American Gods earned Neil Gaiman the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Bram Stoker Award. Gaiman reinvents mythology better than any writer I know. Follow his inky of map of the American mythological landscape.
We'll be meeting to discuss this book on October 8th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Some thoughts about The Sheltering Sky...
Is this a horror novel? Does it follow the conventions of the horror genre? How or how not?
Would you describe Kit and Port’s relationship as emotionally healthy? Do they love one another? Why or why not?
Of the three main characters, (Kit, Port and Tunner) which is most in control of their own destiny?
Have the attitudes of United States citizen’s towards Arab Africa changed at all since the initial publication of the novel in 1949? How do the attitudes of the American and the French characters towards the “natives” differ?
The Sheltering Sky is often cited as the precursor to the literature of the Beat Generation. Do you think this is an accurate assessment?
==========
Here is Tennessee Williams’ original review of the book as published in the New York Times:
An Allegory of Man and His Sahara
By TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
After several literary seasons given over, mostly, to the frisky antics of kids, precociously knowing and singularly charming, but not to be counted on for those gifts that arrive by no other way than the experience and contemplation of a truly adult mind, now is obviously a perfect time for a writer with such a mind to engage our attention. That is precisely the event to be celebrated in the appearance of "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles' first novel.
It has been a good while since first novels in America have come from men in their middle or late thirties (Paul Bowles is 38). Even in past decades the first novel has usually been written during the writers' first years out of college. Moreover, because success and public attention operate as a sort of pressure cooker or freezer, there has been a discouraging tendency for the talent to bake or congeal at a premature level of inner development.
In America the career almost invariably becomes an obsession. The "get-ahead" principle, carried to such extreme, inspires our writers to enormous efforts. A new book must come out every year. Otherwise they get panicky, and the first thing you know they belong to Alcoholics Anonymous or have embraced religion or plunged headlong into some political activity with nothing but an inchoate emotionalism to bring to it or to be derived from it. I think that this stems from a misconception of what it means to be a writer or any kind of creative artist. They feel it is something to adopt in the place of actual living, without understanding that art is a by-product of existence.
Paul Bowles has deliberately rejected that kind of rabid professionalism. Better known as a composer than a writer, he has not allowed his passion for either form of expression to interfere with his growth into completeness of personality. Now this book has come at the meridian of the man and artist. And, to me very thrillingly, it brings the reader into sudden, startling communion with a talent of true maturity and sophistication of a sort that I had begun to fear was to be found nowadays only among the insurgent novelists of France, such as Jean Genet and Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.
With the hesitant exception of one or two war books by returned soldiers, "The Sheltering Sky" alone of the books that I have recently read by American authors appears to bear the spiritual imprint of recent history in the western world. Here the imprint is not visible upon the surface of the novel. It exists far more significantly in a certain philosophical aura that envelopes it.
There is a curiously double level to this novel. The surface is enthralling as narrative. It is impressive as writing. But above that surface is the aura that I spoke of, intangible and powerful, bringing to mind one of those clouds that you have seen in summer, close to the horizon and dark in color and now and then silently pulsing with interior flashes of fire. And that is the surface of the novel that has filled me with such excitement.
The story itself is a chronicle of startling adventure against a background of the Sahara and the Arab-populated regions of the African Continent, a portion of the world seldom dealt with by first-rate writers who actually know it. Paul Bowles does know it, and much better, for instance, than it was known by AndrÈ Gide. He probably knows it even better than Albert Camus. For Paul Bowles has been going to Africa, off and on, since about 1930. It thrills him, but for some reason it does not upset his nervous equilibrium. He does not remain in the coastal cities. At frequent intervals he takes journeys into the most mysterious recesses of the desert and mountain country of North Africa, involving not only hardship but peril.
"The Sheltering Sky" is the chronicle of such a journey. Were it not for the fact that the chief male character, Port Moresby, succumbs to an epidemic fever during the course of the story, it would not be hard to identify him with Mr. Bowles himself. Like Mr. Bowles, he is a member of the New York intelligentsia who became weary of being such a member and set out to escape it in remote places. Escape it he certainly does. He escapes practically all the appurtenances of civilized modern life. Balanced between fascination and dread, he goes deeper and deeper into this dreamlike "awayness."
From then on the story is focused upon the continuing and continually more astonishing adventures of his wife, Kit, who wanders on like a body in which the rational mechanism is gradually upset and destroyed. The liberation is too intense, too extreme, for a nature conditioned by and for a state of civilized confinement. Her primitive nature, divested one by one of its artificial reserves and diffidences, eventually overwhelms her, and the end of this novel is as wildly beautiful and terrifying as the whole panorama that its protagonists have crossed.
In this external aspect the novel is, therefore, an account of startling adventure. In its interior aspect, "The Sheltering Sky" is an allegory of the spiritual adventure of the fully conscious person into modern experience. This is not an enticing way to describe it. It is a way that might suggest the very opposite kind of a novel from the one that Paul Bowles has written. Actually this superior motive does not intrude in explicit form upon the story, certainly not in any form that will need to distract you from the great pleasure of being told a first-rate story of adventure by a really first-rate writer.
