Barbara Presents Rebecca West

Jacquie's Email I awoke with a start early this morning.
My first thought, “OMG! My Lit Club presentation is in two and a half weeks, and I haven't begun to write!”

After some deep breathing to calm my rapidly beating heart and the realization that it was not yet morning, I attempted to get back to sleep, but my mind began to race with thoughts both existential and mundane. I won't bore you with the specifics, but luckily one of those thoughts included calculating what day it was and remembering I had to send out my reminder about this week's upcoming meeting. (And not to worry - I'm all set with the menu for my Yom Kippur evening meal...)

It is, somehow, mid-September and the inaugural meeting of the 2023-2024 Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson's season is set for this Wednesday, September 20th. Our theme this year: Literature Club Topics from the Years We Were Born (or topics inspired by the year a member was born.) *

Our first presenter is Barbara Morrow who will bring us back to 1944/45 and the World at War: Rebecca West. We will be meeting at 12:30pm, hopefully in Frances' lovely back garden. Our meeting will officially begin at 1pm.

The weather forecast currently calls for a sunny 74 degrees, so bring your hats and blankets! If the forecast should change, we will be meeting inside.

Unfortunately, we will not be Zooming or recording the meeting, but, as always, if you are unable to attend, Chirstine's meeting minutes are certain to be a delight in and of themselves.

I look forward to seeing you all soon! x Jacquie

Christine's Minutes For the first meeting of this 2023- 2024 season, in which we board the Wayback Machine to the Literature Club programs from the years of our birth, thirteen members gathered around the pool at Christine’s house. Perhaps for a last taste of summer, but not necessarily. Our esteemed presenter, Barbara Morrow, came accompanied by her spousal and most distinguished Sherpa, George, always ready to help the cause of Literature.

President Constance rang the bell a little after 1 pm.

Christine read the not-really-minutes from our summer gathering. Laura read her minutes from the last meeting of last year, in which Carla presented on Kurt Weill. All approved.

In the absence of our treasurer, Constance reported that we have $170 in the treasury, and told us of the very satisfying–if logistically challenging–delivery of 50 books to Yonkers.

Since the Hastings Library seems to already have copies of all Helen Barolini’s books, we continue to contemplate an appropriate gift in her honor. We will check if the library has a copy of her excellent cookbook, Festa.

Revisiting a topic we had all hoped was dead and gone, and given the current unfortunate resurgence of COVID, we have decided that for the rest of this year, we will have our meetings outdoors whenever possible, or else inside, masking optional.

Several books were recommended by members:

My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Short Stories, by Kate Atkinson

The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese

Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck

The Girl with Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Our presenter, Barbara Morrow, started our year with a fascinating program about Rebecca West. She explained her not-entirely-usual reason for this choice: on her shelf was a venerable 1943 edition of West’s famous (though often unread) tome about the Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Barbara admitted that she, too, had found it not quite necessary to finish the book, though she read sections with great interest, and shared them with us.

In 1947, Rebecca West was pictured on the cover of Time magazine, and declared to be the world’s “Number One Woman Writer.” Yet who reads her now? It is question we will keep asking.

In 1892, the writer we know as Rebecca West was born as Cicely Isabel Fairfield, in London, into an intellectual and liberal household. Though her journalist father left the family when Cicely was only 8, she surely acquired from him an early passion for abstract ideas, though her feminist vision would diverge from his. Her mother, Isabella, was a pianist, and West grew up surrounded by music, literature and good conversation. But not much money.

West studied to be an actress, though that was not to be her métier. But she loved the theater. She was 18 when she wrote her first theatrical review, of a play by Gorky. Her reviews were not mealy-mouthed or anodyne, as she quickly made manifest. The strength of her opinions was such, that in order to allay her mother’s fears for notoriety, at 19 Cicely Fairfield began using the name Rebecca West, a character drawn from Romersholm, by Ibsen. She later claimed that she chose the name in haste and liked neither Ibsen nor the character.

As Rebecca West, she continued reviewing and writing on a multitude of social issues. She was well-informed, funny, and unrelenting.

In 1912, H.G. Wells was 46 years old and one of the most famous writers in the world. He was both a supporter of women’s rights, and a well-known libertine. Rebecca West was 20. A snide-ish comment in her review of his novel, Marriage, provoked Wells to invite the young reviewer to lunch with his wife and himself. Thus it began. She found him ‘most interesting’; they talked for hours. He later said he was struck by her “curious mixture of maturity and infantilism”.

Their son, Anthony West, was born in 1914. Until his teens he believed that Rebecca West was his aunt, and H.G. Wells, called Wellsie, was a family friend. (Note: this fiction did not end well.) Anthony’s relationship with his mother went from cool to terrible.

