Reading Toni Morrison with Phil Weinstein on Zoom

 

Toni Morrison: a name to reckon with for the past half-century, a writer who held the spotlight ever since her debut novel, The Bluest Eye, appeared in 1970. Morrison went on to write ten more novels, arguably becoming — with the publication of Beloved (1987) and winning the Nobel Prize in 1992 — the most significant American novelist of her time. It feels appropriate, in 2024, to reassess her body of work and probe the components of its power.

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present  a six-part seminar on Toni Morrison, reading The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Classes will be twice monthly on Wednesday evenings at 7pm, October 9th through December 18th. This online workshop will be hosted on Zoom by Lifelong Learning Swarthmore. Professor Weinstein and Lifelong Learning Swarthmore have generously arranged for Martha's Vineyard Library patrons to participate at no charge.

To register for the series call the library or email vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org. Zoom login will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session on October 9th. 

“Reading Toni Morrison” classes will be held at 7pm on the following Wednesdays: 

October 9th: The Bluest Eye

October 23rd: Sula

November 6th: Song of Solomon Part I

November 20th: Song of Solomon Part II

December 4th: Beloved Part I 

December 18th: Beloved Part II

Note: This course will cover the same material as the seminar hosted by the library in 2020. The library will be planning for a new seminar with Professor Weinstein later this winter on a topic to be announced.

Register for "Known & Unknown Worlds: Fictions of the 21st Century" with Phil Weinstein

REGISTER ONLINE or by calling the library.

Beginning in January, Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of Literature at Swarthmore College, will present a nine-part seminar, Known and Unknown Worlds: Fictions of the 21st Century. 

Programs will be held online via Zoom twice monthly from 6pm - 7:30pm, beginning Thursday January 18th (subsequent sessions will be on Wednesday evenings). Prior to the first class in January, registered participants will receive a welcome email with Zoom access information.  A limited number of copies of the books will be available for pickup at the library, or can be requested through CLAMS. All sessions will be recorded.

Additional course description, readings, and class dates appear below.

***

What might be a central tenet drawing together the six novels I have chosen for my next course at the Vineyard Haven Library? A syllabus comprised of Franzen's The Corrections, Sebald's Austerlitz, Jones's The Known World, Egan's A Visit from the Good Squad, Patchett's The Dutch House, and McCann's Apeirogon looks more like an out-of-control enterprise: these writers are so different from each other!

My candid answer is that no common theme or procedure joins together these six books. Rather, I find them the most resonant novels published (in English) in the 1st two decades of our new century. It's too early to call them classics, but (like classics) they stay in the mind long after an initial reading. The impression they make--on this reader at least--is intricate, powerful, lingering. With the exception of The Dutch House, each is difficult to categorize. Indeed, Austerlitz, The Known World, and Apeirogon escape all familiar novelistic frameworks. The Corrections and A Visit from The Goon Squad operate in more recognizable territory, but both are capable of startling you. As for The Dutch House, it is, while neither unfamiliar nor surprising, simply perfect.

We will devote two sessions each to the three longer novels (The Corrections, The Known World, Apeirogon), and a single session each to the three others. I cannot predict what you will come away with, but I can say this: together, they comprise an unforgettable set of readings. Rather than expertise--who is an expert on 21st century fiction?--I shall offer what guidance I can. A remarkable experience--in equal measures challenging and rewarding--lies ahead.

Dates and reading assignments:

Thursday Jan 18 2024: Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (1st of 2 sessions)

Wednesday Jan 31 2024: Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Wednesday Feb 14 2024: W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

Wednesday Feb 28 2024: Edward P Jones, The Known World (1st of 2 sessions)

Wednesday Mar 13 2024: Edward P Jones, The Known World

Wednesday Mar 27 2024: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Wednesday Apr 10 2024: Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

Wednesday Apr 24 2024: Colum McCann, Apeirogon (1st of 2 sessions)

Wednesday May 8 2024: Colum McCann, Apeirogon

Philip M. Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College. His numerous publications include Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), and Becoming Faulkner (2009). His newest book is a collection of essays entitled Soul-Error, published in May 2022. Professor Weinstein has been offering literary seminars in cooperation with the Vineyard Haven Public Library since 2012, and is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Capital Campaign for Vineyard Haven Library's expansion and renovation project.