I suspect that a good many people will read this book and be enthralled by it without once suspecting that it contains a mirror of what is most terrifying and cryptic within the Sahara of moral nihilism, into which the race of man now seems to be wandering blindly.
December 4, 1949
================================
We'll be meeting to discuss this book on September 10th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.
Would you describe Kit and Port’s relationship as emotionally healthy? Do they love one another? Why or why not?
Of the three main characters, (Kit, Port and Tunner) which is most in control of their own destiny?
Have the attitudes of United States citizen’s towards Arab Africa changed at all since the initial publication of the novel in 1949? How do the attitudes of the American and the French characters towards the “natives” differ?
The Sheltering Sky is often cited as the precursor to the literature of the Beat Generation. Do you think this is an accurate assessment?
==========
Here is Tennessee Williams’ original review of the book as published in the New York Times:
An Allegory of Man and His Sahara
By TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
After several literary seasons given over, mostly, to the frisky antics of kids, precociously knowing and singularly charming, but not to be counted on for those gifts that arrive by no other way than the experience and contemplation of a truly adult mind, now is obviously a perfect time for a writer with such a mind to engage our attention. That is precisely the event to be celebrated in the appearance of "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles' first novel.
It has been a good while since first novels in America have come from men in their middle or late thirties (Paul Bowles is 38). Even in past decades the first novel has usually been written during the writers' first years out of college. Moreover, because success and public attention operate as a sort of pressure cooker or freezer, there has been a discouraging tendency for the talent to bake or congeal at a premature level of inner development.
In America the career almost invariably becomes an obsession. The "get-ahead" principle, carried to such extreme, inspires our writers to enormous efforts. A new book must come out every year. Otherwise they get panicky, and the first thing you know they belong to Alcoholics Anonymous or have embraced religion or plunged headlong into some political activity with nothing but an inchoate emotionalism to bring to it or to be derived from it. I think that this stems from a misconception of what it means to be a writer or any kind of creative artist. They feel it is something to adopt in the place of actual living, without understanding that art is a by-product of existence.
Paul Bowles has deliberately rejected that kind of rabid professionalism. Better known as a composer than a writer, he has not allowed his passion for either form of expression to interfere with his growth into completeness of personality. Now this book has come at the meridian of the man and artist. And, to me very thrillingly, it brings the reader into sudden, startling communion with a talent of true maturity and sophistication of a sort that I had begun to fear was to be found nowadays only among the insurgent novelists of France, such as Jean Genet and Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.
With the hesitant exception of one or two war books by returned soldiers, "The Sheltering Sky" alone of the books that I have recently read by American authors appears to bear the spiritual imprint of recent history in the western world. Here the imprint is not visible upon the surface of the novel. It exists far more significantly in a certain philosophical aura that envelopes it.
There is a curiously double level to this novel. The surface is enthralling as narrative. It is impressive as writing. But above that surface is the aura that I spoke of, intangible and powerful, bringing to mind one of those clouds that you have seen in summer, close to the horizon and dark in color and now and then silently pulsing with interior flashes of fire. And that is the surface of the novel that has filled me with such excitement.
The story itself is a chronicle of startling adventure against a background of the Sahara and the Arab-populated regions of the African Continent, a portion of the world seldom dealt with by first-rate writers who actually know it. Paul Bowles does know it, and much better, for instance, than it was known by AndrÈ Gide. He probably knows it even better than Albert Camus. For Paul Bowles has been going to Africa, off and on, since about 1930. It thrills him, but for some reason it does not upset his nervous equilibrium. He does not remain in the coastal cities. At frequent intervals he takes journeys into the most mysterious recesses of the desert and mountain country of North Africa, involving not only hardship but peril.
"The Sheltering Sky" is the chronicle of such a journey. Were it not for the fact that the chief male character, Port Moresby, succumbs to an epidemic fever during the course of the story, it would not be hard to identify him with Mr. Bowles himself. Like Mr. Bowles, he is a member of the New York intelligentsia who became weary of being such a member and set out to escape it in remote places. Escape it he certainly does. He escapes practically all the appurtenances of civilized modern life. Balanced between fascination and dread, he goes deeper and deeper into this dreamlike "awayness."
From then on the story is focused upon the continuing and continually more astonishing adventures of his wife, Kit, who wanders on like a body in which the rational mechanism is gradually upset and destroyed. The liberation is too intense, too extreme, for a nature conditioned by and for a state of civilized confinement. Her primitive nature, divested one by one of its artificial reserves and diffidences, eventually overwhelms her, and the end of this novel is as wildly beautiful and terrifying as the whole panorama that its protagonists have crossed.
In this external aspect the novel is, therefore, an account of startling adventure. In its interior aspect, "The Sheltering Sky" is an allegory of the spiritual adventure of the fully conscious person into modern experience. This is not an enticing way to describe it. It is a way that might suggest the very opposite kind of a novel from the one that Paul Bowles has written. Actually this superior motive does not intrude in explicit form upon the story, certainly not in any form that will need to distract you from the great pleasure of being told a first-rate story of adventure by a really first-rate writer.
