutes of the previous meeting, way back in June, were read and accepted. Our treasurer reported we have $345.52 in our account. It was noted that we need to choose a book for the library in memory of Phyllis Frankel. 

For our first program in this season of biography, Christine Lehner presented The Quest for Corvo, An Experiment in Biography, by A.J.A. Symonds. For her presentation, Christine wore a fez and a Coptic cross with an amethyst; the significance of these items became clear when pictures of Baron Corvo were circulated. Written in 1934, The Quest for Corvo is still considered groundbreaking, because the reader learns the story of Frederic Rolfe, Baron Corvo, right along with the biographer, who must act as a detective, seeking and finding information about his mystifying subject. The quest began when a friend innocently gave Symonds Hadrian the Seventh, Corvo’s brilliant novel about becoming pope, half autobiographical, and half wish-fulfilment. Symonds was bowled over by the writing and wanted learn about the writer. It took years of tracking down Corvo’s old friends and enemies for Symonds to compile a reasonable picture of this contradictory man.  Frederic Rolfe (1860-1913) left school early and had a checkered career as a teacher and then a writer. In 1886 he converted to Catholicism, a religion he loved for its pageantry and rituals, and whose members he loathed. Rolfe famously said, “As for the Faith, I find it comfortable. As for the Faithful, I find them intolerable.” He quickly determined that he had a calling to be a priest. Twice he was thrown out of seminary, once in England and once again in Rome. In Italy he became friendly with the Duchess Soforza Cesarini, and began calling himself Baron Corvo. He claimed that she had bestowed upon him an ‘unused title’. Starting in1900, he lived in London and tried to make a living as a writer.  In his novel Nicholas Crabbe – which could not be published until 1958 for fear of libel suits – Rolfe/Corvo wrote autobiographically of those London years, his dire poverty, the young man he takes in and nurtures. The book includes exact transcriptions of his elegant and vituperative correspondences with publishers and agents. In Hadrian the Seventh, Rolfe’s alter-ego, George Arthur Rose, is a Catholic convert who has twice been refused to become a priest. Then along come two Eminences to visit, and apologize for the egregious mistake, and immediately set about to ordain him. Soon after, back in Rome, the College of Cardinals finds itself at an impasse, unable to agree on a choice for the new pope. George Arthur Rose is presented as a dark horse candidate, and shockingly, is elected the next pope. With his first papal act of choosing a name, Rose/Rolfe makes it clear that he will follow his own inclinations, rather than ecclesiastical traditions. Hadrian is not a name the cardinals consider appropriate. Pope Hadrian then proceeds to sell all the art stored in the Vatican, and give the proceeds to the poor; he also brings several young men from London to Rome, and gives them titles and keeps them close. 

While Frederic Baron Corvo Rolfe remains little known, his masterpiece Hadrian the Seventh has been reprinted, along with The Quest for Corvo. So, there is hope.

Members read selections from The Quest for Corvo and Hadrian the Seventh. 

As we are beginning a year of exploring biographies, I quote Symonds, from his lecture Tradition and Biography: “Biography is the telling of a story-of a life-story, and it differs from fiction only in this, that whereas the novelist must confine his plot within the boundary of probability, the biographer must observe the boundary of fact.”

The meeting was adjourned at 3 pm, just before our president noted a red-bellied woodpecker in a tree behind us.

Respectfully submitted,

Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

—(Christine did double duty today, as both presenter and recording secretary)

Phyllis Frankel (April 8, 1934 to July 14, 2021)

It is with deep sadness that I share the news of longtime member Phyllis Frankel’s death. Phyllis was 87. Our mothers were sisters. She was fourteen years older, the first born of my generation of cousins, and like a light on the road of my life, she led my way first to Hastings and then to the Literature Club.

Whatever Phyllis did, she did well. She was our Recording Secretary for years; her minutes were beautifully detailed. Her presentations were thoughtfully done. We all so enjoyed being in her home when she hosted.

