Linda Presents NiKolai Gogol

Jacquie's Email

Hello Literary Ladies!
Of course, Nikolai Gogol is much more than his “Nose”, as Linda will tell us all when we meet for her presentation on Zoom but having read his astonishing short story recently in George Saunders' A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, I thought it would be fun to look at a few artists' interpretation of one of Gogol's most famous creations -- and they certainly did not disappoint.
Until then, keep your noses clean! x Jacquie

Christine's Minutes

On March 30, 2022, fourteen members and one associate member of the Literature Club gathered, yes, once again on little screens brought to us courtesy of Zoom*. And since we have become so intimate – adept – with zoom, I thought I would share a few facts about this phenomenon.

*ZOOM was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan and some other engineers. In 2013 they launched their software. In 2017 ZOOM’s valuation made it a unicorn. The company turned its first profit in 2019. On March 11, 2020, WHO declared that the spread of this new respiratory disease, the novel coronavirus, was now a pandemic. Millions of people started to work remotely, children had to go to school remotely, and even some Literature Clubs have had to eschew their lunches and – meet remotely.

President Connie Stewart rang the bell at 1:11p.m. She indicated that “where is spring?” should go on record as her first question of the meeting.

The minutes of the previous meeting were read and accepted. Our treasurer reported that, with a recent infusion of our annual dues, our treasury has swollen to a respectable $430.11.

As for our business: Joanna Reisman shared her screen to show us the ballot for next year. After winnowing from the cumbersome original list, we now have six choices for next year’ program: Nineteenth-century American and British Novels; Banned Books; Behind the Iron Curtain; Drama; The Harlem Renaissance; Literature from Canada. It does not bear mentioning that the last choice is new this year, and our program chair is by birth a Canadian.

Connie thanked Jacquie for compiling such a lovely collection of ‘noses’ to illustrate her email.

Today, Linda Tucker presented Vladimir Nabokov’s biography of Nikolai Gogol, originally published by New Directions in 1961. Linda suggested that as the book starts with Gogol’s death and that the word nose appears no less than thirteen times in the first three pages, we should assume that this will be no ordinary biography merely relating a life story. Nevertheless, our presenter did tell us something of Gogol’s short life.

Nicolai Gogol was born in 1809, in Sorochintsky, Ukraine. His father died when he was a teenager. After high school, Gogol left home to seek a civil service job in St Petersburg. Without connections, that turned out to be difficult. He had equally little success as an actor or a poet. He took money his mother had entrusted to him and traveled to Germany. Only when the money ran out did he return to St Petersburg and take a shabby civil servant job.

By 1830 his short stories about Ukrainian life were coming out in literary reviews. According to Nabokov, Gogol’s students at a girls’ boarding school thought he was very dull.

Meeting the revered Pushkin in 1831 meant a great deal to Gogol. By then Gogol was publishing his short stories, about “ghosts and Ukrainians”, according to Nabokov. The stories were quite popular, “The Nose” among them. When his play, The Government Inspector was produced in 1836, Gogol felt that it was misunderstood by the critics, and left the country to lick his wounds in Rome, for twelve years. There he started writing Dead Souls. In 1839 he made a quick trip back to Russia and read Dead Souls to his friends. Then, back in Italy he wrote “The Overcoat,” and kept working at Dead Souls. The first part of Dead Souls was published in 1841, with the name changed to the uninspired The Adventures of Chichikov, as Dead Souls was considered blasphemous. For the next six years Gogol traveled, looking for health and inspiration, but none. He was unable to finish Dead Souls, and actually burned all he had written of the second part. Gogol returned to Russia in 1848, and died in 1851, at the age of 42.

Following our immersion in Nabokov’s biography, members read passages from Dead Souls, “The Overcoat,” and finally, “The Nose”, a story initially rejected by the Moscow Observer as “dirty and trivial”. We also heard from George Saunders who, in his A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, explains the key scene in “The Nose” in this way: “The world is full of outrageous nonsense”.  Additionally, members learned some important vocabulary specific to Russian literature. Nabokov explained “poshlust”, and per Saunders, we discovered “a particular Russian form of unreliable narration called skaz”.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that after spending quality time with Gogol, the world can never look quite the same again.

