This week sees the start of a series of classes on The Outsider by Camus. I ran this class last year in Whitstable and it was fascinating, we had two very interesting sessions on it. It's been a pleasure to go over all the background work again, and I've managed to find some good critical essays. Issues to be discussed (I hope!) include, the "absurd", meaning and meaninglessness in life, justice, the individual, and Camus narrative style.

Tenterden on Wednesday 21st July.

Petham on Thursday 22nd July.

Folkestone on Wednesday 28th July.

Updates on how these classes go to follow!

Had a wonderful class on Wednesday, looking at Poe's stories. Some great ideas about "The Fall of the House of Usher" as an allegory of American society, with themes of incest and family breakdown noted also. Others felt that the Gothic tones of the story were overdone, that, perhaps, Poe put too much into it. "The Pit and thr Pendulum" made a great impact on the clas. Poe's ability to manipulate the reader, to place the reader in almost the same powerless position as the narrator of the story, is quite wonderful.

Just back from our final class on Virginia Woolf. Today looking at A Room of One's Own.

Generally good reception for this, with most of the class appreciating the impact of the text politically, even though for some Woolf's style will never be one that pleases! There was a varied opinion as to whether much has REALLY changed, in terms of the attitudes of men, regarding the question of women, even though on the surface much has changed.

The cleverness and beauty of some of the writing, the humour, were all mentioned, and so too Woolf's questioning of the concept of "absolute Truth". Also the way she blurs lines between fact and ficiton. All good points and a jolly good class!

Atonement by Ian McEwan next week!!

Well, a fabulous class yesterday, studying Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. So many interesting points were raised, and not for the first time, a class is split when dealing with a non-conventional narrative. Some love this disorientation, and the 'having to work much harder as a reader', and for others it is frustrating 'trickery' and obfuscation.

A main area for discussion was boundaries, and how Ondaatje blurs lines between what might seem to be black and white issues. Caravaggio, the criminal in normal civil society, becomes a skilled utility and very employable in the context of war. The idea of history as a fixed, definite thing is called into question with the introduction of Hereodotus into the narrative. The 'father of history' is also just a man collecting stories, and if were are inclined to a sense of curiosity we might follow this thread and ask ourselves, What is history?

Is it, It happen this way? or This is one view of what happened.

We covered so much in the session, and it was a shame to see that clock tick round to twelve.

Friday, A Room of One's Own.... !!!!

Yesterday's we focussed on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which seemed on the whole to get rather a rough ride from the class. Some felt it bleak and depressing and others, I think, found the symbolism of the book a kind of evasion; that Conrad was indulging in a kind of trickery in suggesting some essence or inner truth, with-out naming what it is.

But surely that is the point. We've all felt that sense of beauty or wonderment at the world, a piece of music, a work of art, dare I say, a work of literature, and felt at the same time incapable of describing it in words. We feel something, but expression of the feeling in language eludes us. We are swept away, we catch our breath, we are moved to tears or soar for a moment in pure delight. We feel these moments of Being (as Woolf calls them ), or Joycean epiphanies, at some intuitive level, and we know it somehow, and, yet, they are fleeting, and once they are gone, we are left with the impossible task of describing them....

Anyway. Conrad's book has a force about it, a way of making us think about those dark places in our psyche that we would, perhaps, rather ignore.

Tomorrow, we finish Woolf's To The Lighthouse. 

The first day of a new month seems a fitting time to begin a blog spot!

Had a particularly enjoyable class this morning in Herne Bay. In focus was Coetzee's Booker prize winning Disgrace. Some excellent points were raised in regards the theme of power in the novel, and how power relations play out in every aspect of society, be it gender relations, racial differences, institutional power, familial and personal ties, and even the sheer weight of historical narratives pressing on the lives of individuals.

As usual with my classes, I leave with my mind spinning. Does the individual have any moral obligations to the historical (and thus always political) narratives he or she is thrown into? Perhaps the question should be, How far do these moral obligations go?

As a class I think we acknowledged the sheer brilliance of Coetzee in being able to manipulate us (the reader), to angle us into postions where the grounds for the judgements we have already made, are shifted suddenly, made quick-sand where they were rock. The result is a test of our own moral judgements - at least that's how it seems to me!

A final thought. Within this discourse of power, what of the powerless? Is it bleak or hugley optimistic to think that for the disempowered, the only possible action is to activley give up what you have, rather than waiting for it to be taken away?