DATES FOR 2021

October 14

October 28 [THIS DATE WILL HAVE TO CHANGE, EITHER BY A WEEK OR A DAY, AS I HAVE A READING]

November 11

November 25

December 9

December 23

We can talk about when we start up in January, but I strongly suspect it will be January 6th.

Historical Record - I will get this up to date but it is a work in progress for now

Week One

Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff

We talked about how Anders sees the world, how he is unable to engage with the reality of things, how he has lost his capacity for surprise, etc. Also, the impact of the story’s title and its timing.

Patagonia by Kate Clanchy

Who are the people? Is the ‘you’ dead? Have they left? Was it a missed opportunity? Is this about something that just wasn’t done and it’s too late now for reasons of age, infirmity or other? How does the language tell the story of where we are and create the way we feel about it.

Week Two

Writ by Ali Smith

I hadn’t intended this to echo Bullet in the Brain but we decided there were similarities in the way the character sees things through moments of language. The great difference is that this narrator isn’t unhappy. For me, the really exciting thing about the story - perhaps what makes it so unusual - is that the narrator doesn’t give their younger self any advice.

Skunk by Seamus Heaney

Written for his wife about a time when they were apart. We wondered how someone might feel at being referred to as a skunk - but the skunk is treated entirely positive and the choice seems playful - a joke to someone you trust. Again, the echo to last week - a poem to someone who seems not to be there - was unintentional!

Week Three

The Rocking-Horse Winner by DH Lawrence

I was determined to pick a very different story. This one’s a clearer narrative heading to a classic short story shocker of an ending and we discussed how Lawrence uses the poetics of repetition and cadence as he builds a claustrophobic, intense momentum. Also, the contrast between love and materialism, and the ways it’s portrayed outside the obvious.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

An incredibly famous poem which most people knew. None of us - including me until a few days before, and this is why I chose it - knew that it was originally written as a joke to tease Frost’s dithery friend Edward Thomas, who he had walked with a lot in England before the war. We discussed the poem first without my saying this - how does the poet seem to sum up the importance of a decision - do decisions matter or do we just say they do - and then after I’d given the biographical information and read it in a completely different way. Then we discussed how differently one might choose to take it and whether it was important to know what Frost meant. Logically, we felt the last stanza does read like it’s taking the mickey, but the mood of the poem is so strong that the mood overwhelms the literal meaning.

Week Four

Death of a Racehorse by WC Heinz

One of the great pieces of sportswriting. Of journalism, in fact. How what seems like a very bald description is actually an exercise in careful mood-setting, pathetic fallacy and choice of material. How it’s about the business of racing and the animal, which are both normally ignored. I didn’t think in the room about how writing about the death of healthy promise, to no end, was probably harder-hitting in 1949. Also, it fits in with the other very famous thing Heinz did, which is co-write MASH, the novel that became the tv series about death and war.

The Kavanaugh Hearing, Chris Janson’s “Drunk Girl,” and Country Music’s #MeToo Misfire by Kathy Shulz

A very different piece of journalism. How and why? It’s personal. It’s opinionated. Why is it effective? It builds its case through examples and demonstrations of expertise and immersion in its subject where Heinz doesn’t bother.

Roads by Edward Thomas

Written at the same time as Frost’s poem above, after Thomas had taken Frost’s advice to write poetry. Also he took Frost’s poem as a call to be decisive, signed up and was, in 1917, killed. We originally foundered a bit, the poem seemed fluffy, although the line about all roads leading to France is obviously powerful. But as we talked, and especially because we knew Helen is a Welsh goddess associated with roads and defending the nation, we slowly decided that, for us, the poem broke into three sections. The first is meditative, as if walking and thinking scattered thoughts about roads, each stanza ending separately. The second, from Helen, starts to flow and connects roads, soldiers and defending the nation. It feels like this is the poet coming to terms with what he’s thinking. The third, where the roads lead to France, is a much smoother section where the decision is made and clear. The rhyme, ABBA, feels like it’s well suited to a dithery meditative walk rather than an ABAB which might be more stridy and clear.

Week Five

The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon

The story of a tragedy written in a very journalistic style, not unlike that of Death of a Racehorse, to the extent that people wondered if it might have been a real thing that happened in the seventies. Again the story is talking about sudden death, but also the wider context in which the death is taking place - a run down society and infrastructure. Theoretically about the seventies but written much more recently and feeling very pertinent.

The Fall of Rome by WH Auden

Another one about a society in decline, again the links were not entirely deliberate - or there were more links than I realised - or the human mind looks for links. Very beautiful last stanza. Again ABBA rhyme scheme but it had a different feel. We weren’t sure why - here it felt like each stanza neatly encapsulated a thought.

Week Six

Crusoe in England by Elizabeth Bishop

Long, so we did it first.