Enough gossip. (As if there is ever enough.) It is her work which will last. Her first novel, The Return of the Soldier, about a returning shell-shocked soldier, came out in 1917. In 1981 it was made into a film starring Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson and Julie Christy.

Meanwhile, the stress of her relationship with Wells, her two residences and binary existences, caused West to suffer from various ailments, including skin problems.

Her second novel, The Judge, came out in 1922. In 1923, she visited the US for a lecture tour, and met numerous literary luminaries, including Glenway Wescott and Alexander Wolcott.

West met Henry Andrews in 1928, at a party given by Vera Brittain - who would later write Testament of Youth. West and Andrews married in 1930. Having lost his job in banking, but then inheriting significant money, Henry Andrews became a scholar, and ‘something of a pedant’. West regarded Andrews as being, like herself, a perennially ‘displaced person.’

In 1936, while lecturing for the British Council in the Balkans, West fell in love with the region, and with the Serbs in particular. She returned again and again. Her ginormous tome, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (which I have variously called Black Falcon and Black Lamb, Grey Lamb and Black Falcon, and so on.) was published in 1941. The New Yorker called it “as astounding as it was brilliant.”

During WWII, West started writing for The New Yorker, particularly about criminals and traitors. Harold Ross later assigned her to cover the Nuremberg Trials. It was an intense time. Her best-loved novel, The Fountain Overflows, quite obviously autobiographical, came out in 1957 and was a best-seller. Understandably so. The Christmas scene we read aloud should be a classic of the genre. The fifties should have been a glorious time for her. But that was not to be the case. Her son, Anthony, with whom she had always had a fraught relationship, published his novel, Heritage, in 1955. The novel was a thinly disguised autobiography in which the mother is vilified. West succeeded in stopping it from being published in Britain until after her death. Despite occasional reconciliations, her relations with her son continued to pain her, and he was not with her when she died in 1983.

In 1959, she was created a Dame of the British Empire. West continued writing and traveling extensively, and being active socially, with such friends as Martha Gellhorn, Doris Lessing and Warren Beatty. Her health began failing in the seventies, and Dame Cicely Fairfield died, bedridden in 1983.

Members read from Victoria Glendenning’s biography; from Black Lamb and Grey Facon; from West’s essay, “Greenhouse with Cyclamens,” about the Nuremburg trials, collected in A Train of Powder (she was underwhelmed by the efficiency of the so-called security); from Andrea Barrett’s introduction to The Fountain Overflows; from the critic Elizabeth Janeway’s review in the New York Times. All the readings were much enjoyed.

Respectfully submitted,

Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary

Summer Picnic

Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies! Although it is pouring rain at the moment, it looks like the weather gods are smiling on us - at least at this moment - and we will have clear skies for our summer meeting this Wednesday around Christine's beautiful pool. We will be gathering at noon - please feel free to bring a bag lunch, your suit, and a towel.
    I look forward to discussing Umbertina, Helen Barolini's literary masterwork, with you all. How I wish we had thought to read it together while we still had a chance of having Helen lead our discussion. What a legacy she has left us.
     I know many of you are away. You will be missed! As we say in my family when someone is missing out on a get-together, "We'll try not to have too much fun!" xJacquie

No Minutes, Just Photos

Carla Presents Kurt Weill

Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! Our final performance of the magnificent 2022-2023 season of the Hastings-on-Hudson Literature Club will feature Carla Potash in the starring role as Presenter on Kurt Weill. This will take place, weather permitting, in the outdoor performance space of Carol's backyard. Lighting by God.*

Seating will begin at 12:30pm with pre-performance remarks beginning at 1pm. Live streaming will be available. Again, please inform our technical director if you would like to Zoom. 

And since I never pass up the opportunity to watch Raul Julia in performance, or in anything, here is a link to a filmed version of him singing and dancing Tango Ballad (with the gorgeous Julie Migenes) from Weill's Threepenny Opera.

Laura Rice's Minutes (substituting for Christine Lehner)  

Constance called the meeting to order in Carol Barkin’s lovely garden. The stunning irises were a perfect distraction from Constance reading the minutes of the previous Noh Theater presentation by Laura Rice.

The treasurer’s report would have to wait in the absence of our treasurer, Lori Walsh. Discussion of expenses ensued. Our usual library contribution hovers around $130; the cost of printing our annual program about $125.

