Gathering to Discuss Novels

Eastman Johnson, Woman ReadingWoman Reading,  by E. Johnson

For several years now I have been moderating a library book club, an experience I will reflect upon today. We read mostly novels, often alternating between past and contemporary works. From the past we have read all of Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Silas Marner, Gulliver’s Travels, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Roxanne (by Defoe), Beowulf, The Odyssey (to set ourselves up for Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad), Lolita (in anticipation of a visit to St. Mary’s of Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran), Sophie’s Choice, East of Eden, The Great Gatsby and many others. Our Anne Tyler novels are now in double digits (she is, after all, a Maryland writer), and we have read multiple novels by Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, Amy Tan, John Irving, and others. For December we often read a children’s book like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Wind in the Willows, Christmas Carol, The Giver, or Child’s Christmas in Wales.

The whole experience began over 10 years ago with a grant from (I think) the Maryland Humanities Council, which purchased books that groups all over the state read. I was invited in to lead discussions about Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, John Irving’s Prayer for Owen Meanie, Marilynn Robinson’s Housekeeping, and one other book whose name I’ve forgotten. We had such a good time that we’ve been meeting monthly ever since.

For me it is a chance to (1) keep up with contemporary novels and (2) experience novels through the eyes of people who are not 18-22 years of age. I love my college students but one’s perspective can get skewed when those discussing are barely out of adolescence. In the book group, by contrast, I am often the youngest participant. For years we had someone who was in her 90’s—she even returned after breaking her neck in a car accident. A number of the members are librarians, a number are housewives. All are women.

I can count on one hand the number of times men have attended. One came when we did a rare non-fiction book, The Perfect Storm. Another showed up when the National Endowment for the Arts sponsored a “Big Read” where people all over the country read a single book (Earnest Gaines’s A Lesson before Dying). This gentleman was there because he was convinced that liberals were squandering taxpayer money with the effort. (I think he came away impressed with the stories of growing up in the segregated south that the book elicited from the group.)

The gender disparity is not caused by our reading mostly books by women (we didn’t start off this way). By way of explanation, I fall back on the traditional gender stereotype, implied in my conversation with novelist Rachel Kranz, that men are more interested in information, which allows them (as they see it) to directly impact the world.  Women, by contrast, tend to focus on relationships, a strong point of novels. In my liberal arts college, the gender breakdown can be seen in the disciplines: there are far more women than men majoring in English, psychology and human studies (education), more men than women in economics, history, and physics.

Of course, being a man who reads novels and not (very often) biographies or histories or purely informational texts, I can vouch that there are exceptions. Then again, this website is dedicated to showing how literature can help us make an impact on the world, so maybe I’m revealing my stereotypically male colors.  Maybe I want novels and pragmatism both.

Our discussions sometimes wander far afield as we use each book to launch into our own experiences. But we always return, invariably with new insights into the work. The Yearling is a richer book for me now that it has been joined up with Mildred’s accounts of growing up in 1920’s Mississippi.   I now know about the southern Maryland Wesort community since reading Wayne Karlin’s The Wished For Country (about colonial Maryland) and then hearing accounts by members of the discussion group about those local families (many dirt poor) who are descended from the whites, Indians, and escaped slaves who hid out in the southern Maryland swamps. (Wesort is from “we [meaning “our”] sort of people”). King Lear looks different when those discussing it relate more to Lear than they do to his children.

Last week we discussed E. L. Doctorow’s The March, a fictional account of General Sherman’s march to Atlanta and beyond. In addition to immersing us in the Civil War, it allowed us to think about our own lives: About women who learn to find their own voices after having deferred all their lives to men; about men who see the best in women and so give them permission to step into their strengths; about other men who are so obsessed with causes that they lose their humanity, and about whites and blacks who reach out across the barriers that separate them to build communities.

As Rachel Kranz says, we practice being human when we read novels, and discussing books in common reinforces the lessons. We walk out of our gatherings more fully appreciating the complexity of the lives around us.

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