We talked about how we all bring our own ideas to island stories, how they have a history we all know, and how we know Robinson Crusoe too, so that means the author can use our pre-knowledge. Before I said anything, we were immediately talking about how it felt like a metaphor for personal isolation, and even for the isolation of the creative mind, which I think is probably a large part of what it’s about.

I didn’t do extensive biographical research to prepare, but I did know Bishop was lesbian and her partner had committed suicide, and after I said this we talked about the Friday passages.

The knife passage made us think how much more alive she had been in the island period, however much harder it was. Who knows if that was right. It also felt valedictory somehow, not unlike Prospero bidding farewell to his art in The Tempest (also an island story…). Again, no idea whether it was, but that’s where we got to.

Cruise by Evelyn Waugh

Did it as a palate cleanser after Crusoe in England - the links we drew (human brain creating patterns) were of sea, obviously, but also settings where we have an idea of the general nature of these stories and then the author can play with the form.

We discussed comedy of events and comedy of voice and decided this was much more the latter. One super interesting point raised was how like an Agatha Christie story the set-up was. Not just the setting but the relations between the characters (apart from the multiple engagements and the fancy dress comedy). It's just the voice that was different. 'Just'!

Week Seven

After the Dance by Leo Tolstoy

A really very interesting discussion about how end of aristocracy is paralleled with the end of youthful illusions mediated by a walk through snowmelt symbolising the end of a regime and eyes being opened.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

Everyone new the former, but it was interesting to remind ourselves of sonnets in a formal way and then to compare it with the Lazarus: she obviously knew the Ozymandias and her poem didn’t feel like a rebuke to Shelley but it felt like a rebuke to Ozymandias.

Also to discuss why someone would choose the constraints of a sonnet - the advantages and disadvantages of building on established forms.

Week Eight

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

People felt the story was rather nothingy as they were listening, and then started slowly to feel something a bit rum was going on. Obviously, this is exactly what Jackson wanted…

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

Hate the Villanelle by John Flansburgh (They Might Be Giants)

We went double villanelle. First we talked about the Plath, without discussing the form. Then we talked about form, at the advantages of using a traditional form, and this particular form (sounds great, can be tricksy, feels claustrophobic).

Then we looked at Hate the Villanelle, a song in strict form which auto-deconstructs - it's about hating the form, and formalism in general, sort of at school, and yet you learn things you need as building blocks to make things, and this villanelle is an achievement the likes of which the poet is saying a villanelle can't be.

A great discussion. Perhaps people felt freer chatting about a song. And we could play it.

Week Nine

Atlantic Crossing by Jeanette Winterson

Discussion was partly in light of previous texts on cruises and islands. There were interesting question about the narrator's reliability - he calls himself a liar. Several readers were strongly influenced by what they knew about Jeanette Winterson.

Questions About Angels by Billy Collins

For quite a long time we discussed this without talking about the fact that it’s funny. Saying that unlocked the conversation slightly, and generally people really enjoyed the irreverent way it looked at unanswerable questions and the people who ask them.

Week Ten

A Night at the Opera by Janet Frame

A very interesting discussion of perspective. Children see hilarity, but in the madhouse, A Night at the Opera is horrifying, if still blackly comic/farcical. And the end beautifully imagines the story is its own stage set, a thin veneer over the darkness.

The discussion was very beautiful, and people were profoundly affected by both it and the story of Janet Frame. The general assumption before learning that story was that she probably had a deep experience of what she was writing about, though this was by no means a universal assumption. There was also the question of trying to imagine who this narrator (not necessarily the writer, but perhaps) came to be among such struggling cases in such a place.

Le Musee Des Beaux Arts by WH Auden

Auden was also about how perspective creates tragedy. The fall of Icarus is terrible for Icarus but real life carries on. Someone who knew their Auden very helpfully pointed out that Auden's most famous poems are about his own pain being increased by the fact the world just carries on.

Both works also discussed pieces of art that we didn't see or know. People cared more about seeing the paintings, but actually before they did, they described the painting quite well (even if the legs were even smaller than they thought!).

Week Eleven

Dog Heaven by Stephanie Vaughan

Someone told me that this was jolly, which was a good antidote to last week. It was not at all. Just having a jolly dog in a story doesn’t make the story jolly. You literally have to consider what happens in the story. I have hard words with the person who told me this story was jolly. He is insane about dogs.

It was a very interesting story, however, about natural behaviour, tailoring behaviour so you fit in, wanting to be part of a group. The very basic units in many ways of politics and inclusion.

For I Will Consider Your Dog Molly by David Lehman

About natural behaviour versus formal behaviour. What it means to be religious. What it means to do what God wants.

Week Twelve

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes

Why the choice of form when the rhyming and word-choice is so much from another tradition (felt like it was inflected by the kind of rhyming and rhythmical choices you here more usually in hip-hop to us but we are aware that we are not top international hip-hop analysts)? I picked it because I read in the New Yorker and immediately felt a burning need to discuss it. The only fact I knew about him going into the session was that he's written a book of sonnets with the same title since 2016 arrival of Trump on the scene and this made for a very interesting conversation.