REGISTER ONLINE or by calling the library.

Tolstoy's War and Peace with Phil Weinstein

Beginning in September, Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of Literature at Swarthmore College, will present a six-part seminar on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, hosted on Zoom by Lifelong Learning Swarthmore. Professor Weinstein and Lifelong Learning Swarthmore have generously arranged for Martha's Vineyard Library patrons to participate in this program at no charge. 

The class will take place every two weeks on Mondays from 7:00-8:30 pm, September 18th, October 2nd, October 23rd, November 6th, November 20th, and December 4th.

To register through the library, visit https://bit.ly/3su4UMw. Zoom login will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session in September. A limited number of copies of the book will be available for pickup at the library, or can be requested through CLAMS: https://library.clamsnet.org/Record/205597

At a time when most Americans have trouble thinking positively about Russia, it may be productive to launch a six-part engagement with Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Our aim is to come to grips with the literary dimensions of Tolstoy’s big book, not with the problematic history of post-Tolstoyan Russia in the last hundred years. That said, it is not surprising that Lenin was deeply interested in Tolstoy and wrote brilliantly about him. More, Tolstoy’s abiding concerns—the drama of class differences and commonalities, Russia’s relation to European culture and powers, among others—continue to resonate long after his death in 1910. 

"Not a novel," Tolstoy said about his epic novel, yet his refusal of novelistic norms does not keep War and Peace from being a supreme example of 19th-century Western fiction. Realistic, recognizable, filled with intricate and sympathetic characters, this novel does what great novels do: it informs, enlarges, deepens, and entertains its readers. It also does more: it seeks not just to rewrite history but to articulate a philosophy of history, intermingling the real and the invented in ways that baffled Tolstoy's critics. Reading 200 pages per session (every two weeks, for three months), we shall take the time necessary to try to do justice to Tolstoy's masterpiece.

Beginning in January, Professor Weinstein will present an additional seminar with Vineyard Haven Library, "Known and Unknown Worlds: Fictions of the 21st Century." Texts for this course will include works by Jonathan Franzen, W.G. Sebald, Edward P Jones, Jennifer Egan, Ann Patchett, and Colum McCann. Additional details to be announced.

Philip M. Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College. His numerous publications include Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), and Becoming Faulkner (2009). His newest book is a collection of essays entitled Soul-Error (2022). Professor Weinstein has been offering literary seminars in cooperation with the Vineyard Haven Public Library since 2012, and is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Capital Campaign for Vineyard Haven Library's expansion and renovation project.

A Century of American Short Stories with Philip Weinstein Continues in January

Register for the series

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present a six-part seminar discussing short story collections from six American writers. Programs will be held online via Zoom on six Wednesday evenings from 6pm - 7:30pm, beginning November 16th. Prior to the first class, registered participants will receive a welcome email with Zoom access information. 

***

To go from Ernest Hemingway to Elizabeth Strout is not quite 100 years, but it is certainly enough time for us to come to grips with how brilliantly American writers have deployed the shorter form.  We begin with two "masters"--Hemingway (In Our Time, 1925) and Faulkner (a selection of his finest stories, written in the 1930s).  Everyone who comes after them is affected, one way or another, by the power of their work. But, while Raymond Carver's reputation is founded on his Hemingway-like tautness, you would never confuse his Cathedral (1981) with anything by Hemingway. 

Thereafter we shall read Louise Erdrich's 1st great collection of stories, Love Medicine (1984).  Our final pair of writers--Edward P. Jones (All Aunt Hagar's Children, 2006) and Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, 2008)--take us into our current century; their careers, like Erdrich's, are still underway.

These readings are neither unduly lengthy nor unduly difficult.  You will get in easily enough; my aim is to help you get in as deeply as possible.  To that end, we will devote a separate session to each writer, so that you might come away with a finer sense of each one's typical syntax, lexicon, concerns, obsessions... I want you to turn them into your familiars--voices whose timbre and resonance will stay with you long after this course. 

