[Many thanks to Eli, who graciously offered to compose this write-up of the April meeting in my absence. Tony’s opening essay is available in the left margin of this page as usual. -Jeffrey]

The men of Athenaeum met once again at Radio Coffee & Beer to discuss the merits of Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. The first and unavoidable observation made by most is that Marlowe is no Shakespeare. The point was made over and over, to the annoyance of some, and the defenders of Marlowe are right in their assertion that The Jew of Malta is not without it’s own merit. But no matter how talented a writer may be, to write plays in the Elizabethan era in London is to write in a shadow.

Much was said of Barabbas’ commitment to selfishness and evil. Many noted that Machiavelli opened the action of the play, and Barabbas picked up his baton and carried it with calculated and brutal effect until his own end in a boiling vat of pitch. The government of Malta committed the original perfidy when they confiscated all of Barabbas’ wealth to pay tribute to the Turks. Barabbas then turns all of his energies to reclaiming this wealth, and revenging their misdeed. Murders abound in the story, including a convent full of nuns and Barabbas’ own daughter. As the play carries forward it seems everyone who comes in contact with Barabbas ends up dead with a single line and turn of the page (the clumsiness of the “flow” of the narrative was oft pointed out.) Other characters like the slave Ithamore, the prostitute Bellamira and her pimp/thug Pilia-Borza, and Calymath the Turk seem to be clawing their way through the plot trying to one-up the other, only to succumb to Barabbas’ vengeance. Even the friars lack decency. It’s a free for all, where the most sinister man wins.

The table also fell into a discussion of whether Marlowe was anti-Semitic. And the general consensus is that The Jew of Malta is certainly anti-Semitic. But one outstanding point was made, that at the time Marlowe published in the 1580s Judaism had been outlawed in England for at least 200 years, and that Marlowe had probably never met a Jew. So it surprised none that the stereotype of the money-grubbing and sinister Jew would be laid so thick upon Barabbas, and that probably did not discount The Jew of Malta as a legitimate work of literature in its time. Marlowe was simply playing to his audience, all of whom were in the same fog of ignorance as the author. This doesn’t make it right, but if we trim off every work of literature throughout history that looks awkward when viewed through the lens of 21st century sensibilities, our reading list would be quite small.

As always the discussion was lively, the weather was perfect, the brews and ‘baccy delicious, but most important was the fellowship around the table. If there was a downside to the evening it was the intolerably loud music, and so when we next meet to discuss Midnight’s Children it will be at a different place.

At the evening’s close the winning vote was cast for Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.

Adeiu~

[UPDATE: Randy has volunteered his business facility to host the next meeting. Bring a six-pack or a bottle of hooch, and get some to-go cuisine, and we’ll have a great and PEACEFUL meeting. I wont post the address here for security reasons. Members should have it in an email.]

Willa Cather’s lovely book titled Death Comes for the Archbishop was universally appreciated by the group for its vivid details and even-keeled style, which we were told was the effect attempted by Cather in her desire to write in the mode of the American legend.

The story follows the life of Father Jean Marie Latour, newly appointed bishop of the New Mexico territory circa 1850, and his vicar Joseph Vaillant as they emigrate from France and set up their ministry in the wild desert region.

The book reads like a story reaching for the broadest audience of mostly readers to the east who have heard with fascination the tales of Kit Carson, the American Indians, and the frontier. The pacing is steady, and each episode of their adventures is largely encapsulated chapter by chapter.

One cannot help being charmed and inspired by Latour and his vicar by the end of the book, and his passing at the end is the closing of a warm and eventful life visited by perils, challenges, and occasionally the miraculous.

I will only add, since I write this blog, that I found the book best suited to readers of a milder constitution as the perils were quickly resolved and the reader is not taken very far afield either emotionally or in the literary terms of structure, vocabulary, or plot. Her intention of writing in the legend-style was effective, but undemanding.

The meeting was again at Radio Coffee Bar, and the vote to continue in that venue was overwhelming.

The book for April is Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and the book for May after a 3-way runoff vote will be Midnight’s Children by Salmon Rushdie.

About 30% of the time, the members of Athenaeum gather on that much-anticipated 2nd Saturday night murmuring as they come to the table that they do not expect the book to sustain two and a half hours of discussion.

Sometimes the grumbling is worse: are we going to end up spending the entire time trashing the book? Surely the others did not enjoy the book either. What a shame. This meeting is going to send us away without that usual magic and thrill that comes when like-minded souls rejoice at each other’s brilliant observations, experience the undergirding power of hearty fellowship, savor the golden apples of well-placed words.

The meeting for The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin had just such a prelude.