Respectfully submitted,

Christine Lehner, Recording secretary

Sharon Presents Zora Thurston Neale

 Jacquie's Email

Zora Neale Hurston

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Dear Literary Ladies,
    As this year continues to raise so many questions, we are so fortunate to be able to come together again this Wednesday, May 16th at 12:45 pm on Zoom to hear Sharon's inaugural presentation on Zora Neale Hurston.
    In addition, attached please find a draft of Joanna's inaugural topics ballot for your review. We ask that you come with any suggestions or changes you might wish to see before Joanna sends it out for an official first round of voting.

    Until then! Jacquie

Christine's Minutes

On March 16, 2022 sixteen members of the Literature Club gathered, yes, once again, on Zoom. From a quick check-in on the state of our membership, per our Zoom tradition, we learned that the woodcocks are emerging, that cappuccino is to be had in Williamstown, that some people are actually back to working IRL and wearing heels, that Carla has changed her topic to Margaret Wise Brown, and that we are all very concerned about Ukraine.

At 1:07 President Connie Stewart expertly rang the bell for her inaugural meeting.

The minutes for the last meeting were read, and accepted.

The treasury is still at $265.11, but there are hopes for huge gains in the coming weeks, as our dues are collected. Your $15 may be sent via check, Venmo, or Zelle to Lori, our treasurer.

There was a brief discussion of the list of possible topics, as circulated by Joanna. Literature of Adolescence was deleted, and Literature of Canada was added.

    Then, onward to our armchair travels to Florida, to Harlem, to Haiti, and back to Florida, all in an afternoon. Sharon, in her inaugural presentation for Literature Club, knocked it out of the park. Her subject, Zora Neale Hurston, was a novelist, playwright, anthropologist, folklorist, and a leader in the Harlem Renaissance.

    She was born in 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, during hog-killing season. She was fifth of the eight children of John and Lucy Hurston. Zora, however, was not pleased with that birth year, and subtracted from it so many times that she ended up being born in 1901.

    When she was three, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was one of the few all-Black incorporated towns in the country. Valerie Boyd, her biographer, wrote that her confidence derived from growing up in Eatonville, where she learned to experience “racial health”. Growing up without the “white gaze” she did not know she was ‘colored’ until she went away to school.

    When Zora was 13, her mother died, and many things in her life were altered for the worse. She was sent off to boarding school where she did not fit in. When she returned home, she discovered that her father had remarried, to the archetypal evil step-mother. The father, John Hurston, was a complicated man. He was a pastor of the Macedonian Missionary Baptist Church; he was also a philanderer, and sometimes violent. Several of Hurston’s protagonists are based on her father, including the pastor in Jonah’s Gourd Vine. After returning from boarding school, Hurston worked at many jobs, from a ladies’ maid in a theatre troupe to a waitress, ending up in Maryland.

    But all she cared about was getting her high school degree, and to that end, she shaved more years off her age in order qualify for free schooling in Baltimore. She excelled in high school and was admitted to Howard University. Her writing began to get serious attention. In 1924, her short story, “Drenched in Light,” was accepted for publication, and the next year she moved north to Harlem. Like Eatonville, Harlem was all black, and she became part of the Harlem Renaissance. At a 1925 Awards Dinner for winners of the Opportunity Literary Contest, Hurston won several prizes, for two short stories and for a play called Spears. Langston Hugues was there, and decided he wanted to know her – they soon became close friends.

    With her prize money, Hurston enrolled at Barnard. Thus began her lifelong need to accept financial aid from white people. This aid allowed her to continue with her writing, but it also led to complicated and uncomfortable situations. At Columbia, Hurston met Franz Boas, the renowned anthropologist. Anthropology was a perfect fit for Hurston, who never stopped loving and retelling the stories heard on her porch in Eatonville. In 1927 she received a fellowship to collect “Negro folklore” in the South, and collect she did, from Florida to Haiti and New Orleans. She discovered the use of ‘double words’ in Negro vernacular, and became a pre-eminent scholar of Hoodoo.

    Hurston’s anthropological work found its way into her novels, as did the language of her characters. Her use of this vernacular was often criticized, as it made Blacks appear uneducated. She was also criticized for not focusing on the plight of Blacks. But she was also defended by certain Black critics.

    Meanwhile, money was needed to live. Charlotte van der veer Quick Mason supported many Black artists in addition to Hurston. She only asked that she be called “Godmother” and that her identity be kept secret.

    Hurston’s 1928 essay, ‟How it Feels to be Colored Me,” published in a white journal, set out her views on race. In 1930 she began working on a play, Mule Bone, with Langston Hugues, based on a short story of Hurston’s. But things between the two grew complicated, and in the end, the process destroyed their friendship.

