Since we had our last book club meeting, I have been reflecting on what I have learnt from the SELCS Summer Book Club. As I have not just learnt skills for discussions, I have learnt skills for life. A lifelong passion for literature and reading has been further instilled within me.

Communication: The SELCS Summer Book Club has undoubtedly strengthened my communication skills. Initially, the prospect of raising points in front of a wide-ranging virtual audience was quite a challenge to grasp. Yet, with determination and the sheer camaraderie of the book club members, coupled with its more informal atmosphere, I reignited my thrill for literature. It was amazing to embark on a journey alongside fellow readers who too, shared my same yearning for literature and communication. Communication with the book club members helped me to find and present my voice and listen to a broad spectrum of notions and opinions.

Listening: Through this book club experience, my listening skills have also been enhanced. Each book club discussion featured a range of themes and ideas, some of which I was new to. I learnt about new terminology and also about different cultural contexts. Therefore, in the discussions, the ability to listen was strengthened since I became conscious of new ideas and literary references, which I could then apply to my own readings. Possessing strong listening skills enabled me to confidently express my ideas whilst also evaluating other interpretations.

Analysis: Furthermore, my analysis skills have improved as a result of constant collaboration with team members and I had the opportunity to gain insights into world literature on a temporal, cultural and textual level. I encountered the tropes of different genres of literature and synthesised my thoughts effectively to analyse not just one layer of meaning, but several layers of meaning that arose from authorial intentions and political and social contexts. I relished the opportunity to delve into a variety of genres including contemporary literature, dystopian literature, political literature, and the rewarding classical literature.

Awareness of Cultures: One final key skill that this book club has fostered within me is to have an awareness of different cultures. As my chosen language for my comparative literature study is German, I was naturally inclined towards the German texts and references discussed. However, as the discussions progressed, to my delight, I became more enthused with the desire to be open to a range of cultures and to reflect on French, Russian, Indian, Bengali, Chinese and African literature too, that helped to change my perceptions, especially during lockdown!

This week’s session was lead by Dr Florian Mussgnug

The summary of the discussion is written by Sara Karim

‘Station Eleven’ – Emily St. John Mandel

Dystopian novels that are deemed as apocalyptic fiction are not the usual books I prefer to read. My outlook on apocalyptic fiction and dystopian fiction transformed after reading and discussing Emily Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’. The unfamiliarity of this fast paced and anxiety ridden novel launched me into being out of my reading comfort zone. During my reading journey of this novel I felt enlightened especially by the comical tone to the novel. These moments of spontaneous euphoria included August’s ability to seek out Poetry and TV Guides in abandoned, dilapidated houses. As well as the collective solidarity of the Symphony who had the conviction to perform Shakespeare even when times were bleak and uncertain. Indeed, during our discussion, there were parallels drawn between current times during the pandemic and the serious tone of the novel.

The most striking aspect of our discussion was when we thought about what may happen when there is a global demise of the Internet. One of the points raised which was thought-provoking was when it came to the realisation that it would only take a few shops to close down, a few street lamps to stutter and planes to no longer take passengers to classify this as an apparent world-ending point. But perhaps, as the author of the novel may suggest, there is more to humanity than global connectivity, even more so there is a strong desire to encourage solidarity and to reach out to those family, friends and dear ones whom we once thought we had lost, but now we have found again. The globalisation that features in this novel from ‘hearing no news from Beijing, then Moscow’ and then the isolated South Korean ships on the Malaysian Coast, struck a chord with our group. Here, the world is depicted as being so dependent on technology for business, travel, adoration, love, and memories of friendship and laughter that resonate in the protagonist, Jeevan. Surely, if the technology no longer prevails then perhaps, we can choose what we would want to rejuvenate into the next ‘new normal’ future?

The polyphonic nature of the novel including magazine captions and the interview scripts that explore Kirsten’s experiences show the powerful effects of Emily Mandel’s writing style. Not only does she deploy this to show the connectivity between the characters from all walks of life, she also may do this to exhibit that the ‘mourning‘ of Arthur has encouraged the characters to reflect on their own lives. This sense of reflection is even perhaps encouraged in ourselves as readers, as self-reflection can be especially powerful and humbling during a pandemic. As is the case with Arthur’s first wife, Miranda, she composed herself to ‘repent nothing’, in reality she also reflects on the sorrows and joys of her past. Furthermore, as a group we discussed that despite the Symphony’s initial grudges and petty dislikes against one another, they all poured their energies into performing a ‘Midsummer Night‘s Dream’ and they sought to value each member as one of their own. This novel made me realise that dystopian fiction novels are not just full of sadness and catastrophe, dystopian novels can also be remnants of hope that seek to provide an opportunity to self-reflect and empower us.

