Spring 2007 Workshops at Writers & Books

Reading Seminars

The Jack London Trinity: Man, Myth, and Storyteller

• SA7-R101
• 6 Tuesdays 7–9 p.m.
• April 17 through May 22
• $113 W&B members / $119 general public
• Instructor: Tim Madigan

The man who brought us White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and the\ classic story “To Build a Fire” was himself as interesting as any of his characters. Wanderer, gold miner, itinerant reporter, and some-time prisoner (he even did a stretch in Buffalo on a charge of vagrancy), London’s life was never dull. In some ways, he was a forerunner of many American literary “bad-boys” and adventurers as various as Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Jim Harrison. In this class, Tim Madigan will lead readings and discussions from London’s oeuvre. The main texts will be The Portable Jack London and Sea Wolf. Students should pick them up before the class begins.

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The Genealogy of Nature Poetry

• WA7-R01
• Saturday, 10 a.m–2 p.m.
• April 21
• $37 W&B members / $39 general public
• Instructor: Karla Linn Merrifield

Part workshop, part writing seminar, this class traces the aesthetic impulses of nature poetry from the British Romantics to contemporary American poets, from Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Lawrence, Longfellow, and Whitman, through Mary Oliver and Pattiann Rodgers. Nature lovers, readers, poets and other writers—all can join this discussion and mini-workshop.

How to register

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“We’re Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto”

• SA7-R102
• One Saturday, June 9
• 10 a.m.–2 p.m.
• $35 W&B members / $39 general public
• Instructor: Patricia Roth-Schwartz

This four-hour reading seminar will explore the literary artistry of contemporary novelist Gregory Maguire in transmuting L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (plus other volumes in the Oz series) into Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, and Son of a Witch. We will also discuss Judy Garland’s classic Oz film and the Broadway musical Wicked.

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Reading for Fiction Writers

• SA7-R103
• 6 Wednesdays 7–9 p.m.
• April 25 through May 30
• $113 W&B members / $119 general public
• Instructor: Darby Knox

You can learn what makes a great story by honing your critical reading skills. Using Best American Short Stories 2006 (Ann Patchett, ed.) as a text, we’ll read and discuss some of the best recent short stories. We’ll look at character development, point of view, plot, and other elements of fiction to “get under the hood” of the story. The Patchett text can be found at bookstores or at the library. Read the first two stories, “Once the Shore” and “Awaiting Orders,” before the first class. Then we’ll vote on the next stories that we’ll cover. 

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Parmenides vs. Socrates

• SA7-R104
• 4 Thursdays 7–9 p.m.
• May 17 through June 7
• $85 W&B members / $89 general public
• Instructor: David White
  

“Whether there is or is not a One, both that One and the Other alike are and are not, and appear and do not appear to be”—so ends the poem “Way of Truth” by Greek philosopher Parmenides, who once joined in heated debate with Socrates. Dr. David White will lead this seminar through Parmenides' poem, as well as Plato’s “Parmenides,” guided by the commentary of F. M. Cornford. This class will provide a good introduction to these essential philosophers, while also welcoming more advanced scholars into the discussion.

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William Stafford: The Extraordinary Ordinary Poet

• SA7-R105
• 5 Mondays 6:30–8:30 p.m.
• May 21 through June 25 (skipping Memorial Day, May 28)
• $95 W&B members / $99 general public
• Instructor: Donna M. Marbach

The author of 67 books, William Stafford is remembered as one of America’s most prolific poets. Rising each morning before 6, he wrote about the most ordinary aspects of suburban life. Indeed, in many ways he was ordinary: father of four, teacher, active church member. Yet, behind the ordinary, Stafford was an extraordinary person and poet, complex and contradictory. In this five-week course, we will read a broad selection of Stafford’s poetry, as well as some of his writing about writing. We will also read about the person behind the words as seen by his son. Our key texts will be: Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford, by Kim Stafford; The Answers Are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life, and The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems, by William Stafford. Let’s see if by exploring Stafford’s life and works we can find the extraordinary in our own ordinary lives.

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Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed

• SA7-R106
  5 Tuesdays 7–9 p.m.
  May 29 through June 26
  $95 W&B members / $99 general public
  Instructor: Alfred Geier

A study and discussion of Dostoyesvsky’s The Possessed (also entitled The Demons), a profound study of the psychological roots of moral and political evil, as shown through a small group of hell-bent radicals, idealists, anarchists, and nihilists, led by the arch-villain Nikolai Stavrogin. (Read Part I, sections 1 through 4 for the first meeting.)

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Gilgamesh, Mary Magdalene, & The Da Vinci Code (Revisited)

• SA7-M102
• 4 Thursdays 7–9 p.m.
• May 17 through June 7
• $79 W&B members / $85 general public
• Instructor: John Maier

Why has Mary Magdalene become so popular that the Monroe County Library System lists more than 60 items on her alone? The Da Vinci Code did not initiate the interest, though it continues to stir up controversy about this famous biblical figure. Who was she, and why does she generate such interest? In this four-week class, John Maier will introduce writings and visual images from much earlier than the New Testament and Gnostic texts that form the basis of most investigations. He’ll start with deep background to the Sacred Marriage—a ritual that goes back to the forth millennium BCE, and examine ritual and myth reflected in the ancient Iraqi work, Gilgamesh.

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