December 2009: As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)

Post date: Jan 08, 2010 12:26:21 AM

Fiction series Part One!

We missed the Faulkner fans at our December meeting... A couple of women who very much like Faulkner had planned to attend, and we would still like to hear their side of the story! The ten or so of us gathered (class of '58 through '06) at Jennie's house in the Golden Gate neighborhood of Oakland on Thursday, December 17, 2009 were all a bit depressed by William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. The story ended with no hope or redemption, and was filled with bad luck and poor choices -- or no choices.

Still, we admired Faulkner's contribution to literature, including the voices of his characters, with great detail in the type of information they shared, their different language, and the perspectives each offered.

Thanks to Catherine for reading several sections of the book aloud. Through it, we got to hear the language more fully, and interpret certain passages in a different light. We think reading selected passages aloud at future meetings would be a good general practice; literature is so different when given voice, and we may all benefit from turns of phrase, presentation of facts, or historical or scientific reference. Though your librarian would never encourage "dog eared" pages, tuck scraps of paper to mark pages you'd like to share with the group at the next meeting!

Next meeting we will be selecting the third fiction in this series – please start thinking of suggestions! Remember: the book must be in paperback, and should be one you have read and know would be good for the club to read. If you want your suggestion in the reminder email, so others have time to consider it, post it to comments here, or send Sherrill the title, author and what you like about the book sometime between now and December 7th, so she can include it in the reminder. Review our ongoing list of suggestions, and add your own, on our Google spreadsheet.

Faculty speaker

We are also looking ahead to our annual faculty-speaker event in the spring, so bring suggestions of topics and/or professors we can request.