This was odd considering that this book won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and “has achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction”¹ for its engagement with serious and complex themes. However, Noah’s opening essay, which all of us would have done well to have read going into the book, whet our appetites for a good discussion and like the rising sun cleared away much of the fog.

And indeed, discussion was lively, though it did still center on the many criticisms leveled against the book: that there were few characters with whom the reader could sympathize (perhaps only the train conductor or Shevek’s servant Efor), that it contained several appalling misrepresentations of human nature, that the aspects of human parental/marital relationships on the planet Annares were fatuous, that the purpose of the pivotal sex scene seemed obscure (it was suggested that it showed the culture clash between Urrasti and Annarasti mores of sexuality), and finally that all the universe of characters were cardboard, one-dimensional.

Nevertheless, (and this is what makes Athenaeum such a delight to all), rousing conversation was easily sustained throughout the night. We debated the feasibility of her worlds, governments, and economies. We learned something about the Taoism that provides her own framework for writing. We discussed whether the forceful “out of the gate” criticisms were (in my own terms) a failure of the imagination to allow suspension of disbelief in the face of a foreign way of life which has none of the history and assumptions of our world.

Conclusion: while Le Guin deserves credit for creating worlds that were not over-simplified and idealized, while we appreciated her not offering a simple utopian vision of a personal agenda, the book received a generally luke warm reception due to its long passages of tiresome description, lack of pace, relational interactions that were hard to swallow, seeming contradictions, and other things.

John’s final contribution is worth recording: part of the weakness of science fiction stems from its complete removal from our own time and place. What makes great books great is the real world history and culture that a reader brings to a novel set in a real historical period. Novels set in the real world create infinite cognitive connections with our own knowledge and experience of the world, making a well-written novel deeply satisfying for striking many resonant chords already in our souls. Science fiction must create all the terrain, all the history and backstory, sometimes even the language, dress, morals, music etc. from scratch. And thus what it gains in the freedom to speculate and dream is matched by what is lost by the foreignness to the reader.

The next book is Willa Cather’s Death Comes For The Archbishop.

The book for April, after a runoff against Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, is Christopher Marlow’s 16th century play The Jew of Malta, proposed by Tony.

1. Wikipedia contributors, “The Dispossessed,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Dispossessed&oldid=636214650 (accessed February 15, 2015).

I had heard of Don Delillo for some time as one of the top living American authors, but had not read anything of his until White Noise.

Though we are told that this book is not necessarily representative of his style, that he has other novels written in an entirely different voice and manner and mood, White Noise made Delillo fans of almost all the Athenaeum group.

White Noise reads a lot like Walker Percy with its quirky, dryly humorous style, and delightful wit. And in this style he weaves a story that touches on the subject of death on every page, lampooning simultaneously the inanities of modern life, our domination by commercialism, media, and marketing. We got the distinct impression that there was much in the book that would reward multiple readings, which is something of a benchmark of a good book by Athenaeum standards.

The story follows a year or so in the lives of Jack and Babette Gladney with their children Heinrich, Steffie, Denise and Wilder, with favorite characters Murray Jay Siskind, a fellow university professor, and Winnie Richards, the lanky, mysterious chemist. They are an ostensibly normal American family. Their town undergoes the “Airborne Toxic Event” and other death-dealing events, each of which has the effect of bringing characters out of their consumer-commercial malaise to suddenly appreciate things like sunsets with a new, blissful poignancy.

The February book is The Disposessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. I write this post on the Saturday of Athenaeum as a matter of fact, so we discuss LaGuin tonight at Radio Coffee & Beer.

The book for the March meeting is Willa Cather’s Death Comes For The Archbishop.

I wonder if anyone would object if I called Philip Roth’s American Pastoral something of an Everyman novel. It is a book that almost any book lover can read and enjoy. It is a story that most of us can identify with: the tragedy that befell the Levov family, the horror that happened and the baffling lack of an identifiable cause. Seymour “The Swede” Levov can almost be heard saying, “But I didn’t do anything.”

We may not have had a daughter go publicly over the edge and bring horror and shame to the family. But we can each feel the real possibility of devastating things happening to us despite our lack of exceptionalism. We were just living out a normal American life and things hit the fan.

Our group could also call it an Everyman Novel because throughout the entire Athenaeum conversation, not a single complaint or criticism was raised until the closing remarks in which I first said, and John echoed, that Roth “can talk.” You get the feeling that he could just go on talking about the glove factory, or Newark’s socio-economic troubles, or Merry’s mental state, or Swede’s athletic prowess, or Dawn’s attitude about becoming Miss New Jersey, forever.