We will be alert, as well, to the larger "story of America" that they are each engaged in telling.  Inevitably, such stories touch on dramas of race and gender and class--of black and white and red, of violence abroad and at home--that give America's past century its unpacifiable power to disturb.

Upcoming dates and reading assignments:

Wednesday January 11th: Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

Wednesday January 25th: Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar's Children

Wednesday February 8th:  Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

Previous sessions on Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner, and Raymond Carver's Cathedral can be viewed online: https://vimeo.com/showcase/10017344

Philip M. Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College. His numerous publications include Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), and Becoming Faulkner (2009). His newest book is a collection of essays entitled Soul-Error, published in May 2022. Professor Weinstein has been offering literary seminars in cooperation with the Vineyard Haven Public Library since 2012, and is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Capital Campaign for Vineyard Haven Library's expansion and renovation project.

Register for the series

Register For "A Century of American Short Stories" with Phil Weinstein

Register for the series

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present a six-part seminar discussing short story collections from six American writers. Programs will be held online via Zoom on six Wednesday evenings from 6pm - 7:30pm, beginning November 16th. Prior to the first class, registered participants will receive a welcome email with Zoom access information and a reading guide. 

***

To go from Ernest Hemingway to Elizabeth Strout is not quite 100 years, but it is certainly enough time for us to come to grips with how brilliantly American writers have deployed the shorter form.  We begin with two "masters"--Hemingway (In Our Time, 1925) and Faulkner (a selection of his finest stories, written in the 1930s).  Everyone who comes after them is affected, one way or another, by the power of their work. But, while Raymond Carver's reputation is founded on his Hemingway-like tautness, you would never confuse his Cathedral (1981) with anything by Hemingway. 

Thereafter we shall read Louise Erdrich's 1st great collection of stories, Love Medicine (1984).  Our final pair of writers--Edward P. Jones (All Aunt Hagar's Children, 2006) and Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, 2008)--take us into our current century; their careers, like Erdrich's, are still underway.

These readings are neither unduly lengthy nor unduly difficult.  You will get in easily enough; my aim is to help you get in as deeply as possible.  To that end, we will devote a separate session to each writer, so that you might come away with a finer sense of each one's typical syntax, lexicon, concerns, obsessions... I want you to turn them into your familiars--voices whose timbre and resonance will stay with you long after this course. 

We will be alert, as well, to the larger "story of America" that they are each engaged in telling.  Inevitably, such stories touch on dramas of race and gender and class--of black and white and red, of violence abroad and at home--that give America's past century its unpacifiable power to disturb.

Dates and reading assignments:

Wednesday November 16th: Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time

Wednesday November 30th: Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner

Wednesday December 14th Raymond Carver, Cathedral

Wednesday January 11th: Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

Wednesday January 25th: Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar's Children

Wednesday February 8th:  Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

Philip M. Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College. His numerous publications include Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), and Becoming Faulkner (2009). His newest book is a collection of essays entitled Soul-Error, published in May 2022. Professor Weinstein has been offering literary seminars in cooperation with the Vineyard Haven Public Library since 2012, and is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Capital Campaign for Vineyard Haven Library's expansion and renovation project.

Register for the series

"Uncanny Voyages" with Phil Weinstein Begins January 26th

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present  a seven-part seminar "Uncanny Voyages," that will center on writers who explore extreme situations. According to Professor Weinstein, "in these readings we enter spaces where common sense collapses. Kafka prized those books “that affect us like a disaster...like being banished into forests far from everyone... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within.” To travel with such texts is to encounter the bracing shock of uncanny voyages."

Hosted on Zoom by Lifelong Learning Swarthmore and Vineyard Haven Public Library, the class will take place every two weeks on Wednesdays from 7:00-8:30 pm, January 26th - April 20th, 2022. Zoom login will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session on January 26th. To register through the library, visit https://bit.ly/3mCbuds

Class dates and reading selections appear below. 

