566. HAVE YOU READ? LITERARY JOURNEYS

June 12: Ben Markovits, The Rest of Our Lives. ISBN 978-16668231562. In the fourteenth century, Dante Alighieri began his epic The Divine Comedy “in the middle of life’s road.” In the seventeenth century, John Bunyan composed an allegory of the progress of the soul through the hardships and temptations of life to its heavenly reward. Before and since, the journey has continued to be a useful literary metaphor for a character’s spiritual and/or psychological development. And what could be a more suitable American variant on this theme than the road trip? And what could be a better way of dealing with an out-of-control life than being, at least for a while, in the driver’s seat? Tom Layward drives from Westchester to Pittsburgh to drop his daughter off at college, a life event that places him firmly in the middle of life’s road. He keeps driving, heading west, and in the process considers where he’s been and where he’s going.

July 10: Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional. ISBN 979-8217047369. Retreat from the cares of the world to a sacred space is a long-honored religious tradition. Wood’s novel traces the inner and outer journeys of a middle-aged woman who needs to abandon her complex life in Sydney, Australia. Her place of refuge is a tiny religious community near where she grew up, in a remote area of that sparsely populated country. Several problems arise, however. For one, she is not herself religious, is in fact an atheist. Then, the community is not as peaceful as she had hoped. There is a mouse infestation; the discovery of a skeleton; a mysterious stranger arriving among them. The unraveling of these various plot elements will determine the success or failure of this journey.

August 7: George Saunders, Vigil. ISBN 978-0525509622. Readers of Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo will not be surprised to find that the journey in this novel is from life to death — and back again. Jill Blaine, known as “Doll,” is tasked with accompanying the dying on their final journey. The complication is that she herself is dead, and returns to the land of the living only when acting as a supernatural escort. This particular assignment is unusually difficult. On what is supposed to be his deathbed, K. J. Boone will not, in the words of Dylan Thomas, “go gentle into that good night” like the majority of Doll’s clientele. Even though he finds fault with most of the institutions of the modern world, Boone believes that that world is better with him in it. Even visitors from the afterlife cannot convince him otherwise.

Details:
Have You Read? Literary Journeys
Professor Margaret Hallissy
3 sessions: Fridays, June 12, June 10 and August 7 
10:00 – 12 noon 
Fee: $90