Constance was delighted to announce she had found an organization eager for the oversupply of children’s books in the Hastings Library's used book shop: the Family Service Society of Yonkers. They run a summer camp program in Ossining and would like 50 books for levels from kindergarten to fifth grade. July 7 is the first day of camp. At the end of the camp season, each child will take home one of the books.

In Helen Barolini's memory we decided to read one of her books. We wondered if  the Hastings Library hzx all of her books. To be checked out.

About our summer picnic. We decided that any Wednesday in July or the first two weeks of August would work. Christine, who has volunteered to host, will choose the date.

Carla’s presentation on Kurt Weill:

We learned that the Weill family records date back to the 14th century, when they took the name of the town in Germany where they lived. Kurt’s father became a cantor, breaking a long succession of rabbis in the Weill family. Kurt was born in 1900, the third of four children. His musical gifts showed at a young age and were encouraged by his parents. He attended school at the synagogue, but also took piano and organ lessons, and began composing at 10 years of age! He and his siblings put on plays and musical events at the synagogue, with Kurt playing the piano and directing the enterprises. By the early 1920’s he was recognized as one of the leading young classical composers in Germany.

In 1924 he met Lotte Lenya. Life was never the same! We heard selections from their letters to each other, beginning with the passionate and ardent, and moving through a cooler tone, when their relationship was strained. They married, the separated, they divorced, and finally, they remarried.

Weill’s work includes music for cantatas, operas, requiems, plays with music and music for radio and movies. He collaborated with Berthold Brecht, Maxwell Anderson, Alan Jay Lerner, Ira Gershwin and others. Several of his songs live on outside of the theater: ‟September Song,” ‟ My Foolish Heart,” ‟My Ship” and ‟Mac the Knife.”

In addition to writing the music, Weill cast, directed, produced, and generally ran the show. Stress gave him heart incidents. He died at 50 years of age in 1950. Lenya married several times after his death, but she made it her mission to perform his works and burnish his memory.

After this introduction, we were ready to stage The Threepenny Opera, perhaps Weill’s most famous work. Carla’s summary explained the turf war between the two rival parties. The daughter (Polly) on one side is marrying the biggest crook on the other (Mac). Polly’s father, Beggar Boss Peachum plans to capture and hang Mac, but amid lots of complications, no hanging, but yes, that famous song. Oh, and lots of satire about poverty and crime.

We heard songs leading to the scenes we performed with aplomb! And no gallows.

The second play we explored was Lost in the Stars, from the novel Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton. Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill adapted it for the stage, with Weill writing the songs. Set in South Africa, it was produced in 1949. The main character, an African minister, seeks his son, who has gone off to Johannesburg. Sadly, in Johannesburg, the young man kills a man during the course of a robbery. His victim turns out to be the son of the white man who has befriended his father and the congregation in the village. After a trial, the minister’s son is to be hanged.

The two fathers, who each have lost a son, speak together, conveying hope for the future.

Two very different theater pieces, yet each brings social conditions of the times to the audience.

I forgot to mention that between the two plays, we adjourned to Carol’s living room, as the driveway project next door clattered so loudly!

And here endeth our season of drama on the Hudson. Thank you, Carla.

Respectfully submitted,
Laura Rice

Laura Presents Noh Theater

Jacquie's Email: Hello Literary Ladies! If there's any meeting where masks are appropriate to wear, it is for this Wednesday's presentation by Laura Rice on Noh Theater! We will be meeting at Christine's house.

I'm so sorry I will not be with you on Wednesday for what I'm sure will be another wonderful presentation, but while you are meeting, I will be in my sister's back garden in Jerusalem for my niece's rehearsal dinner before celebrating her wedding on Friday in Jaffa. Good things always seem to happen at the same time. Shalom! Jacquie

Christine's Minutes: Your secretary feels confident in writing that the meeting of May 3rd began unlike any other meeting in the history of the Literature Club. Our presenter, Laura Rice, arrived with a suitcase full of kimonos and a portable folding coatrack which she installed on the front porch of Christine’s house. Each arriving member was encouraged to choose a kimono to wear for the meeting, which would involve dramatic enactments of selections from NOH repertoire. Following their costuming, members gathered in Christine’s living room.

President Constance rang the bell. The minutes were read and accepted. The treasurer reported that, having spent $139 on flowers for Helen Barolini’s funeral, we are still quite flush with $270.20.

Diana suggested that we invite Helen’s daughters, Niki and Linda, to our summer meeting when we will discuss Helen’s novel, Umbertina. All agreed this was an excellent plan.

Constance said that she will speak to Debbie at the Library about getting Helen’s books for the library.

The venue for our next meeting on May 17th , originally scheduled for Jacquie’s, remains up in the air. Laura has volunteered to take the minutes in Christine’s absence.