7pm Wednesday January 26, 2022
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

7pm Wednesday February 9, 2022
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

7pm Wednesday February 23, 2022
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

7pm Wednesday March 9, 2022
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents & Essay, "The Uncanny"

7pm Wednesday March 23, 2022
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, & Stories (selections below)

• The Judgment
• In the Penal Colony
• A Report to an Academy
• A Country Doctor
• A Starvation Artist
• Jackals and Arabs

7pm Wednesday April 6, 2022

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

7pm Wednesday April 20, 2022
Flannery O'Connor, Stories (selections below)

• A Good Man is Hard to Find
• The Life You Save May Be Your Own
• The River
• The Displaced Person
• The Artificial Nigger
• Good Country People
• Greenleaf
• Everything that Rises Must Converge
• Revelation

Save the Date for Winter Literature Seminar with Phil Weinstein

 

Online: Uncanny Voyages with Phil Weinstein
Wednesdays at 7pm, January 26th - April 20th

This winter, Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present  a seven-part seminar "Uncanny Voyages," that will center on writers who explore extreme situations. Readings from Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Kafka, Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor will make up the syllabus. 

According to Professor Weinstein, "in these readings we enter spaces where common sense collapses. Kafka prized those books “that affect us like a disaster...like being banished into forests far from everyone... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within.” To travel with such texts is to encounter the bracing shock of uncanny voyages."

Hosted on Zoom by Lifelong Learning Swarthmore and Vineyard Haven Public Library, the class will take place every two weeks on Wednesdays from 7:00-8:30 pm, January 26th - April 20th, 2022. Zoom login will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session on January 26th. To register through the library, visit https://bit.ly/3mCbuds

Online: All-Island Classics Reading Group Fall Schedule

 

Join the Martha's Vineyard Library Association's Island-wide classic book group on Zoom! West Tisbury Librarian Dee Leopold has been running this group since March 2020, and welcomes new participants. 

On Mondays beginning September 13, the group will meet from 5-6 pm to discuss Anthony Trollope's "Framley Parsonage."

On Tuesdays & Wednesdays beginning September 21st, discussion will be on E.M. Forster's "Passage to India" (participants choose either Tuesday or Wednesday group).

Later in October, the group will begin George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss," dates and times to be determined.

Email Dee at dleopold@clamsnet.org for more information or to join!

Online: All-Island Classics Reading Group

 

Spend your summer and fall reading and discussing Jane Austen! The Martha’s Vineyard Library Association Classics Reading Group is a fun and casual book club meeting on Zoom. This group is led by West Tisbury librarian Dee Leopold. Participants can join a small group on either Sundays or Wednesdays,  from 5 to 6 pm. Copies of the book are available at the Island libraries and online. The group is free and open to the public. Email Leopold at dleopold@clamsnet.org for more information or to join.

June: Pride and Prejudice

July: Emma

August: Sense and Sensibility

September: Mansfield Park 

October: Persuasion

November: Northanger Abbey

Online: Faulkner's Masterpieces with Phil Weinstein

Beginning in April, Philip Weinstein will present a nine week seminar on the master works of William Faulkner. The seminar will be hosted on Zoom by Swarthmore College's Lifelong Learning program, weekly on Wednesdays from 7:00 to 8:30 pm, April 7th through June 2.

Professor Weinstein and Lifelong Learning Swarthmore have generously arranged for Vineyard library patrons to participate in this program at no charge. In order to sign up for complimentary access, please register through the library's event calendar. Zoom login will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session on April 7th.

William Faulkner—arguably America’s greatest 20th-century novelist and Nobel Laureate in 1949—launched his career as a Joyce-inspired modernist. But, a lifelong Southerner, Faulkner found his supreme subject in his country’s ordeal of race. Following the poetic stream of consciousness of The Sound and the Fury (1929), the fallout of racial brutality in the South lodges at the center of Light in August (1932). The human cost of racism attains its furthest historical and emotional resonance in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), evincing, as Phil writes, “Faulkner’s widest grasp of the racial nightmare coiled at the heart of American history.”
 
Each novel will be explored in three sessions. The first session, on April 7, is on chapter one (the Benjy chapter) of The Sound and the Fury; and session two, on April 14, is on chapter two (the Quentin chapter). The novel as a whole will be discussed in session three (April 21). The longer text of Light in August will be roughly divided into three sessions (April 28, May 5, 12). Discussion of the uniquely challenging—and rewarding—Absalom, Absalom! will take up the last three classes (May 19, 26, June 2).