I suspect that a good many people will read this book and be enthralled by it without once suspecting that it contains a mirror of what is most terrifying and cryptic within the Sahara of moral nihilism, into which the race of man now seems to be wandering blindly.
December 4, 1949
================================
We'll be meeting to discuss this book on September 10th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Sheltering Sky is now ready for pick up
Our next book The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles is now ready for pick up at the Main Library return desk.
Bowles' existential masterpiece follows 3 westerners into the Sahara desert as slowly the isolation and desolation of the landscape alters their concept of reality.
We'll be meeting to discuss this book on September 10th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.
Bowles' existential masterpiece follows 3 westerners into the Sahara desert as slowly the isolation and desolation of the landscape alters their concept of reality.
We'll be meeting to discuss this book on September 10th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Some thoughts about The Human Stain...
- I love the title of this book. What do you think it means?
- Is the relationship between Coleman and Faunia immoral or somehow exploitative?
- Should Coleman have apologized for using the word "spooks"? What do you think of his decision to resign?
- Was Coleman's decision to lie about his race justifiable? Was it necessary for him to disown his family?
- Is Les Farley accountable for his actions?
- How, if at all, is this book about Bill Clinton?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Roth is one our nation's most critically acclaimed novelists. Here's an interview with him:
------------------------------------------------------------------
The character of Coleman Silk is thought to be based on real life literary critic Anatole Broyard. Broyard's daughter Bliss wrote a memoir, One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life -- A Story of Race and Family Secrets, about her father and learning learn of his racial identity two months before his death. Here's a short feature about her book:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We'll be meeting to discuss Philip Roth's The Human Stain on August 13th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.
- Is the relationship between Coleman and Faunia immoral or somehow exploitative?
- Should Coleman have apologized for using the word "spooks"? What do you think of his decision to resign?
- Was Coleman's decision to lie about his race justifiable? Was it necessary for him to disown his family?
- Is Les Farley accountable for his actions?
- How, if at all, is this book about Bill Clinton?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Roth is one our nation's most critically acclaimed novelists. Here's an interview with him:
------------------------------------------------------------------
The character of Coleman Silk is thought to be based on real life literary critic Anatole Broyard. Broyard's daughter Bliss wrote a memoir, One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life -- A Story of Race and Family Secrets, about her father and learning learn of his racial identity two months before his death. Here's a short feature about her book:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We'll be meeting to discuss Philip Roth's The Human Stain on August 13th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Our next book is The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Philip Roth's The Human Stain earned the acclaimed novelist the PEN/Faulkner Award upon its original publication. What on the surface appears to be an indictment of political correctness and public flares of moral outrage, slowly reveals itself to be far more profound as Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman discovers secrets embedded in the past of dethroned professor Coleman Silk.
We'll be meeting to discuss this book August 13th, at the Main Library in Conference Room 3 at noon.
We'll be meeting to discuss this book August 13th, at the Main Library in Conference Room 3 at noon.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Reading List for Fall 2008
Your votes are in! Here is our reading list for Fall 2008:
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles - Sept. 10th
American Gods by Neil Gaiman - Oct. 8th
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann - Nov. 12th
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Dec. 10th
We'll need to pick four new books around October so keep recommendations in mind.
Thanks,
Bryan the Librarian
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles - Sept. 10th
American Gods by Neil Gaiman - Oct. 8th
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann - Nov. 12th
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Dec. 10th
We'll need to pick four new books around October so keep recommendations in mind.
Thanks,
Bryan the Librarian
Some thoughts about Omnivore's Dilemma
- Is this book really a "natural history of four meals," or is it about something else?
- I read reviews of the book praising the author for handling the subject matter in a unbiased manner. Do you think the author was biased in any way? Why or why not?
- There was a long sidebar towards the end of the book about the ethics of eating meat. Did this section sway you at all, or cause you to reconsider your opinions on this matter?
- The author suggests the difference in cost between industrial and organic food could easily be absorbed if people simply chose to budget for it. He uses cell phones as an example of an expense that was once considered a luxury but is now common place. Is this a good analogy?
Here are websites of two companies he discusses in the book:
Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM): one of the world's largest processors of corn and soybeans: http://www.admworld.com/naen/
- I read reviews of the book praising the author for handling the subject matter in a unbiased manner. Do you think the author was biased in any way? Why or why not?
- There was a long sidebar towards the end of the book about the ethics of eating meat. Did this section sway you at all, or cause you to reconsider your opinions on this matter?
- The author suggests the difference in cost between industrial and organic food could easily be absorbed if people simply chose to budget for it. He uses cell phones as an example of an expense that was once considered a luxury but is now common place. Is this a good analogy?
Here are websites of two companies he discusses in the book:
Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM): one of the world's largest processors of corn and soybeans: http://www.admworld.com/naen/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
