Book Club Hits with Henry!

Current (and some previous!) faculty and staff gathered on Friday 18 April to discuss the adventures of Prince Hal, Hotspur and Falstaff. Discussion ranged from history to current politics to family dramas (both fictional and real-life!) to poetry and also films.

(above Falstaff, in Stratord-upon-Avon)

Some of us previewed My Own Private Idaho and enjoyed the adaptation of Shakespeare's dynastic struggle & coming-of-age story to the street hussler culture of 1990s Portland.

(above, Keaneau Reeves -- a modern day Hal?)

If the better part of valour is discretion, why is that line so often taken out of context? And why does it generate 286,000 Google hits? Do all those webmasters know Falstaff was referring to playing dead?

And how is that related to discrete mathematics? This is truly a multi-disciplinary book group!

Unfortunately, we didn't have any Falstaff Beer:

Thanks to Kaya Ford for hosting!

Henry IV, a tale for our times?

The Alexandria Book Club will revisit a sometime neglected classic in the Spring -- Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I. Does the story of a wayward son coming clean, inheriting his father's throne and waging a belligerent war of conquest have anything to tell us about the current occupant of the White House?

The Bushes may not be Lancastrians, and the presidential elections may not be the Wars of the Roses, but does Prince Hal's story resonate with modern politics? A scion of an aristocratic house spends a dissipated youth, reforms and wins political office, assumes his father's position and under the influence of his father's self-interested courtiers wages a war of conquest in a foreign land.

Hal, as the warrior-king Henry V was successful in his French ambitions. But even this success was short lived:

"Of France and England, did this King succeed:

Whose State so many had the managing,

That they lost France, and made his England bleed:"

One should also remember that Henry IV was a usurper. One wonders if any "sad and solemn priests" sing still for the political career of Al Gore?

Fitzgerald flops

F Scott's lush, complex, and sometimes unlikable second novel The Beautiful and Damned drew a record small number of book club fans. The Jazz Age is truly dead.

Nevertheless, die-hards gathered in Arlington on a mild & sunny 8 Feb to discuss class, mobility, the tragedy of wasted talent and the wages of leisure, as well as a lively consideration of Fitzgerald's oeuvre, followed up with speculation as to who might be Fitzgerald's modern-day spiritual heirs (the Beats?). Highballs were also consumed.

Your faithful correspondent promises not to take it personally that The Beautiful and Damned was a bust. We promise to return to our regularly scheduled program of gay confessional literature and themes of social despair.

Book Club Hits the Jazz Age

Mix the martinis, find your cigarette holder and get ready to spend some quality time in the dissolute world of the jazz age.

The Book Club turns to a minor classic this winter, reading F Scott's Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned: "One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-known works, The Beautiful And Damned is a glittering novel set against an era of intoxicating excitement and ruinous excess. Hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a scathing, ironic tale whose fictional couple parallells the real-life relationship of Fitzgerald and his wife, from its romantic beginning to its tragic end. It remains to this day a devastating portrait of insatiable greed, ruthless ambition, and wasted talent."

Fitzgerald's works are now available in the public domain, and can be accessed via Project Gutenberg or Google Books.

The Book Club meets Friday Feb 8th.

Book club discusses Maus

15 members of the Alexandria Campus Book Club (including our youngest member -- who has not yet attained her first birthday!) gathered at the Matt Todd's apartment in Washington DC's Glover Park.

Discussion ranged from the American Indian Museum to Selling the Holocaust, to the graphic novel/ comic genre to the the symbolism of anthropormorphic animals. We also drank some wine.

Read more about Spiegelman on his website or vist the comicpedia.

Suggestions are welcome for our next title.

Alexandria Book Club reads Maus I & Maus II

The Book club tackles the Graphic novel for the second book of the year, reading Art Spiegelman's Maus.

The book club is all about breaking new ground: not only have we branched into the graphic novel genre, we've branched right out of Virginia! The November 16th book club will meet at Matt Todd's house in Washington DC.

(why are the Nazis portrayed as cats? Hmmm...)

First Meeting of the Year Waffles

No, we didn't waffle over our opinion of The Road (see below) but we did enjoy pecan & blueberry waffles at Visual & Performing Arts & Public Services Dean Tony Stanzo's house. After enjoying made-to-order waffles from Chef Stanzo, we got down to a interesting and wide-ranging discussion of the The Road which no one seemed to like exactly but everyone found very interesting, thought-provoking or engaging.

The Book Club's next book(s) will be Art Spiegelman’s Maus 1: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Maus 2: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. There are two copies of each on Reserve for the Book Club in the Library, and two more sets on order. This graphic novel won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award in 1992.

Next Meeting: Friday 16 November.