Philip M. Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College. His numerous publications include Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), and Becoming Faulkner (2009), and is currently working on a book of essays entitled Soul-Error. Professor Weinstein has been offering literary seminars in cooperation with the Vineyard Haven Public Library since 2012, and is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Capital Campaign for Vineyard Haven Library's expansion and renovation project.

Please register through the library's event calendar: https://bit.ly/30vaey9
Zoom login will be sent to all registered participants prior to the first session on April 7th

Register for Fall Literature Seminar on Toni Morrison with Phil Weinstein

Register Online

This year the library's annual literature seminar with Philip Weinstein will be presented as a series of virtual events on Zoom. Professor Weinstein will be discussing the works of Toni Morrison, one of the 20th Century’s most influential novelists and intellectuals, and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. The class will be reading four novels, including The Bluest Eye, Sula, The Song of Solomon, and Beloved. 

Philip Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College. He has been offering literary seminars in cooperation with the Vineyard Haven Public Library since 2012. His publications include Henry James and the Requirements of the Imagination (1971), The Semantics of Desire: Changing Models of Identity from Dickens to Joyce (1984), Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), Unknowing: The Work of Modernist Fiction (2005), Becoming Faulkner(2009), and Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage (2015).  He is currently working on a book of essays entitled Soul-Error.

In order to allow the library to distribute class materials and communicate with students, participants should register online. Prior to the first class, registered participants will receive a welcome email with Zoom access information and a reading guide.

Dates and reading assignments:

Wednesday, September 16th, 5:30 pm
The Bluest Eye -- Request the book or Checkout the eBook
Reading guide

Wednesday, September 30th, 5:30 pm
Sula -- Request the book or Checkout the eBook

Wednesday, October 14th, 5:30 pm
Song of Solomon, part I -- Request the book or Checkout the eBook

Wednesday, October 28th, 5:30 pm
Song of Solomon, part II

Thursday, November 12th, 5:30 pm
Beloved, part I -- Request the book or Checkout the eBook

Wednesday, December 2nd, 5:30 pm
Beloved, part II

--

This year, Professor Weinstein will also be presenting a series on James Joyce's Ulysses with Swarthmore's Lifelong Learning program starting in September. For more information, visit https://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni-resources-events/lifelong-learning-swarthmore

Register for Fall Literature Seminar with Phil Weinstein: "Fictions of the Law"

Register Online

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present the next in the ongoing program series "Islanders Read the Classics", with a six-part seminar "Fictions of the Law". This free seminar will be held on Wednesday evenings at the Katharine Cornell Theater, 51 Spring Street, Vineyard Haven.

"Fictions of the Law" will study three classic novels: Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1852), Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), and Franz Kafka's The Trial (1925). Participants are encouraged to read the books in advance, however it is not required. Copies of the books may be requested through your local CLAMS library. Those who prefer to read the same edition that Professor Weinstein will use in class may request the Norton Critical Edition of Bleak House, the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation Crime and Punishment, and the Muir translation of The Trial.

According to Professor Weinstein, the series' title--"Fictions of the Law"--should be understood in at least two ways. "On the one hand, we are reading three classic novels that circulate obsessively around the concept of the law (both criminal and civil). But each novel does this in its own ways, and the three of them differ starkly in approach, implication, and resonance. The other way to understand "Fictions of the Law" is to grasp that "law" itself is held up to an imaginative probing (is shown to be in disturbing ways fictional) in all three novels.  You may come away from each novel wondering, afresh, what is law?"

In order to allow the library to prepare class materials and communicate with students, participants are encouraged to sign up in advance at the library, or register online.

Dates and reading assignments:

Wednesday, September 18th, 7pm
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, chapters i - xxxi

Wednesday, October 2nd, 7pm
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, entire book

Wednesday, October 23rd, 7pm
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, parts 1-3

Wednesday, November 6th, 7pm
Crime and Punishment, entire book

Wednesday, November 20th, 7pm
Franz Kafka, The Trial

Wednesday, December 4th, 7pm
Franz Kafka, The Trial

Register for Fall Literature Seminar with Phil Weinstein: "Fictions of the Law"

 

Register online

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present the next in the ongoing program series "Islanders Read the Classics", with a six-part seminar "Fictions of the Law". This free seminar will be held on Wednesday evenings at the Katharine Cornell Theater, 51 Spring Street, Vineyard Haven.