    Hurston’s three marriages were all brief. Her longest relationship was with Percy Punter, a graduate student at Columbia, who later became the inspiration for Teacake in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Hurston’s best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written over seven weeks in Haiti, and was published in 1937 to very little notice. Even though it contains a rare incidence of what is known to beekeepers as “Apian-porn.” Then in 1973, Alice Walker ‘discovered’ Hurston and her work. Since then, millions of copies have been sold all over the world, it is taught in schools everywhere, and even a Halle Berry movie has been made.

    The writer’s life did not end well. She struggled financially, had serious health issues, and died in a welfare home in St Lucie, Florida in 1960.

    But Walker’s discovery and resuscitation has wrought great changes. Eatonville now hosts a Hurston Festival every year, and there is a Zora Neal Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts.

Sharon shared with us her experience of hearing the latest biographer, Valerie Boyd, speak, on January 7, which is Hurston’s birthday. She then emailed with the writer, until her untimely death at 58.

    Zora Neal Hurston remains with us. Her play written with Langston Hugues, Mule Bone, was finally produced on Broadway in 1991. Her words keep resonating, as her quote: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

    Members read from Hurston’s autobiography, Dust Tracks, from Jonah’s Gourd Vine, from Their Eyes Were Watching God, and from Valerie Boyd’s Wrapped in Rainbows.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

Annual Meeting 2022

Jacquie's Email

Hello Literary Ladies!!! It's somehow that time of year again - March!!! Along with hopes for warmer weather, crocuses, and peace in Europe, it's time for our Annual Meeting.
    Our agenda includes:

• The nominating committee will announce our fearless leaders for 2022-24 - president and vice president. (This is not an election year for other officers.)
• A discussion on whether to continue on Zoom? In-person masked? Lunch? (As Fran pointed out, we owe Sharon many!)
• Begin a discussion of topics for next year. Attached please find a list of topics since the inception of the club to facilitate brainstorming. (We've done biography twice before, and in 1912-1913, German literature was the topic. Hmmm.)

I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday in your neat little rectangles on my computer screen. Until then! Jacquie

Christine's Minutes

On March 2, 2022, fourteen members of the Literature Club met, again, on Zoom, this time for the time-honored ritual of our Annual Meeting. Our pre-meeting chat ranged from books to new kitchens to blizzards in Montreal to the last great Auk.
    President Fran Greenberg rang the bell for the last time as our president. The minutes were read and accepted. The treasury remains at $ 265.11
    The nominating committee presented their slate for a new president and vice president. Their two-year term will begin next meeting. Because of COVID constraints, we were unable to have our usual ceremony for the "Passing of the Bell", with fifers, drummers, baton-twirlers, and book jugglers.
    The committee nominated for our next president, Connie Stewart, and for vice opresident, Joanna Reisman. Both were unanimously acclaimed. All members applauded Fran for her excellent presidential term, especially in what have been exceptionally trying times. She has been a reassuringly competent presence at her computer guiding us through the shoals of Zoom. In her farewell speech, Fran generously declared that the Literature Club is “a superb organization to be president of".
    Our first topic of the meeting: to Zoom or not to Zoom, that is the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler to stay in our screens
And miss the pleasures of Another’s
Living room, and A Literary Lunch
Or to take arms against a mess of mandates
And by opposing them, to risk the wrath
Of Omicron. To Zoom, a known Path.
Or not to Zoom, tis a consummation
Devoutly to be Wished for.

If not absolute consensus, then there certainly was agreement and a willingness on the part of every member to be considerate to all other members. We agreed that each of us should feel safe. The decision, such as it was: we will continue with Zoom through our April 20th meeting, when Jacquie will present The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.* After that we hope to be able to meet outside and unmasked. One important sidebar: for many presenters it would be very helpful to know ahead of time whether or not we will Zoom, as that can affect their preparation.
    Our second topic was to discuss suggest possible topics for next year. Joanna helpfully provided the list of the suggested topics from last year, containing lots of the old chestnuts. New suggestions included:

• Crime and criminals
• Literature from Countries threatened by Russian land-grabbing and Putin’s madness? Or more succinctly, Writing from Behind what Used to Be called the Iron Curtain, or even, Reclosing the Iron Curtain.
• A book or an author that changed my life
• Banned Books – not band books as this secretary originally understood and then wracked her brain searching for rock’n’roll books.
• Books from a single specific year

OR, we could revisit The New York Times’ list of Comforting Reads.