A question about the interpretation of the theme for the upcoming season was quickly resolved. As ever, it was suggested that the theme could be variously interpreted according to whatever you would like to do.

In another first for the Literature Club, Laura then introduced us to Noh Theatre with a start with a YouTube excerpt from the Noh play Kuroduka.  It was indeed very helpful to see - and hear – real Noh actors; otherwise, it might have been difficult to imagine just how slow are their movements, and just how loud are their words.

Then Laura took us back in time to the 1990s when, thanks to a well-spent grant from the NEA, Laura and another teacher at Hastings High School went to Japan to study Noh drama.

So, to begin our education. No, Noh is not realistic theatre. Yes, Noh does lend itself to occasional sophomoric wordplay.

Upon entering the theatre, the audience sees the porch of a small house. There are four columns on the stage, supporting a tile roof. Stage left there is a walkway onto the stage for the actors. Stage right there sits the chorus. Upstage are musicians, and behind them a painting of a pine tree, a symbol of longevity.

The play opens with a character walking, very slowly, on to the stage and explaining who he is and where he is going.

Noh theatre developed in the 1200s, influenced by Buddhism coming from China as well as traditional Yamato dances. During the Muromachi period, 1336 to 1573, Noh theatre took shape. In particular, the Shogun Yoshimitsu and two actors, father and son Zen priests, reworked the form into the Noh theatre we still see. Their texts and rules established Noh as a refined art for the nobility, a reflection of the culture.

There are five types of Noh drama:
1 the god play
2 the warrior play
3 play with a female protagonist
4 the miscellaneous and madwoman play
5 the demon play
A typical presentation includes three Noh plays, each separated by a kyogen, a lighthearted comedy sketch. Spectators will often bring scripts with them so that they can follow along with the play. All roles are played by men, Noh kidding, and they speak in their natural voices when playing men or women. However, they wear masks when playing women, demons and spirits. The masks are smaller than the actors’ faces.

The first play members performed was Atsumori, by Seami. Properly kimono’d, aand standing in a semi-circle in front of the fireplace, standing in for the pine tree, they read the parts of the Priest, the Reapers, a Young Reaper, and Atsumori – our hero. When staged in true Noh style, everything happens very very slowly; which gives the audience time to consider the wisdom of some great lines, such as the chorus telling us: “Put away from you wicked friends; summon to your side a virtuous enemy.”

After acquainting us with our first Noh play, Laura then presented the remarkable Nine Levels: A Pedagogical Guide for Teachers of Acting. We read aloud the last three: Level Nine, The Marks of Coarseness and Leadenness, as embodied by the abilities of the tree squirrel. Level Eight, The Marks of Strength and Coarseness, explained with this, “A tiger three days after birth is all eager to eat an ox.” Level Seven: The Marks of Strength and [Regard for] Details, referred to the contrast between the metal hammer’s flashing, while the “precious sword’s gleam is cold.”

Then three more members clad in kimonos ascended to the stage and read from a Poem Play, Haku Rakuten, also by Seami, in which a Chinese poet arrives at the Japanese seashore, and is found by fishermen. Members acted the parts of Haku, the Two Fishermen, the Old Fisherman and the Chorus. The fishermen engage with Haku on the subject on poetry; then one of the fishermen is revealed as the god of Japanese poetry, and a great wind blows from their billowing sleeves and sends the Chinese poet and his ship back to China.

Returning to the pedagogy, still working backwards, we read Level Six: The Mark of Surface Design, encapsulated by “the Path of paths is not the usual path.” Skipping Level Five (Versatility and Precision), we moved on to Level Four: The Mark of the Genuine Flower. This level is rendered thus: “In the luminous mist the sun sinks; the myriad mountains are crimson.” Level Three: The Mark of the Tranquil Flower has a wonderfully elegant saying, “In a silver bowl, he piles snow.” With the last levels, actors approach the pinnacle of perfect acting. Level Two: The Mark of the Profoundly Brilliant Flower, is symbolized again with snow. “The snow covers a thousand mountains; how come a lone peak is not white?” And finally, to Level One: The Mark of the Miraculous Flower, about which we read: “In Silla at midnight, the sun is bright.”

With reluctance, we returned to our pedestrian, Western, and quicker lives, grateful for an afternoon spent with the glacially slow Noh drama, and of course, for the opportunity to wear lovely kimonos.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

In Memory of Helen Barolini (1925-2023)

Helen Barolini, a longtime member of the Literature Club, died at age 97 on March 29, 2023. We attended her memorial service on May 1, 2023. 

