What we’re about
This group started in May 2011, and we've read novels by Joyce, Malraux, Kafka, Wright, Mishima, Faulkner, Nabokov, Unamuno, Ellison, Hamsun, Woolf, Biely, Gide, and many others. We try to have a good time discussing the books without descending to small talk, think critically without descending to pedantry, etc.
Also, as the title shows, we've expanded our reading list since the group started. We don't really want to title the group something as vague as "Chicago Literature Group," etc., and modernist fiction and poetry still make up most of the reading list. But if some group members are excited about reading something else, be it Goethe or Ovid, Wallace or Perec, we're interested in that too. Feel free to make suggestions.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Alice Munro’s “Too Much Happiness” (2009) — Short Story DiscussionLink visible for attendees
Alice Munro is a Canadian writer who was dubbed a "master of the contemporary short story" when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. She is the recipient of many other literary accolades, including the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement and is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Award, Canada's highest literary honour. Much of Munro's work is set in Canada and concerns the lives of everyday people.
The British Council's directory of writers describes her work as follows: "One Alice Munro short story has the power of many novels. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is irrelevant. Every word glows. Munro is able to capture the shape and mood, the flavour of a life in 30 pages. She is wholly without cliché... Munro has talked about ‘the complexity of things, the things within things’. She teases the surface, until all that is hidden, all those tucked away pivots of a life, are revealed..."
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This is a series of occasional meetups (hosted by the Toronto Philosophy Meetup group) to discuss Alice Munro's short stories.
This time we will discuss “Too Much Happiness” (2009), a fictional retelling of the life of the 19th century Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, who made important contributions to partial differential equations and classical mechanics.
Please read the story in advance (⚠ around 65 pages, so not THAT short ⚠). A pdf copy is available here.
Stories by Munro we've previously discussed in this group:
- The Bear Came Over the Mountain (1999)
- A Real Life (1992)
- Wood (2009)
- The Albanian Virgin (1995)
- A Wilderness Station (1992)
- Differently (1989)
- Miles City, Montana (1985)
Note: We'll be joined by other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at this meeting – https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/297672690/
