A Favorite but Much Worn Hat, Part the First

My bookgroup has me running our next two meetings. November and December pose their own obvious challenges as few have time to meet for three hours on a Friday afternoon before either Thanksgiving or Christmas, let alone read a tome.

For November I am supposed to say something intelligent about three things and in December to put my statements to the test by using them to consider, interpret, appreciate--something like that--a novel of my choosing. So I chose a short one: Jean Rhys' The Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys, who was born in Dominica, seems to have asked herself a few questions about that woman locked in the attic of Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre, the woman Rochester had married in the Caribbean and who had gone mad shortly thereafter. Rhys' answers to her questions constitute her exceptional novel. Her storyline is gripping, exquisite, ambiguous--almost Gothic--and provides dual historical lens through which to view popular conceptions regarding women and sexuality and their connection to popular conceptions regarding women and madness; Rhys manages both the Victorian perspective mid-19th century and her own one hundred years later.

I chose this book because it's beautifully written and short. (Remember the holidays' demands on leisure time.) It's also complex, one of my criteria for the November Three Things. First I am assigned to speak to the difference between literature and all the rest, the great body of not-literature, and explain how one might tell the difference and justify this difference as valuable to anyway who isn't a college professor. There, that's Thing the One.

Next I'm to say something intelligent about the novel. I might speak to its history, its practitioners, its popularity, its construction or even its topics. Thing the Second.

Third and last requires both theoretical and useful remarks about reading strategies, the variety of ways one might approach a fine novel (assuming I've set to rest the literature question) to gain the greatest pleasure.

It was a treat to be invited to labor away like a college professor again. It's been a very long time since I gave a lecture, no matter how informal, and even had the chance to follow up with the close examination of a text. Nothing so sweet as theory AND praxis. So, here's fair warning: I plan to keep track of the preparation process here over the next few days and share whatever tidbits surface as I research what many a famous critic and author have had to say about LITERATURE, THE NOVEL, and THE READER.

But the sun is shining and the willows are only half-pruned and the dogs are nudging and nuzzling for outside time. Out we go for a few hours.