"Is she or ain't she?"

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S
Truman Capote

Discussion questions:
1. Is there anything particularly modern about Miss Holly Golightly? Is the idea of human beings treating themselves, or others, as commoditites a new one?

2. Comment on the following dialogue:
"So, what do you think: is she or ain't she?"
"Ain't she what?"
"A phony."
"I wouldn't have thought so."
"You're wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you're right. She isn't a phony because she's a real phony."

3. Manners and mores were declared "out-dated" in the 60s, and those who clung to them were accused of hypocracy. What are the arguments pro/con? What led to this philosophic development, and what followed it?

4. Post-war America suffered an identity crisis (we'll talk more about this after reading 'God and the Atom'). How did the gradual de-humanizing of society affect individual personalities? How did it affect Miss Golightly? Why is she so insecure?

5. Given the autobiographical nature of this story, what is Capote trying to tell us about himself? Is the vague hope of redemption he accords Miss Golightly (at the end of the story) meant to imply that Capote did not, finally, despair of himself?

6. "Why did God make me?" is the perennial question asked by man. Did Capote, or Miss Golightly, ever come to a conclusion about this?

Of Interest:

- Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961, directed by Blake Edwards, starring Audrey Hepburn at her most gorgeous (pictured above)

Post-Modernism

“You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will ever hurry back, and, ere you know it, will burst through your foolish contempt in triumph” - Horace


THE CHILDREN OF MEN
P.D.James

Discussion questions:
1. Which characteristics define Modernism and Post-Modernism? Does this story fit either definition?

2. Does James' vision of a future dystopia ring true? Are we already there?

3. What does Science, as religion, demand in the way of sacrifice? What happens when Science is unmasked as a false god (in failing to cure infertility)?

4. What can we say about the five demands? Are they reasonable? Well ordered? Are they the products of despair or hope?

5. Does the author acurately assess the psychological, biological, social and religious consequences of infertility? Are there any flaws in her argument?

6. Do voluntary contraception and involuntary infertility have the same consequences on either the individual or population level? Is fertility as important to men as it is to women?

7. How necessary is population control to the power of the State?

8. Is contraception dehumanizing? Is contraception necessarily followed by impotency? The author mentions porn shops as the government's answer to lack of sexual desire. What about anti-depressants (for women) and Viagra?

9. A generation ago a man would have been filled with shame to publicly acknowledge his impotency, whereas today he'll proudly be a poster boy for Viagra. What has changed mens' fundamental perception of themselves and their role in society?

Of Interest:

- Children of Men, 2006, starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore

The Most Aggressively Inarticulate Generation

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

The text: Totally like whatever, you know? by Taylor Mali

Perfection?

THE BIRTHMARK
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Discussion questions:
1. Does the story come across as all together too melodramatic? Is the plot believable? Do the characters, as portrayed, ring true, or are they types?

2. Which factors could explain Georgiana's willingness to undergo the operation?

3. Is the temptation to destroy 'the good' in pursuit of 'the perfect' typical of idealists? Of melancholics? How is this temptation counteracted in everyday life?

4. "The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part."
Are idealists inclined to envy the angels their spirits? How does this envy develop in religion?

5. "Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present."
What is the difference between the idealist and the ideologue? Are all ideologies fatally flawed? What are the inevitable consequences of pursuing ideologies?

6. Is perfection possible in literature? In art? What price does the artist pay for perfection, or even the pursuit of perfection? Is it worth it? Is compromise possible?

7. Does anyone else except me get really excited by Hawthorne's masterful use of punctuation? His commas are exquisite; his semi-colons beyond reproach! How important is punctuation to the expression of ideas? Does vers libre succeed? What about punctuation in our lives? Nature gives us some (the seasons), religion others (feasts) and culture still others (family dinners). What happens when we do away with punctuation?

Further questions

2009 Reading List

• Infelix Culpa? - George McCartney, May 2009 Chronicles Magazine
• The Leopard - Guiseppe di Lampedusa
• Left to Tell - Immaculee Ilibagiza
• Beauty - Roger Scruton
• Debating Beauty - Alice von Hildebrand
• Address to Artists - Pope Benedict XVI
• Men Without Women - Ernest Hemingway

2010 Reading List

• The Birthmark - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Willa Cather's Capitalism - Stephen D.Cox
• Sloth - Evelyn Waugh
• The Burned Out Case - Graham Greene
• The Children of Men - P.D.James
• Short Stories - Anton Chekhov
• Selected Stories of Edgar Allen Poe: The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Fall of the House of Usher
• Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
• Dickens, Dali & others - George Orwell
• God and the Atom - Ronald Knox