January 4th7pm
We will discuss audience - was this a work intended to be read? To what extent is the author performing for an imagined future readership? Is that a wink at us buried in a book from decades ago? We will discuss self-knowledge - do we trust the account as given? What are they hiding from us? Have they completely lost the plot of their life and the lives around them? And of course, we will discuss what thrills - cameos from notables? Salacious asides? That single sentence from 1935 which you still hear ringing in your ears, weeks after reading it?
This month we'll discuss May Sarton's bestselling journal, Journal of a Solitude.
May Sarton writes with keen observation and emotional courage of both inner and outer worlds: a garden, the seasons, daily life in New Hampshire, books, people, ideas—and throughout everything, her spiritual and artistic journey.
"I am here alone for the first time in weeks," May Sarton begins this book, "to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love,are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is happening or what has happened." In this journal, she says, "I hope to break through into the rough, rocky depths,to the matrix itself. There is violence there and anger never resolved. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there."
Reserve your place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the book club meeting on any product in store.