Meeting adjourned at 2:40 pm
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

*That program has been re-scheduled for the end of the season.

Connie Presents Joe Orton

Jacquie's Email

Dear Literary Ladies: I fall back on this quote by the Portuguese poet Fernando Passeo whenever I need to, say, rationalize the fact that I read 72 books last year but my basement is still a mess. (Somehow, I am able to ignore the fact that I have many friends better read than I who have very well-organized basements AND attics... and have also knit a few sweaters in that time...) Yet what we all know is that if anything, literature helps us understand life - meet it head on with greater empathy and understanding of other people. We are not ignoring life in literature; we are maybe just finding ourselves in more satisfying locales and with more interesting characters experiencing more agreeable situations than we might currently be enjoying. And examining literature through the biography of the authors has also inspired, taking us from the (extra)ordinary to the sublime! And now we have Connie's presentation on the playwright Joe Orton to look forward to. Please be on the lookout for the Zoom link from Sharon. Until then, Jacquie

Christine's Minutes
It was frigid outside, but thirteen members and one associate of the Literature Club were warm, inside our rectangles of pixels, and warmly entertained, on February 16, 2022. During our pre-meeting time to catch up, we discussed books, the delights of emerging from COVID, and the wonderful news that Diana has one liberal relative in Mississippi.

President Fran Greenberg rang the bell at 1:06, and announced that we will again be recording the program. Christine read the minutes, and they were accepted. Lori reported that our treasury remains unchanged. As for new business, Fran suggested that we discuss when, and how we will go off Zoom and resume meeting in person. Our next meeting, being our annual meeting, will be a good time for this discussion.

Then, without further ado, it was time to settle down for some serious entertainment and Connie’s program about the English writer, Joe Orton. With her usual aplomb, Connie dressed for the part with a faux leather jacket and scarf.

Connie began her program with the biographer, not the subject: and we learned that John Lahr could himself warrant a biography, so interesting is his life. The son of Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion portrayer so well-known to crossword puzzlers, John Lahr was for many years the drama critic for The New Yorker. He also wrote novels, and biographies of several actors and playwrights, including his father, Dame Edna, Frank Sinatra, Noel Coward, and Tennessee Williams. His writing has won many awards and he is considered one of the greatest living literary biographers. Lahr is now eighty years old, and lives in London with his wife, Connie Booth, better known to some of us as Polly in Fawlty Towers.

Joe Orton died in 1967 at the age of 34.

Lahr’s biography, Prick Up Your Ears, came out in 1978. Additionally, he has edited Orton’s complete plays, and his very compelling diaries. Arguably, Lahr has played a key role in assuring Orton’s importance as a playwright.

Orton was born, John Kingsley Orton, on January 1, 1933, in the Saffron Lane Estates, part of council housing in Leicester. He was the first child of Elsie and William Orton. William was gardener, and quite aloof from his family. Elsie worked as a machinist, stitching underwear from 8 am to 6 pm. Yet she always ran home at her lunch break to cook lunch for her 4 children. She was strong, vivacious, and surprisingly prudish. She was often cruel to her children, yet she recognized Joe as a gifted child, and sent him to a private school, where his teachers found him to be semi-literate. All he cared about was the theatre, and at 16 he left school to pursue that ambition.

In 1949 he joined the Leicester Theatre and decided to apply to RADA. He took dance lessons and sought advice from everyone and anyone. He studied elocution with Mme. Rothery, whose lessons and coaching would make a real difference for Orton. With another of her students he performed a scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream, and won 3rd place. Then, with an uncharacteristically generous contribution from the Leicester Educational Committee, Orton applied to RADA. On his 18th birthday he took the train to London. He auditioned for RADA and got in.

He moved in with a fellow actor, Kenneth Halliwell. Kenneth was older than Joe, better educated, and withdrawn. His mother died as a result of a wasp sting, when Kenneth was 11; he was in his early 20s when his father committed suicide. (This kind of background that should set off alarm bell.) Halliwell and Orton continued to live together after RADA, and in 1959 Halliwell bought a 10 x 17 bedsit. In that small space, they read, wrote, and lived frugally. All their books came from the public library, and they began to subtly change or make collages of book covers. Their collages are now regarded as works of art, but in 1962 the response was less enthusiastic. Halliwell and Orton were caught in a police sting, and they were sentenced to six months in prison, in separate prisons. As with so many things, they reacted differently. Orton found the experience of prison oddly liberating.