Phyllis grew up in Peekskill and Mount Vernon. She went to Buffalo State Teacher’s College, received two master’s degrees from Hunter College, the first in teaching, and the other, to prepare for her second career, in speech pathology. She married Benjamin Frankel in 1959; their daughters, Faith, Rachel and Eleanor, were all born in the sixties. She and Ben were pleasantly surprised when their 3 girls presented them with 6 grandsons. A granddaughter was born between grandsons four and five, but too late to continue the run of three generations of being the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter. Phyllis was the last. We thought of her as the family matriarch.

Phyllis was one of the founders of Temple Beth Shalom and served as president. She was active in the PTSA and the League of Women Voters.

She had a well-lived life.

- Fran Greenberg

Our Pandemic Year

The posts which follow are mostly minutes of our year on Zoom. March 11, 2020 was our last in-person meeting before we went virtual. We knew 2020-21 was going to be a tough year; we chose (wisely) Humor, Comedy and Satire as our topic. Our readings and our presentations lifted our spirits. What we missed most on Zoom was hearing each other's laughter.  

Now - we're all vaccinated. We were able to meet, finally, unmasked, for the last presentation of the year - Carla's, on Calvin Trillin, June 2. We sat in Carol's garden, the day was warm and sunny. Her peonies were in full bloom. 

For the first time this pandemic year, we could all hear each other's laughter.

Carla Presents Calvin Trillin

Superwoman Carla handled both a move and her presentation in May. 

Jacquie's Reminder Email

"When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery." - Calvin Trillin

Hello Literary Ladies!

Although I was saddened to realize that this Wednesday, May 19th's meeting of The Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be the final one for this year's tremendously enjoyable theme of Comedy, Humor, and Satire, I know we are going to have a lot of fun with Carla's presentation on Calvin Trillin because I've already had the best time just choosing a quote for my reminder email. There was this: "As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler." Or, "The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found." Or even, "If Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union, how come 'Lincolnesque' just means tall?" 

But the quote above in blue won the day because not only did it make me chuckle, but it also made me think; think of our dear Lit Club and the myriad ways our form of exploring different themes and the work of different writers brings added richness to what we experience together. Sharing the words of our writers by reading them aloud gives them new meaning - we hear them differently with each new reader, as well as through the minds and enthusiasm of each presenter. It might not be the 'delivery' intended by the author (ha!) but we are grateful to all our writers for bravely giving up that privilege so that we can find our own way through their thoughts and ideas, leaving our time together a little fuller than when we first came. (Pun intended, with dreams of soon returning to shared luncheons!) 

Although I missed the chance to hear everyone laughing together (or not!) this past year, Zoom still kept us all close and I think we should give ourselves a standing ovation for the new computer skills we all mastered and the creative way we persevered. I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday. Enjoy this beautiful weather!  xJacquie

Christine's Minutes

For our first in person meeting in over a year, thirteen fully vaccinated and hence maskless members of the Literature Club gathered in Carol Barkin’s backyard. We were seated upon a variety of folding chairs. For our benefit the garden was extravagantly displaying its ornaments: bright pink and pale pink peonies were at their peak, chives were topped with lilac pompoms, and mingled all about were Rose Campion (Silene coronaria). Even the landscapers had yielded to the imperative of out literary gathering, and had rescheduled their noisy mechanical ministrations.

President Fran Greenberg rang the bell at 1:40, and it was a treat to hear the ding-a-ling unmediated by cyberspace. The minutes of the previous meeting were read and accepted. The treasury remains at $267.52. Fran told us she is in the process of affixing our club bookplates to the books donated to the library. Connie requested that members please tell her their chosen subjects for next year’s program.

What better way to end a year of humor with one of the most humorous humorists out there? Carla’s presentation was on Calvin Trillin, and her chosen readings had many of us weeping with laughter.

Along with copies of our readings, Carla had for each of us a gift-wrapped Chuckles™, elegantly described by one member as a “madeleine of a 1970s childhood in Poughkeepsie.”

Calvin Trillin was born in Kansas City in 1935. He went to Yale, where he wrote for the Yale Daily News. After serving in the army, he moved to New York City to begin his writing career. He started writing for The New Yorker in 1963, and in 1967 he began writing his column “Uncivil Liberties” for The Nation. Most importantly, in 1965 he married Alice Stewart – yes, the famous Alice of all his stories. They had two daughters, and several grandchildren. She died in 2001.