In her memory, we read and discussed her novel, Umbertina, at our summer meeting, July 19. 

Only the infirmities of age stopped her from coming to meetings. During the pandemic, her daughter Niki, helped her attend Zoom meetings. Her love of literature was an inspiration for all of us.

Below is her obituary, by Alex James, published in The New York Times on April 20, 2023.

Helen Barolini, 1987, Hastings

Helen Barolini, Chronicler of Italian American Women, Dies at 97

As a novelist, a poet and an editor, she sought to illuminate rarely told stories of her immigrant female forebears in a new land.

Helen Barolini, a novelist, essayist and poet who explored the challenges of assimilation, as well as the hard-won victories of feminist emancipation experienced by Italian American women, died on March 29 at her home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. She was 97.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Teodolinda Barolini.

A native of Syracuse, N.Y., whose grandparents immigrated from southern Italy in the late 19th century, Ms. Barolini brought their journey, and those of many others, to life in Umbertina, her celebrated 1979 historical novel tracing four generations of women in a single Italian American family as they come to terms with their origins and identity in a new land, and with an ever-changing social landscape.

“It is the Madonna of Italian American literature in that it shows the transition from the Italian immigrant to American citizen like no other book of its genre,” Fred Gardaphé, then the director of Italian American studies at SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island and now a professor at the City University of New York, was quoted as saying in an article in The New York Times in 1999, when the book was reissued.

Throughout Ms. Barolini’s career, her work was animated by the belief that Italian American women were underrepresented, not only as subjects in American literature but also as authors, and that as a group they faced what she called a “double erasure, both as Italians and as women,” Teodolinda Barolini said in a phone interview.

Committed throughout her life to promoting Italian poetry and literature, she always sought to broaden the depictions of her people in popular culture beyond Sopranos-style stereotypes, while giving voice to those previously unheard.

Such beliefs inspired her influential 1985 compilation of short fiction, memoirs and poems, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women.

“I think Italian American literature belongs, interestingly enough, not so much in immigrant literature but in the kind of literature that deals with the outsider,” she said in a 1993 interview published in Melus, a journal devoted to multiethnic literature. “Jews have done this, and Blacks have done this; and they have very pronounced figures — very interesting figures that they have created of the isolated person in an alien society.”

“The Blacks, the Jews, the Irish all have their spokesmen,” she added. “Why not the Italians?”

Helen Frances Mollica was born on Nov. 18, 1925, the eldest of three children of Anthony Mollica, the son of Sicilian immigrants and a self-made man who built a thriving fruit importation and distribution business, and Angela (Cardamone) Mollica, the daughter of immigrants from Calabria.

A gifted student throughout her youth, Ms. Barolini graduated with honors from Syracuse University in 1947, and afterward traveled to Italy to study its culture, history and literature. The next year, she met her future husband, the esteemed Italian novelist and poet Antonio Barolini, in Florence.

The couple married in 1950, had three daughters, and spent a decade bouncing between Italy and the United States, where Ms. Barolini earned a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University. She also worked as a translator of Italian literature, including her husband’s short stories, which were published in English in The New Yorker.

In those early years, “I saw my husband as the more important writer,” she told Melus. “It was after I began to get more in touch with myself that I said, ‘Wait a minute, I want to write. I don’t want to just be the carrier of someone else’s voice.’”

With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ms. Barolini began work on Umbertina. The seed of the idea came on a 1965 trip to Calabria, where she discovered a heart-shaped tin sewing kit like those used by rural Italian women in her grandmother’s day.

With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ms. Barolini began work onUmbertina. The seed of the idea came on a 1965 trip to Calabria, where she discovered a heart-shaped tin sewing kit like those used by rural Italian women in her grandmother’s day.

Taking the time and setting as a starting point, she meticulously researched the historical conditions of each era portrayed in the book and infused the narrative with a feminist sensibility owing to Betty Friedan, the author of the landmark 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, and others. While outwardly a tale of diaspora, “I still think that Umbertina is more a feminist statement,” Ms. Barolini later said.

In addition to her daughter Teodolinda, Ms. Barolini is survived by two other daughters, Nicoletta and Susanna Barolini; a brother, Anthony Mollica Jr.; and five grandchildren.

In later books like Chiaroscuro: Essays on Identity and Their Other Side: Six American Women and the Lure of Italy, Ms. Barolini returned to the subjects and themes that propelled Umbertina.

 “Theirs was an epic in American life, and it should be written,” she said in the Melus interview, referring to immigrant women like her forebears, “for they who lived it kept no diaries. But we descendants can write and tell, and it’s time now before the last of them die out.”

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