In November we had our once-a-year very special event. This event was a visit by Dr. Carol Apollonia, the daughter of our member, Betty. Carol is a Professor of Russian Literature at Duke University, and once a year, when visiting her mother, she leads us in a dicussion of a Russian novel or literature. This year we read and discussed Fathers and Sons by Turgenev. Carol helped us see the clash between the older established families and two young college men who enthusiastically embraced the philosophy of nihilism. At the end of the story the one young man went back to the life of his family who were part of the Russian Aristocracy. The other young man, from a peasant family, became a scientist in the medical profession and died from infection. This book made me realize the beauty of Russia which seemed to be lost for awhile when we thought about Russia as just the Soviet Union and those associated negative feelings. Most of us had not been to Russia and so we enjoyed hearing Carol talk about her trips. On one trip she went to the farm of Leo Tolstoy!
Last year Carol had us read Short Stories by Chekov. The year before, we read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and before that, Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevski. That was a very hard book to read because of the grime, hunger, depression, and crime in the story. We especially needed Carol to redeem that book for us. I am eagerly looking forward to our next assignment.
We did not read a book in December. January's book was Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It was literally a dark book. We counted the words "dark" or "black" forty-two times in the sixty-five pages. This is one of those stories within a story, and maybe another story within that. Ed said we should notice the complicated punctuation. The story was about a man sent into the heart of Africa, the heart of darkness, to bring home a man who truly had a heart of darkness. The setting was the colonial period in England. Margaret and I admitted that we had to read the book a second time to appreiate the telling of the story rather than just the story.
Next month we will read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. The setting is World War I in France. Jack has read the book and tells us it is a story of passionate love and deadly war. I will let you know.
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