In 1963, the BBC accepted his play, The Ruffian on the Stair. His next play Entertaining Mr. Sloan was a huge success. The American premier was directed by Alan Schneider, who – I feel compelled to point out – also directed the American premiere of Waiting for Godot and lived in Hastings on Hudson.

Orton’s next play, The Good and Faithful Servant, was poignant and angry; it was followed by the “boulevard farce” Loot. Loot was originally panned, but after several rewrites, it re-opened in 1966 and was a triumph. All along, as his career was ascending, Orton continued living with Kenneth in the bedsit. They often traveled to Morocco together and reveled in the sexual freedom they found there. But Kenneth’s career was going nowhere, while Orton’s was soaring. He was approached by Brian Epstein to rewrite a Beatles’ script. It was never produced, but by then he was writing What the Butler Saw.

Meanwhile, in December 1966 Orton began to keep a journal, and kept it almost daily until his death. In it he detailed his many sketchy sexual encounters, as well as arguments with Halliwell. Then, on a hot day in August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned the sleeping Orton to his death. He then took an overdose and killed himself. His suicide note directed the reader to Orton’s diaries, “especially the latter part.” Alas, the previous nine days’ worth of diaries have been removed, by person or persons unknown. After this, Orton was more famous for being murdered by his lover, than for his plays. But that would change. His last play, What the Butler Saw, brought farce to high art.

Club members read several selections from John Lahr’s Prick Up Your Ears, from Orton’s own diaries, and saw several photographs of the plays. We had another Literature Club first – pictures of male nudity. Then we were treated to a snippet of the brilliant What the Butler Saw, on YouTube.

As Connie pointed out, there is no butler in the play.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

Joanna Presents Patricia Highsmith

Joanna DID warn us to expect something a little different!

Jacquie's Email

Hello Literary Ladies! Just a reminder that we will be meeting this Wednesday, February (!) 2nd at 12:45 pm on Zoom for Joanna's presentation on the talented Ms. Patricia Highsmith. I have a sense that this is going to be a lot of fun! Until then, stay safe and warm! xJacquie

Christine's Minutes

On February 2, 2022, thirteen members and one associate, each of us inhabiting our allotted rectangle of visibility, joined in via Zoom, from sunny Florida to Hastings on Hudson to wildlife-rich Ossining.

In what has become a pandemic tradition, we all reported on our recent doings, readings, and concerns. Today’s topics ranged from the difficulty of discarding unwanted furniture, especially old dark wood furniture, to the ever-reliable pleasures and comforts of Jane Austen, to the low cost (by New York standards) of a cleaning lady in Mississippi, to bald eagles riding ice floes on the Hudson, to a rescued Maine coon cat called Kiki.

President Fran Greenburg rang the bell at 1:19, and thanked Sharon for being our zoom hostess. Laura Rice (filling in for Christine) read the minutes for our last meeting. Lori Walsh reported that the treasury is flush with $265.11.

Then, in a first for our Literature Club, the program was taped, so that Jacquie, who is in Poughkeepsie taking care of her mother, will be able to listen to Joanna’s talk at a later time. Clearly, our comfort level with Zoom technology has come a long way since our first on-line meeting back in March 2020.

Joanna Reisman began her program on Patricia Highsmith by intrepidly going straight to the great elephant that is in the room every time we discuss literary biography. What difference does it make when we know the life story of an author? Should it make any difference? Is our reading of any text enlightened by our understanding of the author’s character? Should not a work of literature be read for its own merits? And she did all this without mentioning Derrida.

One aspect of Highsmith’s biography that intrigued Joanna, was the writer’s unsavory reputation as “racist, anti-Semitic, lousy to the women she was in love with and those who were in love with her.” Again, the question: do we want to read the work of someone so wretched? Should we reject all art created by nasty artists? And what about authors, such as Jeanine Cummings, who dare to write about people, minorities or oppressed peoples in particular, without being a member of that group? But wait, isn’t the whole point of writing fiction to put oneself into the life, and shoes, of another, of others? Joanna bravely addressed these thorny issues.

Back to Patricia Highsmith: Her parents were already divorced, when she was born in 1901 in a Texas boarding house owned by her grandmother. She spent her first three years with her Calvinist grandmother. Then she met her soon-to-be stepfather, Stanley Highsmith. They disliked each other instantly. The new family moved to New York City, then back to Texas, and back to New York again. One summer she attended a girls’ camp near West Point and wrote in her diaries of the pleasures of skinny dipping.