"Fictions of the Law" will study three classic novels: Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1852), Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), and Franz Kafka's The Trial (1925). Participants are encouraged to read the books in advance, however it is not required. Copies of the books may be requested through your local CLAMS library.

According to Professor Weinstein, the series' title--"Fictions of the Law"--should be understood in at least two ways. "On the one hand, we are reading three classic novels that circulate obsessively around the concept of the law (both criminal and civil). But each novel does this in its own ways, and the three of them differ starkly in approach, implication, and resonance. The other way to understand "Fictions of the Law" is to grasp that "law" itself is held up to an imaginative probing (is shown to be in disturbing ways fictional) in all three novels.  You may come away from each novel wondering, afresh, what is law?"

In order to allow the library to prepare class materials and communicate with students, participants are encouraged to sign up in advance at the library, or register online.

Dates and reading assignments:

Wednesday, September 18th, 7pm
Charles Dickens, Bleak House

Wednesday, October 2nd, 7pm
Charles Dickens, Bleak House

Wednesday, October 23rd, 7pm
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Wednesday, November 6th, 7pm
Crime and Punishment

Wednesday, November 20th, 7pm
Franz Kafka, The Trial

Wednesday, December 4th, 7pm
Franz Kafka, The Trial

Survey: Topic Selection for 2019 Weinstein Seminar

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of Literature, emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present a multi-part literature workshop in Fall 2019, sponsored by Vineyard Haven Library. We would like your input to help select the course of study. You can help us decide with this single question survey!

Follow this link to the survey: Take the survey

Or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/X7RD7JC

Register for Philip Weinstein's Proust Seminar

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present the next in the ongoing program series "Islanders Read the Classics", with a six-part seminar on Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. This free seminar will be held at the Katharine Cornell Theater in Vineyard Haven.

In order to allow the library to prepare class materials and communicate with students, please sign up in advance at the library, or register online.

Professor Weinstein will be using the Random House/Modern Library edition, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin ; revised by D.J. Enright. A limited number of copies are available through CLAMS, or may be requested through the Commonwealth Catalog. Reading assignments for each session appear below.

Wednesday, September 26th, 7 pm
Swanns’s Way, “Combray” pp 1-160

Wednesday, October 10th, 7 pm
Swann’s Way, “Combray” pp 161-265
“Place-Names: The Name” pp 545-606

Wednesday, October 24th, 7 pm
Within a Budding Grove pp 299-376, 417-74, 500-516

Wednesday, November 14th, 7 pm
Within a Budding Grove pp 549-606
The Guermantes Way pp 403-71, 487-99, 786-819

Wednesday, November 28th, 7 pm
Sodom and Gomorrah pp 1-44, 204-45
The Captive pp 83-123
Time Regained pp 173-218

Wednesday, December 12th, 7 pm
Time Regained pp 238-355, 502-32

The "Islanders Read the Classics" series is presented by the Martha's Vineyard Library Association in partnership with the Martha's Vineyard Times. Participants are encouraged to read the books in advance, however it is not required.

Register for Philip Weinstein Seminar on Classic Short Stories

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present the next in the ongoing program series "Islanders Read the Classics", with a six-part seminar on classic short stories. This free seminar will be held at the Katharine Cornell Theater in Vineyard Haven. 

In order to allow the library to prepare class materials and communicate with students, please register in advance at the library or by visiting our website at www.vhlibrary.org.


