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BOOK DISCUSSION
GROUPS
All book groups
meet in the Board Room on the 4th floor.
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SEPTEMBER
2008 - MAY 2009: CALIFORNIA
INTERPRETED 4th series
Book
discussions with local historians and writers.
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THE
PROUST SOCIETY OF AMERICA
San Francisco
Chapter at the Mechanics' Institute Library |
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The
Mechanics' Institute Library proudly offers the Proust reading
group, presented in affiliation with The Proust Society
of America. The Proust Society of America was
established in 1997 by the Mercantile Library of New York
and its Center for World Literature.
The group is open to both beginning
and veteran readers of "À la recherche du temps
perdu" (known in English as "In Search of Lost Time"
or "Remembrance of Things Past"). The novel is read
and discussed in English; any available translation of the
novel is acceptable.
The group meets on the second
and fourth Wednesday of each month from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.
Our reading schedule can be downloaded according to
edition (.pdf file): Viking/Penguin,
Penguin/Allen
Lane (UK), Modern
Library, or Vintage.
The last meeting of the Proust Society will be on
Wednesday, July 23. The Proust reading group will resume on
Wednesday, September 10., 2008.
The group is facilitated by
Dr. Mark Calkins, who holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
and is currently a lecturer at San Francisco State University,
as well as webmaster and editor-in-chief of TempsPerdu.com.
The group is open to members of the
Mechanics' Institute and to the public. Fees for the book
group are $65 for members and $90 for the public per semester
(ten meetings). Participants in the group are also eligible
to attend meetings and events held at the New York and Boston
chapters of the Proust Society of America.
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FICTION
YOU WISH YOU HAD READ
Meets
third Tuesday of the month @ 12:00 NOON |
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Tuesday,
January 20
The Smile of the Lamb,
David Grossman |
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| A
much-acclaimed Israeli writer offers
a tour de force about Israeli occupation of Palestinian
territory, that is a wrenching but ennobling experience
for the reader. The book tells the story of Uri, an
idealistic young Israeli soldier serving in an army
unit in the small Palestinian village of Andal, in the
occupied territories, and his relationship with Khilmi,
a nearly blind old Palestinian storyteller. Gradually
as the violent reality of the occupation that infects
both the occupier and the occupied alike merges with
the old man's stories, Uri, captivated by Khilmi's wisdom,
tries to solve the riddles and deceits that make up
his life. Originally published in Hebrew in 1983, "The
Smile of the Lamb" is a novel of disillusionment
and a piercing examination of injustice and dishonesty. |
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Tuesday,
February 17
The Gravedigger's Daughter,
Joyce Carol Oates |
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novel follows the life of steely survivor Rebecca
Schwart, born on a boat in New York Harbor as her Jewish
family fled Nazi Germany. Her father was
a popular schoolteacher
in Munich, but the only work he can
find in a small town in upstate New York is demeaningly
being a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. Undone by
their inability to assimilate and haunted by their past,
Rebecca's parents drive her away, assured that the new
country will not harm her since she was born here. Rebecca
strikes out on her own, reinventing herself several
times as
necessary. She marries an abusive charmer,
and bears a son who becomes a musical prodigy, and dodges
the pitfalls that American life throws in her path.
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| FORGOTTEN
CLASSICS
Meets
quarterly on Thursdays @ 6:00 PM |
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Thursday,
February 5
Vanity Fair,
William Makepeace Thackeray
(discussion led by Charles Fracchia) |
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| Vanity
Fair: A Novel without a Hero, was first published
in 1847-48, and satirizes society in early 19th-century
England. The subtitle
is apt because the characters are all flawed
to some degree.
The human weaknesses Thackeray illustrates are mostly
to do with greed, idleness, and snobbery, and the scheming,
deceit and hypocrisy which mask them. His tendency to
highlight faults in all his characters displays his
desire for a greater level of realism in his fiction.
The novel is a satire of society as a whole, but it
is not a reforming novel. There is no suggestion
that social or political changes, or moral reform could
improve the nature of society. It thus paints a fairly
bleak view of the human condition.This bleak portrait
is continued with Thackeray's own role as an omniscient
narrator, one of the writers best known for using the
technique. |
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