For all her adult life, Highsmith kept a diary, and a cahier. The diaries were confessional, while the cahiers were used to note story ideas, and random thoughts. All of these were written in a mélange of languages. Both sets off diaries are now housed in the Patricia Highsmith Papers at the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.

In 1942 Highsmith left Barnard and began participating in the NYC life of lesbian bars, galleries, communists, writers, and artists. Her first serious love affair was with the artist, Allela Cornell. She had uncountable love affairs all her life, mostly with woman but sometimes men. She was very prone to falling in love, often for the briefest of periods, and the aftermath was often rather unpleasant.

It is a source of great pride for our club that the idea for her famous first novel, Strangers on a Train, came while she was walking with her parents in Hastings on Hudson. Or is it?

During the 1940’s, Highsmith spent time at Yaddo, doing exactly what residents at Yaddo are famous for doing: writing, drinking, and having sex.

In 1951, the rights to Strangers on a Train were bought by Alfred Hitchcock and it became a very successful film.

Her next novel, The Price of Salt, was remarkable in being about a lesbian relationship that does not end badly. It was based on her real love affair with Virginia Catherwood. But Highsmith’s publishers rejected the manuscript. It later came out with a small press under a pseudonym. In 1953, Bantam brought it out as a 25¢ lesbian pulp edition. Not until the Bloomsbury edition of 1990 was the novel published under Highsmith’s own name. Then in 2015 there was a very successful movie version.

Around 1950 Highsmith moved to Europe. One day in Italy she saw a young man in sandals on the beach in Positano, and conceived of the character Ripley, and the concept of the Ripley novels. The Talented Mr. Ripley has been twice filmed, once with Alain Delon, and in 1999 with Matt Damon as Tom Ripley. Joanna explained how the Ripley novels were more satisfying than the movies, as they got us right inside Ripley’s head. He “is a con artist, a conniver, you find him reprehensible and yet you are rooting for him at every turn.” He is a rare hero who is essentially amoral.

A Suspension of Mercy was written in England, where Highsmith had gone to be near her lover at the time, Caroline Besterman. She otherwise lived primarily in France and Switzerland. Suspension was followed by four more Ripley novels, for a total of 22 novels and many short stories. Throughout her life, she drank heavily. Highsmith claimed to prefer animals to humans, and she was especially fond of snails, and often had several in her handbag. Eventually, she ended up in Switzerland, for tax reasons. She died there of lung cancer, in 1995.

Joanna concluded her program by explaining how Highsmith has, and most likely will, survive cancel culture: there was no hypocrisy. She never pretended to be a nice person without prejudices. On the contrary, she reveled in her honestly lived life. She was herself unapologetically awful, and she wrote compellingly about vile and obsessed characters.

Members read selections from a variety of books, including her biography by Joan Shenkar, and Highsmith’s novels.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording S
ecretary

 

Diana Presents Edith Wharton

Jacquie's Email Notice

Hello Literary Ladies!
It's that time again! No matter how cold and windy it gets outside, no matter what we're hearing is happening across the globe, no matter what or whom we are currently worrying about, thank goodness we can count on Literature Club to bring a few hours of sisterhood and literary delight to warm our hearts for a couple of hours. Our next meeting is this Wednesday, January 19th at 12:30 pm when we will once again be meeting on Zoom to hear Diana's presentation on Edith Wharton.
Until then, have a ball! xJacquie

Laura's Minutes

Zoom meeting. Fran rang the bell at 1:16 after a pleasant half hour hearing about members and their hibernation strategies during the Omicron period, or the other camp, the happy adventures of members who traveled or went into NYC to see plays and soak up culture.Treasury still boasts $265.11, although President Fran threatens we will spend some money soon on books for the library.

Imagine having to be on Zoom in a corset???!!! 

    Diana Jaeger stepped up to our virtual podium, announcing that her subject for the day was Edith Wharton. Diana guessed that members were familiar with the three most famous of Wharton’s novels, Age of Innocence, House of Mirth, and Custom of the Country. When most raised their hands indicating that yes, indeed, this literary group was literate in the Wharton top three, Diana told us that her presentation would focus on Wharton’s life story, hopefully giving us more context to understand the novels.

    Although Wharton has been the subject of a couple of doorstop biographies, Diana primarily used Wharton’s autobiography, A Backward Glance, for information. Engaging writing wins the day!