Nevertheless, Roth’s Pulitzer-winning novel had the power to keep the reader completely engaged even with subject matter that is fairly ordinary. We all liked the immediate family, as well as Swede’s father Lou, most of their friends, and even daughter Merry herself. Even Rita Cohen was an exquisite villain.

Structured in 3 sections – Paradise Remembered, The Fall, and Paradise Lost – we see the wistful tragedy that resulted in, not the demise of the family, or even in anyone’s untimely death, but simply the wreckage, the despair, the bewilderment that an unexplained horror brings, accompanied by shame, self-doubt, humiliation, loss of all self-confidence and ultimately divorce.

And from the For What It’s Worth department, a film version of the book begins filming in March and will star Ewan MacGregor.

And a Jacq’s lovely in abstentia essay can be found in the left column.

This month we had our annual book exchange and a photo of the evening you can see here.

Click to see a larger picture

The book for January is Don Delillo’s White Noise, and after great perseverance, Noah’s steadfast proposal got the vote for February: The Disposessed by Ursula K. Leguin.

We also settled on a design and color scheme for the next commemorative t-shirt: gray shirt with black text.

James Fenimore Cooper published The Last of the Mohicans in 1826, just 6 years after Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. The first observation repeated throughout the evening is that Cooper’s book fit squarely in the same category as Scott’s book, that is, early 19th c. romanticism.

After Jordan’s winsome opening essay, the conversation quickly went into a passionate fracas about whether the book should be called racist, sexist, and/or ethnocentric. William seemed to give the winning discourse about which culture was presented in the best light: the Indians clearly were. Any talk of ‘barbarism’ or ‘savages’ must be understood in light of the fact that all of the white characters were presented as saps, buffoons, naive, or otherwise deficient. The Indian characters, even the villainous Magua, were presented with greater dimension and richness.

Credit is due to the book for establishing a literary vocabulary and tradition of Indian lore, making words like tomahawk, happy hunting ground, and Great Spirit familiar terms in the American conscience.

There were some who found considerable enjoyment in the book, usually after a period of adjusting to the high prose style of the 1820’s. However, a majority of the group expressed overall distaste, not only with the excessively florid narrative but with the flatness of most characters and outlandish details that stretched the limits of the suspension of disbelief. Yet again, these aspects are explained by the popular-level, American romantic style in which Cooper was writing.

To his credit, Cooper was doing what all great writers do in that he was challenging and pressing many assumptions and prejudices of his day. Having the beautiful Cora to be a mulatto, and showing the courage and honor of Ungas and Chingwichgook, and even suggesting a kind of spiritual Universalism in which white and Indian would be coinhabitants of the same eternal estate, were examples of this.

Everyone came expecting the discussion to run out of steam fairly quickly, but that was not the case. And as usual, every man found new appreciation for the book, and a respect for its place in American fiction.

The book for December, is Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. And don’t forget the book exchange.

The book for January will be Don Delillo’s White Noise.

Somewhat predictably, much of the conversation about The Grapes of Wrath dwelt on political issues. Many wise, insightful and clarifying things were said this night, but I’ve forgotten all of them and now they are lost. I do remember saying that the book made me angry. Sorry, everyone else.

Favorite characters: all of them. Rose of Sharon got high marks, and the waitress at the roadside restaurant. But most of our group agreed that all of the Joad family and those who traveled with them had their own endearing aspects with only one or two exceptions.

Interestingly, I saw recently that there is a new documentary coming out with a present day Grapes of Wrath situation going on, only this time in North Dakota. You remember a few years ago with they announced the new oil development? Hiring exploded, cities were built up over night, local economies boomed. Thousands migrated, but now the jobs are all taken and thousand are homeless.

Anyway, if someone wants to take on the role of secretary at the meetings and hand me their notes, I might make these entries a little more interesting. But I’m already acting as web guy for free, so nut up, Eli.

If whoever did the essay will send it to me (Jeffrey) I will post it in the column on the left with the other essays.

BY THE WAY, in case you hadn’t heard, The Dog and Duck is closing down before our next meeting. The new venue will be Gourmands. (Map here.) They have a nice beer selection and decent food. They will reserve a table for us, though it is not covered. In the event of rain, go to Opal Divines on S. Congress (Map).

Next book is The Last of the Mohicans. December’s book is American Pastoral by Philip Roth.

For the two of you who look at this blog, I’ll try to keep something here, though I confess it is hard to find motivation when almost nobody reads it.

Last month we read A Handful of Dust. John M. nominated the book, so he wrote the essay. You can find it in the left hand column.

For July/August, the book is The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.

For Aug/Sept, the book is Life is a Miracle, by Wendel Berry