The Sunnyvale Public Library will host a five-part reading and discussion series, Jewish Literature: Identity and Imagination. This exciting program is designed to offer participants an opportunity to explore Jewish literature and culture through scholar-led discussions of contemporary and classic books centered on a common them. Victoria Harrison, Ph.D., Jewish Studies Coordinator and Lecturer in the History Department at San Jose State University will lead and facilitate book discussions centered on the theme of Your Heart's Desire: Sex and Love in Jewish Literature.
Book discussions will be held in the Sunnyvale Public Library Program Room. Attend all five sessions or as many as you can to get to know other readers and enjoy the variety of viewpoints! Register for the group by calling (408) 730-7300, option 5, or emailing library@ci.sunnyvale.ca.us. Books will be available for checkout from the Sunnyvale Public Library.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008, 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Discussion of Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
With David Mesher, Ph.D.
Alexander Portnoy is hostile, oversexed, and seething with guilt. His libido simply will not behave. On the analyst's couch, he performs a stand-up routine that doubles as an anti-bildungsroman. An equal-opportunity offender, Portnoy rails against his father, Jews, blacks, women, WASPs. He also relishes his own self-hatred by deploying vaudevillian humor ("a man's cartilage is his fate"). At stake for the sympathetic reader are larger questions about religion and morality. Opposed to decency and dignity, Portnoy exhibits the kind of attitude only an assimilated immigrant can afford.
The 1969 novel is best known for Portnoy's onanistic exploits and his explosive anger toward his mother - but therein Roth offers the notion of love as anger, or why else would this antihero spend so much time on the couch?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Discussion of The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
With Rabbi Melanie Aron
Paley's first collection is populated with gutsy, sensuous women and the breezy, selfish men they fall for against their better judgment. The power of these brief, anecdotal stories stems from the generosity and complexity of the author's worldview. Rather than vilifying her feckless antiheroes, who struggle "till time's end...to get away in one piece" from the women who adore them, she offers them up without judgment, exposing both warts and charms.
In subtle, Yiddish-inflected prose, Paley perfectly captures the humor of couplings in a bygone New York. But her earthy stories often turn on moments of intense lyricism, as when one character cradles her son in bright sunlight, his fingers "interred forever, like a black and white barred king in Alcatraz, my heart lit up in stripes."
Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Discussion of A Simple Story by S.Y. Agnon
With Vicki Harrison, Ph.D.
Set at the turn of the 20th century and first published in 1935, A Simple Story floats the anti-romantic, anti-modern idea that it is better to love the person you marry than marry the person you love. Hirshi, the only child of prosperous shopkeepers in northern Polan, is entranced by his intelligent and penniless cousin, Blume. A proposed arranged marriage to Mina, who comes with a dowry, clothes and no interest in books, brings on a bout with madness, but Hirshi emerges from the sanatorium resigned to keep shop in his parents' world. Eventually he embraces its traditions.
Agnon's narrator delivers this not-so-simple story with a folklorist's comic touch, and draws from the Nobel laureate's experiences growing up in a Galician shtetl before he emigrated to Palestine.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Discussion of The Lover by A.B. Yehoshua
With Susan Ellberg
Asya, a high school teacher, begins an adulterous affair with Gabriel, an Israeli emigre, back in the country for a brief visit. But when the 1973 Yom Kippur war breaks out and Gabriel disappears, it is Asya's husband, Adam, who becomes obsessed with his whereabouts: Has he fled the country? Has he been pressed into service by the military? Has he been captured by Egyptian forces? Is he lying wounded in a hospital? Is he lost forever?
The story of Adam's unlikely search, told from multiple viewpoints in the manner of Faulkner, reveals a family in which everyone is a missing person - misunderstood, ignored, silent - and a society riven by differences in class, background and political outlook.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Discussion of The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein
With Rabbi Josh Berkenwald
After shaking off the vestiges, of her Orthodox upbringing, Renee Feuer - the self-deprecating philosphy graduate student who narrates Goldstein's witty debut - embarks on a series of raucous affairs. A crisis of confidence in her intellectual prowess leads her to settle down with an aging mathematician whose genius, she believes, affirms her own: "I was floundering and thus quite prepared to follow the venerably old feminine tradition of being saved by marriage." Soon, though, she's back on the prowl.
Goldstein deftly veers between hilarious anecdotes about Renee's charmingly familiar family and philosophical ruminations on the nature of human romantic interaction - the rift between the "outer public place of bodies and inner private one of minds."
Continued by popular demand:
Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Discussion of In the Image by Dara Horn
With Vicki Harrison, Ph.D.
Horn's debut novel has been described as "a work of raw genius...a book to press into other people's hands and pester them to finish." - Christian Science Monitor.
In an enchanting, introspective and emotionally charged debut, Horn travels back and forth through time and space, offering a Jewish immigrant history amid a young woman's coming of age story, love story, spiritual journey.
----------------------------
Jewish Literature Discussion Groups at Nearby Libraries:
San Jose Public Library
The Let's Talk About It series taking place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library starts in January 2009 and continues through May 2009. The theme will be Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel. Victoria Harrison, Ph.D., Jewish Studies Coordinator and Lecturer in the History Department at San Jose State University will be the scholar and discussion coordinator. Discussion dates and books include:
Sunday, January 25, 2009, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.
A Contract with G'd by Will Eisner
Sunday, February 22, 2009, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Maus I/II by Art Spiegelman
Sunday, March 22, 2009, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories by Ben Katchor
Sunday, April 26, 2009, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.
The Quitter by Harvey Pekar
Sunday, May 24, 2009, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.
The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar
Books discussed in the series will be available for checkout from the San Jose Public Library. For further information or to sign up for this series, please contact Deborah Estreicher, (408) 808-2357.
Watsonville Public Library
The Let's Talk About It series taking place at the Watsonville Public Library starts in September 2008 and continues through December 2008. The theme will be Demons, Golems, and Dybbuks: Monsters of the Jewish Imagination. Dr. Murray Baumgarten, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be the scholar and discussion coordinator. Discussion dates and books include:
Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
The Dybbuk and Other Writings by S. Ansky
Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick
Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Angels in America by Tony Kushner
Books discussed in the series will be available for checkout from the Watsonville Public Library. For further information or to sign up for this series, please contact Watonka Addison, (831) 768-3400.
Sunnyvale Public Library • 665 W. Olive Ave., Sunnyvale CA 94086
(408) 730-7300 • www.sunnyvalelibrary.org
Contact Us • Site Map