    Edith was born to the Jones family on January 24, 1862, third in birth order after her twelve and sixteen year old brothers. Although not as wealthy as the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, the expression “keeping up with the Jones” was thought to originate with people watching Edith’s family. Edith’s mother Lucretia was not the maternal, doting person, and on the birth of her daughter, called the Irish nanny back into service. Her mother was cold and aloof.

    Edith’s earliest memory was holding her father’s hand when she was quite young, and quite dressed up. She characterized the moment as being “awakened to conscious life by love and vanity”. All her life, she loved beautiful clothes. With her brothers away at school, she was basically an only child, who loved making up stories, as well as listening to Greek myths told by a family friend.

    The family went to Europe for six years after the Civil War. By the time her father began to teach her abc’s, she had already taught herself to read. Her mother would approve the books she got to read: epics and tales. After she contracted typhoid fever when at a spa in the Black Forest of Germany, she could read as much and whatever she liked. By the time she was ten years old, she spoke French, German, Italian and English.

    Returning to New York in 1872, they lived in a brownstone Edith labeled as hideous. She was tutored at home in languages, English, and manners. She started to write in her father’s library, where she used the paper wrapping packages for her first writing paper. At eleven she starts her first novel. Her mother’s comment on Edith’s opening line: “Drawing rooms are always tidy.” So much for maternal literary encouragement!

    Edith begins to notice boys, and a “ringing in my ears…”. She asks her mother “What is the passion of love?” No answer there.

    However, her mother did keep a notebook of Edith’s poems, which she then had privately published and gave to friends. Through Longfellow, one copy got to the editor of Atlantic Monthly magazine, and he published five poems in his magazine. Edith is about 15 or 16.

    At 17, she makes her debut, unhappy, and rebelling against the expectations of society. She was miserable at the ball, in an “agony of shyness”. However, following the ball, she did have a kind of social season, where Harry Stevens fell in love with her. But after her father’s death, the engagement is called off, from “a preponderance of intellectuality”.

    There is another boy, Walter Berry at Bar Harbor in the summer of 1883, but he leaves in September. She meets Teddy Wharton, 33 years old, to her 21 years. He is a Harvard grad with a trust fund who likes fishing and hunting and such. They marry in April 1885. Edith is nervous about the physical side of marriage and asks her mother about it. Again, the door slams shut.

    The sexual side of marriage to Teddy was a failure. They loved their dogs, and they loved to travel. Edith is challenged by Edgarton Winthrop to read more systematically and deeply. After receiving an inheritance, she and Teddy return to New York, where she buys two houses, the second at 78th St and Park Ave. She has her first short story published by Scribner's.

    With her old friend Walter Berry, she writes The Decoration of Houses. It was a plea for simpler home decor. Banish the heavy draperies and furniture, and let the light in. First run of 1,000 copies sold out right away. The book continued to generate income for years.

    Edith wrote in bed in the mornings. She enjoyed her three dogs in the bed as well! The typist would come in and take the manuscript to type it. In 1901, she bought The Mount, in the Berkshires, a house and 113 acres. Here she and Teddy lived from 1902 to 11. The marriage deteriorated over these years, as Teddy flew into rages and tantrums, hunted, fished and never read anything.

    Edith longed for stimulating conversation. Henry James, her friend, said of her first novel set in ancient Italy, that Edith should “do New York”. She started House of Mirth in 1904. Wildly successful, her royalties were more than $500,000!

    In 1907 she and Teddy go to Paris, where she meets Morton Fullerton, quite the ladies' man. She starts a love affair, and a secret love diary, both lasting about two years. Meanwhile, Teddy embezzles $50,000 from her, and sells the Mount besides. She divorces him. Custom of the Country, her novel about divorce, reflects this. The heroine has four marriages!

    World War I breaks out. Edith makes intense efforts to care for refugees and makes six trips to the front lines in France. She writes of her experiences for Scribner’s, so Americans will donate money to the cause.

    In 1921 she won the Pulitzer Prize for the Age of Innocence, the first woman to do so. But with James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S.Eliot’s The Wasteland both published in 1922, she worries her writing is old fashioned. But when F.Scott Fitzgerald visits her (although drunk), she is touched.

    Her autobiography was published in 1932, leaving out her lover Morton Fullerton and lots about her mother. She died in 1937.

Respectfully submitted, Laura Rice

Carol Presents Jane Austen

 Jacquie's Email

Hello Literary Ladies!!!

I hope you had a lovely holiday season and not ALL of your holiday plans were interrupted by a COVID-related wrinkle.

So back to Zoom we go for our first meeting of 2022 this Wednesday, when Carol will be discussing Jane Austen. I, for one, will be imagining myself in Christine's beautiful parlor, snuggling down in a ridiculously comfy chair, knowing Jane herself would be most comfortable in that gracious setting (though would have much to say of the newer fashions all around her), and grateful that technology has made it such that we can still be all together, as well as be able to watch Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy swimming in the pond at Pemberly scene whenever we wish, a scene I don't believe Jane would have fantasized about herself... or would she?

Jacquie's Minutes

(Jacquie got to be both Corresponding and Recording Secretary; Christine was recovering from an operation on a ruptured tendon)

As one by one members of The Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson appeared in little boxes on my computer screen as we were once again meeting on Zoom due to the quickly spreading Omicron variant in our community, I\this writer couldn’t help but feel the weight of history creeping into the very fabric of our precious gatherings. With resigned good humor, members conveyed how contagion, illness, and the latest shut downs effected their holiday plans and how accommodations were hastily and creatively made – from pared down gatherings and flight cancellations, to no gatherings at all while family members quarantined, to larger get-togethers attended, pandemic-be-damned. Associate Member Lyn McClean spoke about her meaningful work with Afghan refugee families. And time was spent remembering that this was the day before the one-year anniversary of member Barbara Morrow’s talk on Shakespeare’s Fools, which we all were all delighting in when some were interrupted by alerts on their phones that the Capital was under attack, while others chuckled on, unaware of what was unfolding, and that this day was to be known forevermore as January 6th. And Mary Greenly quietly mentioned that she was celebrating her 90th birthday. Her many years as a member of the Literature Club, along with the ringing of the bell by President Fran Greenberg bringing our meeting to order, were reminders of the strong ties we have to the traditions of our Club, and the connection we all feel to the many storied women who came before us over the past century, as they persevered during times of war and uprising, and national and personal joys and heartaches. And finally, as news was conveyed of the passing of Recording Secretary Christine Lehner’s beloved mother, all of us were momentarily silent as we mourned another fierce story coming to an end, yet aware that her story, along with so many others, will not soon be forgotten.

After some final words about how grateful we were to be able to meet on Zoom and not cancel our meeting, which Fran might have had to do even under normal circumstances since the weather outside was icy,Treasurer Lori Walsh reported that we have $265.11 in our coffers.

At this point, we all settled in as Carol Barkin began her presentation on Jane Austen by admitting she had chosen her subject as a good excuse to re-read Austen’s six novels, (as if an excuse was ever needed!)

Using our theme of Biography as a guide, Carol chose to compare the life of Jane Austen as presented by two of her biographers – one, her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh in A Memoir of Jane Austen published in 1871, and the other, historian Lucy Worsley in Jane Austen at Home published in 2017. “There is far more interest in her life than information about it,” Carol told us, since her family destroyed all but 161 of the over 3,000 letters she wrote during her lifetime, most probably to save friends and relations the embarrassment of Austen’s sarcastic commentary. This might account for the more sanitized Victorian version of Jane that Austen-Leigh presented - the quiet and lovely Aunt Jane, sweet tempered and loving of heart, hesitant to be published, wishing to avoid publicity and uninterested in finances, versus the funny and smart woman portrayed in Worsley’s account - an early and eager feminist. Carol sees the later as a bit of a stretch, yet the former “does not account for the woman who created such strong heroines with their cool and sarcastic view of social relationships, and who saw their world so clearly.” Carol thus illustrated how this contrast shows how much biographers’ biases influence what we know, and don’t know, about our subject. What we do know is that – quote - “Jane’s life on the surface was typical of women in her time and social class; but she was thinking in surprising ways about the lives and loves of people around her.”

To readers of her novels, the facts presented about Jane Austen’s life that are known seem all too familiar. It is difficult not to fill in the blanks of Jane’s own story and character with the stories and characters she wrote about.

Between 1810-1816 Jane Austen somehow wrote or revised six full-length novels while also fulfilling her family and household obligations. Years of revising made for tightly plotted and written texts, and we, the readers and lovers of Jane Austen’s novels, can only be grateful that her life story unfolded as it did, to inspire her to write as she did. As Lucy Worsley wrote, “Only with Austen did women begin to think that they wanted – no, needed – to find Mr. Darcy. Only with Austen were women’s thoughts and feelings beautifully and accurately and amazingly brought to life. Only with Austen did women being to live as they still live today.”

Respectfully submitted,
Jacqueline Weitzman
Corresponding Secretary