Fillboid Studge and The Stalled Ox by Saki

These are jolly. The former felt especially timeless in terms of advertising can’t and what people are likely to believe. The second is absolutely timeless for artists - who tend to be asked to repeat themselves - but quite reasonably the group didn’t find this as effective as the lector!

Week Thirteen

Roy Spivey by Miranda July

Great conversation about what was going on. The celebrity was weird. But the narrator was weird. But the celebrity has power. But no one reacts normally to the celebrity.

Did he really give her his number? Why didn't she call it? What sort of anxiety/panic/compulsion underpins her inability to move at various points. Is it connected to unhappiness? Why did she call him today?

Daisies by Louise Gluck

My favourite type - a baffled group (and lector) gradually getting into what we think is going on - a lovely meditation on opening oneself up to the complexity of nature.

Week Fourteen

How to Talk to a Hunter by Pam Houston

Is it really just Martian men and Venusian women? The passages about how we are how we are raised - contrasting men and dogs - seemed to be crucial. Not denying the truth of how people ‘are’ but addressing also the ‘why’. Nature and nurture.

The Dragon by Brigid Pegeen Kelly

Terrific. A lovely contrast between what is a super clear picture painted by Kelly and the opaqueness of what that picture means, or is referring to, whether it's real or metaphorical, or real in a world of magic, or a dream, or what? Obviously Catholic-suffused but also feels full of more pagan sorts of imagery.

Week Fifteen

For He Heard the Loud Bassoon by Jane Gardam

People loved it, predictably, because JG's so cleanly and directly great without being one bit predictable or cheap. What was going on? It was almost like a dream, but not because there were the paintings...

Gorge by Vicki Feaver

Is it real emotion or was it the sort of panicky thinking of someone doing a thing they've been dragged into. And if it is, then is it the marriage as well as the gorge? Pathetic fallacy, imagery of greed, and so on.

Week Sixteen

Troll Bridge by Neil Gaiman

Just what does the troll represent? Just what part of the narrator stay under the bridge and what part leave? It’s not clear, and perhaps Gaiman doesn’t know himself, which is fine in a short story…

Verdicts by Dmitri Prigov

A playful take on animal trials through history - used as a way to discuss a legal system where everyone is guilty if the government wants them to be. Not as much time as I expected identifying what the ‘crimes’ were. More about the law.

Week Seventeen

A&P by John Updike

Enjoyable. About the male gaze, sort of. How conscious is Updike that this is what it's about? How conscious is the girl who sort of is aware of her sexual power and sort of humiliated when someone calls attention to it. She's really an innocent, as is the narrator. How much will they stay that way? Will the narrator end up like the manager of the shop, which is obviously his fear?

I can’t remember what the poem was. This is why the RLF suggests efficient record-keeping. Actually, the more I think of it, the more I think we did the Updike in week sixteen.

From here, it’s just a list, I’m afraid, with the odd note

Kitwancool by Emily Carr

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (sort of opaque, then, after talking about it, incredibly dramatic in a Shakespearian way)

Pardon Edward Snowden by Joseph O’Neill (I think I loved this one more than the group did, about the nature of making art and the pettinesses around it)

Rubaiyat by Omar Kayyam/Edward Fitzgerald (how much is it the translation?)

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce (all time classic and model for many other stories, some of which we’ve read)

The Strange Case of the Lovelorn Letter Writer by Ogden Nash (great fun, great twist, amazing cleverness with rhythm)

26 Monkeys Also Into the Abyss by Kij Johnson (RLF now suggests this as a first or last story for all new groups)

A Forsaken Garden by Robert Browning (Nature outlasts us)

Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian (one of the various toxic masculinity, power imbalance, perception imbalance stories in The New Yorker that has become a cause celebre)

Slough by John Betjamen (surprisingly, properly savage; discussion of punching up and punching down)

24 Hour Dog by Jeanette Winterson (lovely on relationships with animals and people)

The Eyes of the Soul by Michael Faber (sort of Orwellian satire on everyone spending their lives watching screens - windows of council house are screens to lovely landscape)

The Janitor in Space by Amber Sparks (unseen workers)

The Face of the Horse by Nikolia Zabolotsky (Can’t remember but I think it was similar - unheard workers’ thoughts)

So Much Water So Close to Home by Raymond Carver (Incredibly dense, woman feels moved by violence to other women, affects her relationship)

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot (classic; boy can’t speak to girls)

Megan Married Herself by Caroline Bird (very interesting about idea of needing a partner in present era; not an accidental name choice)

Where We Are by Stephen Dobyns (about time speeding up, after the endlessly re-used Bede image of the life being like a bird flying through a lit hall)

The Sagebrush Kid by Annie Proulx (she’s a genius and this is brilliant)

God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins (incredibly beautiful, entirely comprehensible in mood and meaning without any of its images being graspable, which I guess was his point…)