Trillin has been a prolific writer, with 177 works, in over 463 publications. In 2013 he was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

The club read, with great merriment, dare I say giddiness, selections from Floater, Tepper Isn’t Going Out, and The Tummy Trilogy. Your secretary particularly appreciated an extract from “To Market, To Market” in which their friend Jeffrey, who “had finished second in the other-than-white egg division,” chats about eggs with the poultry vendors. It must be admitted that like Jeffrey, your secretary has been known to turn up her nose at the color of yolks not produced by her own chickens.

One hilarious selection demonstrated Trillin’s technique, while traveling out of town, for deciding whether or not to accept a colleague’s dinner invitation, that is, if the food would be good.

Some members almost laughed themselves into a veritable snort, as we listened to the story of Chubby,  the collie dog, who turned out to be named George. Trillin was the one called Chubby.

Throughout his writing, his wife Alice is often brought in, as a straight (wo)man to Trillin’s extravagant gastronomic adventures. His tenderness for her is palpable.

Trillin’s comic genius is made manifest when he takes the mundane and makes it extraordinary, and hilarious. What is more mundane than finding a decent parking spot in the city? His last novel, Tepper Isn’t Going Out, is about Tepper who enjoys parking for its own sake.

A fine time was had by all. The club looks forward to this September when we can meet in person, and in the spirit of Calvin Trillin, enjoy the delicious lunches prepared by members.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

  

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

Our Annual Meeting

Jacquie's Reminder Email

March 8, 2021: Hello Literary Ladies! Just a reminder that we will be meeting on Wednesday, March 10th at 1pm for our annual Annual Meeting. Our agenda will include discussing topics for next year, and the nominating committee will announce the officers for next year. Hopefully some of those meetings will be held in person! Until Wednesday, Jacquie 

P.S. For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for the third season of Shtisel, I have just learned that it will finally air on Netflix on March 25th! For those of you who haven't seen it, I highly recommend the series.

Barbara's Minutes

Signs of almost spring were shared during chat time by 12 members of the Literature Club. Several of us have crocuses or snowdrops blooming in our gardens, and Mary Greenly reported a bluebird sighting in Connecticut. The other hopeful sign was that all members of a certain age have received at least the first shot of the Covid-19 vaccine, so we could talk of meeting for picnics when the weather turns warmer.

We remembered that it was at our annual meeting a year ago that we last gathered indoors in person. Fran Greenberg, then the nominee for President of Literature Club, could not be with us, because her granddaughter’s nursery school in Brooklyn had closed, and she was providing childcare. In the year since that time Fran has mastered conducting meetings on Zoom, many of us have learned how to share screens, and the Club has continued as a source of camaraderie and comfort as well as literary stimulation. We all learned to wear masks and keep social distance, and none of us contracted the virus. There was even a benefit to Zoom meetings, for members who had moved away were able to attend.

Fran led today’s business meeting, at which the minutes were accepted as read. We elected the nominating committee’s rhymed slate of candidates: Jacquie Weitzman continuing as corresponding secretary, Lori Walsh as treasurer, and Christine Lehner as our new recording secretary. Fran asked members to mail $15 annual dues to Lori. As part of the ongoing business to donate books to the Hastings Public Library, we approved Carol Barkin’s suggestion of Pamela Paul’s Rectangle Time in memory of May Kanfer.

Program Chair Connie Stewart led the discussion of topics for next program year, during which we for the first time eliminated as many topics as we added. New topics are "Black Women Authors: American and International" and "Solely Shakespeare." Among the deleted topics were “Adolescent Favorites Revisited,” although the writer of these minutes cherishes a fond memory of Gene Stratton- Porter’s Girl of the Limberlost. Connie will send us the list of topics. For our first vote, we choose 5 or perhaps 6 topics we like, but without ranking them. In the final vote of whittled down topics, we will mark first, second, and third choices.

In closing my final set of minutes, I promise that I will get copies of all to the Hastings Historical Society and that I will send Fran this past year’s minutes to be posted on the Literature Club blog. It has been a privilege to serve this august yet playful Club.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary