12 Questions on "Holy Week," by Deborah Eisenberg

 

1.    P. 475.  Why does Dennis wonder if it was poor judgement to have brought his girlfriend Sarah?

2.    p. 477.  Why does the sight of the “solitary grower in the field” prompt Dennis to reflect on his own life?  [Read last 2 graphs of Sunday]

3.    p. 482 Any significance of parrot screaming after Dot saying people have to be more careful re: talking about their political affiliations in this country than they do at home?

4.    p.484. Why does the owner of La Marquesa “smile with hatred” when he says he doesn’t know what the poor are eating now that the price of beans has doubled.

5.    p.485.  Why does Sarah ask Dennis, “Don’t you like me … why did you have to trot out my credentials for the McGees”?  What are the credentials?  Dennis then says, “I’d only been trying to provide her with an excuse not to see them.”  Can anyone explain this?

6.    p. 486.  Does Sarah give respectability to Dennis?

7.    p. 488. “What does the expression “persecuting loveliness” mean?

8.    p.488 Why would it be “morally reprehensible not to enjoy possibly the most lavish Easter celebration in the whole of the New World?"

9.    p.492. Why does Dot say, “they’re not interested in the Resurrection at all, really. Today and tomorrow are the big days.  The Crucifixion is the part of it they all relate to.”

10.p.496. Read 5 paragraphs after “Next to me Sarah picked up a wobbly child who was steadying himself against her knees.” (Including crucifixion pronouncement).

11.p.497 and following pages (Maundy Saturday).  Any comments on the exchange between Curtis Finley and Clifford McGee (p.498)? The De Léons dinner party and the story of their son Rubén who had been involved in left-wing student politics (p505)

12.Take a look at last 3 paragraphs on p.507.  Does it give a satisfactory summation of the story?

 

15 Questions on "My Confession," by Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)

Why is it that McCarthy says that "Speaking for myself, I cannot remember a single broad altruistic emotion visiting me  -- the kind of emotion the simpler comrades, with their shining eyes and exalted faces seemed to have in copious secretion" during the period she and her first husband took part in left-wing life.  What, then was their motivation?
.
Why does McCarthy say "I see no reason to disavow my actions, which were perfectly all right, but my motives give me a little embarrassment, and just because I cannot disavow them: that fevered, contentious, trivial show off in the May Day parade is still recognizably me." (455)+

Why was "to be a Communist to possess a source of privilege?" (456)

What do you make of the hierarchy she proposes from most to least esteemed: (1) underground worker, (2) theoreticians and oracles, (3) activists (who worked on the waterfront). Last: rank and file, who made speeches, distributed leaflets, attended party and faction meetings, joining front organizations, marched in parades and demos, and that a low opinion was held of "fellow travelers"  (457)

Why would being critical of the party be a compelling reason for joining it? (458)

What is significant about the story of Ansel, who learns to drive and takes a car to California to work as an organizer for the Party?

How did McCarthy unwittingly co-sponsor a letter calling for Trotsky to have the right of asylum and his day in court? (462)

What ensued when McCarthy demanded that her name be taken off the letter? What makes this a key turning point in McCarthy's "confession."  How did it "change her life"? (465)

McCarthy says (p.467) of the majority of those who became anti-Communists during the year 1936-7 that "our anti-Communism came to us neither as the fruit of a special wisdom nor as a humiliating awakening from a prolonged deception, but as a natural event, the product of chance and propinquity. One thing followed another, and the will had little to say about it."  Have your political leanings ever followed a similar path?

Do you agree that Marxism is something you have to take up young, like ballet dancing? (467)

"I joined the anti-Communist movement without meaning to and only found out afterward, through others, the meaning or "name" assigned to what I had done.  This occurred in the late fall of 1936."  What is that "name"?  (page 450)

Why does McCarthy call a "surprise witness," Trotsky, to her side at the end of the piece? (464)

What is the role of chance in life, both in Trotsky's and McCarthy's (469)?

McCarthy ends with this quote from Trotsky, "One can foresee the consequences of a revolution or a war, but it is impossible to foresee the consequences of an autumn shooting-trip for wild ducks", and then she writes, "This shrug before the unforeseen implies an acceptance of consequences that is a far cry from penance and prophecy."  Does this statement give philosophical reassurance to the reader?

Is this a great book?

"R.U.R." as Humanist Manifesto

Silkscreen poster for a WPA production of
"R.U.R." from the mid-1930s

On June 27th, we had a group of seventeen discussants for "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots," by Karel Čapek. The more you think about the layers of ideas in "R.U.R," the more the play comes into focus as a deeply philosophical reflection on the human condition.

"R.U.R. is set on an island on which has been established a factory to produce robots.  "R.U.R." became an international sensation in the 1920s. Čapek's robots, in contrast to the characteristic robots of subsequent science fiction, are not metallic machines.  Old man Rossum, the original founder of the company, had done extensive experiments on protoplasm in order to render his creations biologically human-like. What they lack are human emotions.

In Act II, the head of physiological research at the plant, Gall, reveals that he has done research to change the robots: "I transformed them into people.  I altered them. In some ways they're already superior to us. They're stronger than we are."

The robots stage a rebellion, and kill all of the humans on the island except for the chief construction officer Alquist.  They spare his life because, the robots say, he knows how to build things. As he attempts to figure out the lost formula for the robots, two robots, Primus, a male, and Helena, a female, appear on the scene.  In a ploy worthy of Solomon, Alquist states his intention to dissect Helena, and Primus asks to be sacrificed instead.  Helena in turn offers her life in exchange for his.

Alquist knows the robots have reached a new level of existence because they demonstrate the human drive to love and be loved in return. At the end of the play, Alquist says that he, the last human, may depart the earth in peace because he has beheld the Lord's "deliverance through love, and life shall not perish."

Some questions on "R.U.R" by Karel Čapek

1.      Why is the subtitle of the play “A Collective Drama in a Comic Prologue and Three Acts.”?

2.      In what sense are the robots “universal”?

3.      Why does Helena go to the island?

4.      What were the differences between the attitudes of the older and younger Rossum re: their invention?

5.      Why do the men of the R.U.R. production team all fall in love with Helena and seem to want to possess her by giving her gifts?

6.      Why does Helena stay on the island and marry Domin, although initially she said, “I don’t want any of you.” (382)

7.      Why does Helena have a Nana?

8.      Why does Nana say to Helena, “I know very well why [God] didn’t give you a child.”

9.      Why does Dr. Gall comply with Helena’s request to make the robots more like people?

10.   Why does the production of the robots lead to children no longer being born?

11.   Why does Helena believe that destroying Rossum’s formula will make it possible for people to have children again?

12.   Why do Primus and robot Helena become attracted to each other?

13.   Why at the end of the play does Alquist proclaim Primus and Helena a new Adam and Eve and that life will “begin anew with love”?

14.   Can humans create anything that can attain humanity?

Adapted from Great Conversations 6 (Great Books Foundation)

"R.U.R" by Karel Čapek

Karel Čapek (1890-1938)

Karel Čapek was a prolific 20th-century Czech writer who wrote 
journalistic pieces, short stories, and plays. The play "R.U.R." is his most famous work. "R.U.R.," which stands for "Rossum's Universal Robots," is a dystopian account of a robot factory established with the intent to alleviate human drudgery. (It was Čapek's brother Joseph who coined the term robot, from the Czech word for "slave".)  When the robots revolt, the only recourse their human masters have is to tweak the formula used to manufacture the robots.  "R.U.R." raises deeply philosophical questions about human nature and creativity.

15 Questions on Mann's "Mario and the Magician"

1.     What is significant about the outrage of the man in bowler hat towards the narrator’s daughter running naked on the beach, and what does it say about the attitudes of the locals towards outsiders? (303)

2.     What complaints does the narrator offer concerning both "foreigners" and the local Italian population? How do these complaints shape the narrator's reaction to Cipolla's performance?

3.     What is the significance of Cipolla's physical deformity and drinking habit? Why are these elements important to his characterization?

4.     As a general observation, is Mann correct when he speaks of the  “curious, self-satisfied air so characteristic of the deformed,” which he states to be possessed by Cipolla (308)?

5.     The show begins when the giovanotto calls out “buona sera,” and proceeds with repartee between him and Cipolla.  Cipolla also says to him “people like you are just in my line. I can use them.” Do these exchanges demonstrate that Cipolla’s show is improvisational in nature? (309)

6.   What is Cippolla's goal that he wants to acheive as a performer?

7.     Why does Cipolla state that the giovanotto is unwell (“anyone can see that you are not feeling too well”) (314)

8.     Why does the narrator compare the family not leaving until intermission to them not leaving Torre earlier (“For things had been in Torre in general – queer, uncomfortable, troublesome, tense, oppressive – so precisely they were here in this hall tonight’)? (p. 321)

9.     Cipolla is a much more effective hypnotist than magician. Why do you think Mann makes this distinction?

10. Why does Mann give us a foreshadowing of Cippola’s demise when he writes “Yet I see no reason at all to cast doubt, on rational grounds, upon powers that, before our very eyes, became fatal to their possessor?” (p. 320)

11. Why on page 330 does Cipolla say to Mario, pointing to his cheek, “Kiss me, trust me, I love thee, kiss me here.”

12. Cipolla is killed by one of his own victims. What is the significance of Cipolla's death at the hands of Mario?

13. Much of the audience is horrified to witness Cipolla's assassination, yet the narrator views it as a liberation and leaves calmly with his family. Why do you believe his reaction is so different from that of the rest of the audience?

14. Is Mario justified in killing Cipolla?

15. What do you make of the narrator's attitudes towards "Southern" and "Northern" Europeans? What differences does the narrator note between the two groups

A Glossary of Italian Terms in "Mario and the Magician"

Portrait of Thomas Mann taken
in 1929, the year "Mario and the Magician" was published,
and also the year Mann won the Nobel Prize for Literatute

The narrator of Thomas Mann's story "Mario and the Magician" recounts his vacation weeks with his family in the Italian seaside resort of Torre di Venere. Mann situates the reader in the setting by the use of a number of Italian words and expressions.  To assist you in reading the story, I have prepared a glossary of these Italian terms.  Page citations are from Great Conversations 6, published by the Great Books Foundation.

page
298: cornetti al burro: croissants with butter
301: Fuggièro: apparently a first name
303: rispondi almeno: answer at least
304: molto grave: very serious
305: illusionista: illusionist
305: prestidigitore: slight-of-hand man
306: frutta di mare: seafood
307: pronti: ready
307: cominciamo: we are starting
308: buona sera: good evening
309: paura: fear
309: bè: well
309: Ha sciolto la scilinguágnolo: "he has a glib tongue"
310: Questo linguista di belle speranze: "this hopeful linguist"
310: giovanotto: young man
310: donnaiuolo: lady killer
310: duce: leader (Benito Mussolini was know as "il Duce:)
311: parla benissimo: "he speaks beautifully"
311: simpatico: pleasant (said of a person)
311: non scherziamo: "we are not kidding around"
317: Lavora bene: "he works well"
321: cioccolata e biscotti: chocolate and biscuits
321: subito signorini: "at once, gentlemen"
321: anche se no vuole: even if he didn't want to
327: ragazzo mio: my boy
328: un tratto di malinconia: a bit of melancholy
329: nossignore: no sir!
330: poveretto: poor thing
331: carabinieri: police

More on "The Daughters of the Late Colonel"

Josephine compares "that queer
 little crying noise" inside her to the yeeping
of sparrows on the window ledge. Photo by fs-phil, 

Last Monday evening, 18 members of our group, under COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, participated in a Zoom videoconference on Katherine Mansfield's short story, "The Daughters of the Late Colonel."  In the final section of the story, an organ grinder starts playing music outside the window of the residence of the two sisters, Josephine and Constantia.  Josephine's immediate reaction is to pay the organ grinder to make him stop because their late father disliked the music, however the sisters then jointly remember it doesn't matter anymore.  Their father will never again thump his cane in anger.

Constantia goes into an extended reverie in front of her "favorite Buddha" on the mantelpiece. She contemplates the sunlight on the carpet. She thinks about her mother's death many years earlier and the sisters' inability ever to meet eligible men.  Her thoughts turn speculative, "It was only when she came out of the tunnel into the moonlight or by the sea or into a thunderstorm that she felt herself.  What did it mean? What was it she was always wanting? What did it all lead to?  Now? Now?"  At the very end of the story, "she stared at a big cloud where the sun had been."

Many thanks to our group member of long-standing, Peter McGullam, for calling to my attention some comments Mansfield made about the story in a letter to the writer William Gerhardi:

"All was meant, of  course, to lead us to that last paragraph, when my two flowerless ones turned with that timid gesture, to the sun.  Perhaps now.  And after that, it seemed to me, they died as truly as father was dead." (1)

In other words, Mansfield's feelings about her characters is that their effective quarantine, whether imposed by their father or themselves, wouldn't end.

(1) "An Introduction to Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories," by Stephanie Forward.  Posted on the British Library's website.

20 Questions on "The Daughters of the Late Colonel"

Gentle readers: Please note that the first number in parentheses refers to page in Great Conversations 6, the second to the numbered section of the story.

1. Why does Constantia cry as she answers each letter of condolence? Why afterwards does it transpire that “Even now, though, when she said over to herself sadly, ‘we miss our dear father so much’ she could have cried if she’d wanted to.”   
2. Why does Constantia feel pity for the mouse (“Poor little thing...It was awful to think of it not finding anything. What would it do “)? (338,1) 
3. Why are mealtimes “now that the strain was over” a “trial” for the sisters.  (339, 2)
4. Josephine and Constantia ask Nurse Andrews to stay on another week after their father dies, even though she had “rather overdone the not leaving him till the very last.” (340, 2) Why do they quickly come to regret extending the invitation?  
5. Why is Kate referred to as “the enchanted princess.”  Why does she serve an empty pot of jam? (339,2)
6. When Farolles says to the sisters (341, 4), “These are the times when God wants us to be helpful to one another,” do you think the sisters are comforted by his words?  Is the death of a family member a special time for kindness? 
7. The sisters decline Mr. Farolles' offer to serve them Communion at home. What do you believe is behind their refusal (341, 4)? 
8. Regarding the burial, why do the sisters think, “What would father say when he found out?” and “he [father] was bound to find out sooner or later?” (342,5) 
9. The sisters are hesitant to go through their late father's belongings. Why? What are they afraid of? 
10. Read the paragraph starting, “It couldn’t be helped” and ending with “the quiet seemed to shake into little pieces” (343, 6).  How might they be attempting to have “deceived Kate.” 
11. When Constantia locks her father’s wardrobe, why is it “one of those amazingly bold things that she’d done about twice before in their lives.”  (section 6) 
12. Why is there a flashback at the end of the section 6 about pushing Benny into the pond? 
13. Aside from the litany of excuses they provide, why do you think the sisters would rather give their father's watch to Cyril than Benny in Ceylon? Are they guided more by practical or by selfish motives (section 8)? 
14. Why are the sisters so disappointed that Cyril does not have an appetite at tea? (346,8) 
15. Why do the sisters press Cyril to say whether his father still likes meringues, and then report the answer to their father? What does this incident signify about the family dynamics (section 8 and 9)? 
16. What leads to the sisters' discussion concerning Kate's dismissal? (section 10)?   
17. Why does Josephine think they can’t postpone Kate’s dismissal again, if they “postpone it this time.”? Why in the end are they unable to come to a conclusion (section 11) 
18. Constantia focuses on "her favourite Buddha" in section 12. What does the Buddha signify? What does the Buddha know that Constantia doesn't know? 
19. Read the paragraph in section 12 starting “until the barrel organ stopped playing Constantia stayed before the Buddha” and ending “What did it all lead to. Now? Now?”  What is the answer to her question, “What was it she was always wanting”? 
20. What do you think will change for the sisters now that their father is dead? What does your answer signify about their father's role in their lives? 

Mansfield's "The Daughters of the Late Colonel"

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923),
in a photo taken in 1912

Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Daughters of the Late Colonel," takes place during the week following the death and burial of Colonel Pinner.  Through the words, thoughts, and interactions of his two daughters, Constantia and Josephine, we become privy to the state of the Pinner household, and how death has disrupted it.  In particular, Mansfield uses the Colonel's death to put into relief two characters: the family's housekeeper, Kate, and the sisters' nephew Cyril.  Constantia and Josephine remain the main characters of the story. It's fascinating to consider whether the sisters are separate or fused.

In Sections 8 and 9 of the story, Cyril pays his aunts a visit for afternoon tea.  In a scene either real or imagined, they usher him into the inner sanctum of the Colonel's room.  It's told as part of the sisters' dialogue as to the disposition of the Colonel's watch, a key symbol in "The Daughters of the Late Colonel."

Decameron: "A Plain Most Fair and Delectable"

Illustration from Le Décameron, published  in 1432, in a Flemish edition.

Many thanks to the 20 participants in our group's first-ever virtual book discussion. It was necessitated by the coronavirus outbreak, and we held it via Zoom video conferencing last Tuesday.  In keeping with the zeitgeist, the spirit of this terrifying time, the subject of our discussion was Boccaccio's Decameron.  

The Decameron was written in the mid-14th century, and its introduction gives Boccaccio's reportage on an outbreak of bubonic plague in his home city of Florence in the year 1348. Ten different narrators, quarantined in a country villa, recount ten stories a day for ten days.

I suppose the Decameron is best known for its bawdy tales.  One we looked at, the tale of Nathan and Mitridanes from Day 10, in contrast is a deeply philosophical reflection on how and why the kindest souls among us strive to the nth degree to be generous to others.

Participants wondered why Boccaccio chose to narrate gory details of suffering and death. In fact, he explains his motive at the very beginning of his introduction:

This horrid beginning will be to you even such as to wayfarers is a steep and rugged mountain, beyond which stretches a plain most fair and delectable, which the toil of the ascent and descent does but serve to render more agreeable to them; for as the last degree of joy brings with it sorrow, so misery has ever its sequel of happiness.

Bibliotherapy for This Difficult Time

Boccaccio (1313-1375)

I'll be leading a Special Edition discussion of two portions of Boccaccio's Decameron, set during the plague year of 1348, on Tuesday evening, April 14th, at 7:15 p.m., via Zoom.

The first part is Boccaccio's eyewitness account of the plague conditions in Florence, the second the story of Nathan and Mitridanes, a parable on generosity.  Read Boccaccio's introduction and you'll understand how a 14th-century plague differed from our current 21st-century crisis.  Then join Boccaccio's storytellers on warm and verdant country afternoons for some great escapist literature.

To register and receive the Zoom link the day before the program, click here and scroll to bottom of page.

To get started with the readings (the "First Day Introduction" and "Day 10, Story 3") please go to:

https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php?myID=d01intro&lang=eng

and

https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php?myID=nov1003&lang=eng

OR

use a search engine to find the Brown University Decameron Web.  You will find the texts in both English and Italian, and a wealth of valuable information on Boccaccio and his Decameron.

Check here in coming days for details about joining our Zoom conversation.

"The Man Who Could Work Miracles," by H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

Our featured selection this month is the H.G. Wells short story "The Man Who Could Work Miracles," first published in 1898 in the Illustrated London News. According to WorldCat.org, the world's largest bibliographic database, it appeared for the first time in book form in the United States in 1899 as part of a Wells story collection entitled Tales of Space and Time, published by Doubleday of  New York.

The story mentions a particular date, Sunday, November 10, 1896, as the day when our protagonist, Mr. Fotheringay, "egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig [a minister], began to work miracles."  In reality, November 10, 1896 was a Tuesday!  Wells goes on to say, "The reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date. He will object, probably has already objected, that certain points in this story are improbable, that if  any things of the sort already described had indeed occurred, they would have been in all the papers a year ago."

Is Wells skirting a boundary between fact and fiction?  He was, after all, the original author of the novel The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of Earth. An adaptation of The War of the Worlds was broadcast as a radio drama narrated by the great Orson Welles on October 30, 1938. It created widespread panic among radio listeners fooled by Welles's "Breaking News" approach to the the broadcast. They thought Martians had really begun to invade New Jersey.  By the way, October 30, 1938 was a Sunday!

15 Years of Great Books at Huntington Public Library

Last night's cake showed off
Victoria Craven's baking skills.

Last evening, 18 patrons met for a stimulating conversation about Jane Addams's 1916 magazine piece "The Devil Baby at Hull House."  It marked the 15th Anniversary of our group.  One attendee, who has become a dear friend, had been at our first meeting in January 2005!  On that occasion, the group's "founding mother," Carolyn Hasler, a former librarian at this library, and I went out on a limb in terms of difficulty level by setting Shakespeare's Othello as the very first reading.  Many thanks to the hundreds of participants over the years who have embraced this community effort and engaged with literary masterworks.

Jane Addams's Urban Folk Legend

1940 Addams Postage Stamp

Jane Addams's "The Devil Baby at Hull House" was published in the October 1916 Atlantic Monthly.  It was also published the same year as part of her book The Long Road of Women's Memory.

"The Devil Baby at Hull House" describes a rumor of a "devil baby" with cloven hoofs, pointed ears, and a diminutive tail residing at the Hull House Settlement in Chicago, which Addams founded in the 1890s.  In modern parlance, we would say the story went "viral" in the surrounding immigrant neighborhoods.

The stories were told mostly by women, especially older women.  Addams writes, "Whenever I heard the high eager voices of old women, I was irresistibly interested, and left anything I might be doing in order to listen to them."