By Sara Karim

This week’s session was led by Dr Tim Beasley-Murray

The summary of the discussion is written by Sophie Smars

In this week’s book-club we discussed Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of Red Death’. An appropriate read considering the current situation of lockdown, where much like the characters of this gothic short story, we too are slowly losing a sense of time, as a pandemic rages on outside.

Indeed, the concept of time and specifically the symbol of the clock was one of the points we focused on. Time appears to be liquid in this story. On the one hand, the guests are taken in the illusion of excess to a point where they lose a sense of this time and awareness of what is happening in the outside world. Yet on the other hand, they are also constantly haunted by the presence of the clock and thus cannot really escape time. It is the device that mediates and organizes everything in the story. The party is constantly marked by the eerie effect of silence and stillness that the ominous sound of the clock creates every time it strikes a new hour, until this tension eventually builds to the fatal rupture the midnight hour brings, when the Red Death is finally among them. The appearance of this figure illustrates how time symbolizes the frailty, futility and illusion of Human control in the face of inevitable death.

The omnipresence of a time that is accelerating towards death is also mirrored by a quickening-pace in vivid descriptions of the environment of excess. Readers had different point of views on what these depictions of the castle meant to them. Some thought it to be a gorgeous, exotic fantasy that is undeniably attractive to its’ guests. Yet others found this surplus to be sickening and oppressive, with an architectural geometry resembling a maze that is purposefully confusing to its’ guests and the readers. The question was thus raised: is something being kept out or are they being kept in? Are these guests even enjoying this party or is it an illusion, like a staged masquerade or similar to a ‘Danse Macabre’? Are these prisoners or guests? These questions about the descriptions of the castle bring about a general feeling of horror, which we compared to HP Lovecraft’s writing of ‘impossible spaces’, or physical dimensions in stories that create horror due to being unimaginable, inhuman, and unknown. This chaotic space is further highlighted by the abundance of colour (red and black being the most significant), with typical gothic images from 19th C literature, like the stained glass, as well as a profusion of sensory impression, that represents the moral decadence of the time. We concluded that red could symbolize death, but also life, vitality, and desire, which we related to the tension of Eros and Thanatos, that is commonly found in literature.

The importance of aesthetic in this story, as well as the indication of Prospero being somewhat of a ‘mad artist’ made us question the role of Art and the Artist. We often associate art, music and dance as things that bring joy, and much like storytelling, activities that put of death. But in this story, it is actually what brings death to them. We also tend to think of the artist as the voice of society’s victims, or as Nadine Gordimer says ‘Art is on the side of the oppressed’. Yet here the figure of the artist also happens to be a controlling and tyrannical one that does not care about those dying outside. This Prospero and his story also have many similarities to Shakespeare’s Prospero in ‘The Tempest’. The latter is a figure of magic and illusion, and the play itself has often been interpreted as a part of Prospero’s dream or a metaphor for the illusion of theatre itself. In Poe’s story we see a similar importance of dreams, magic, and the occult, that is conveyed through the rich sensory images and colours, acting as omens of the approaching death. Sorcery is often seen as a zero-sum game; engaging in magic means winning but necessarily losing something in the process, which we see in the fate of these guests who thought themselves protected. Their illusions and specifically their fantasy of power are eventually caught up by reality. ‘The Tempest’ isn’t the only literary reference in Poe’s work that is unquestionably a mesh of intertextuality, with its masked spectral figure that reminds a reader of ‘Macbeth’ or the mentioned Victor Hugo’s ‘Hernani’, but also made our readers think of later works, such as ‘The Library of Babel’ by Jorge Luis Borges or ‘Cortigiana’ by Miloš Marten.

Lastly, we may be left with questions about the ‘aim’ of this text. Is it didactic and moralizing? Does it resist the idea of a moral, despite the argument that it is hard to write about an apocalyptic scenario without being moralizing (especially considering the time period). Does the presence of Horror prevent a didactic conclusion? What is the allegorical function in this tale? And so on.

By Sophie Smars