7pm Wednesday, October 4, 2017 
Herman Melville: Benito Cereno, Billy Budd &  Bartleby the Scrivener

7pm Wednesday, October 18, 2017 
Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, Master and Man (The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Pevear/Volokhonsky translation)

7pm Wednesday, November 1, 2017  
Anton Chekhov: A Boring Story, Ward No. 6, Rothschild’s Fiddle, The Man in a Case, The Darling, The Lady with the Little Dog, In the Ravine, The Bishop (Stories of Anton Chekhov, Pevear/Volokhonsky translation)

7pm Wednesday, November 15, 2017 
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw, The Beast in the Jungle 

7pm Wednesday, November 29th, 2017
James Joyce: Dubliners (entire) 

7pm Wednesday, December 13, 2017 
Franz Kafka The Judgment, The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, A Country Doctor, Jackals and Arabs, A Report to an Academy, In the Penal Colony (Selected Stories, Muir translation)

The "Islanders Read the Classics" series is presented by the Martha's Vineyard Library Association in partnership with the Martha's Vineyard Times. Participants are encouraged to read the books in advance, however it is not required. Copies of the books may be requested through your local CLAMS library.

Islanders Read the Classics: Phil Weinstein on Classic Short Stories

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present the next in the ongoing program series "Islanders Read the Classics", with a six-part seminar on classic short stories. This free seminar will be held at the Katharine Cornell Theater in Vineyard Haven beginning October 4th, and continuing on October 18th, November 1st, November 15th, November 29th, and December 13th.

Professor Weinstein will discuss selected works by six masters of the genre:

• Herman Melville: Benito Cereno, Billy Budd
• Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, Master and Man (The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Pevear/Volokhonsky translation)
• Anton Chekhov: Ward No. 6, The Lady with the Little Dog, In the Ravine, and 3-4 other stories (Stories of Anton Chekhov, Pevear/Volokhonsky translation)
• Henry James: The Turn of the Screw, The Beast in the Jungle
• James Joyce: Dubliners
• Franz Kafka: The Judgment, The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, A Country Doctor, Jackals and Arabs, A Report to an Academy, In the Penal Colony (Selected Stories, Muir translation)

The "Islanders Read the Classics" series is presented by the Martha's Vineyard Library Association in partnership with the Martha's Vineyard Times. Once each month, an island library will host a free talk by an educator who has a passion for a specific book. Participants are encouraged to read the books in advance, however it is not required. Copies of the books may be requested through your local CLAMS library. For further details, contact the hosting library.  Other upcoming events in the series include Nancy Aronie on Ram Dass at 5:30pm June 29th at Aquinnah Public Library, and John Hough on The Confessions of Nat Turner at 7pm July 25th at West Tisbury Library. For further details, contact the hosting library.

Islanders Read the Classics: Phil Weinstein on Samuel Beckett

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present the next talk in the onging series "Islanders Read the Classics", with ‘Something Gone Wrong with the Silence: Reflections on Samuel Beckett.’ The free talk will be held at 7pm Tuesday, June 13th at the Katharine Cornell Theater in Vineyard Haven.

Samuel Beckett was one of the 20th century's greatest writers, winning the Nobel Prize in 1969, and this talk will attempt to provide some of the reasons for such an assessment. Born in Ireland to a well-to-do Protestant family, Beckett completed his education at the Sorbonne in Paris, writing a brilliant Masters thesis on Marcel Proust. After participating in the Resistance in the early 1940s, Beckett returned to Paris and began to write in French.  He is proficient in two genres--fiction and drama--and this talk will focus on one of his most remarkable plays, Krapp's Last Tape (1957). Participants are urged to read this very short, funny play prior to the talk on June 13th.

The "Islanders Read the Classics" series is presented by the Martha's Vineyard Library Association in partnership with the Martha's Vineyard Times. Once each month, an island library will host a free talk by an educator who has a passion for a specific book. Participants are encouraged to read the book in advance, however it is not required. Copies of the books may be requested through your local CLAMS library. Future events in the series include Nancy Aronie on Ram Dass at 5:30pm June 29th at Aquinnah Public Library, and John Hough on The Confessions of Nat Turner at 7pm July 25th at West Tisbury Library. For further details, contact the hosting library.

Islanders Read the Classics: John Sundman on Philip K. Dick

In February, novelist and essayist John Sundman will present two programs featuring the work of Philip K. Dick, as part of the ongoing series "Islanders Read the Classics." On Tuesday, February 28th at 7pm, Vineyard Haven Library will screen Blade Runner, the film based on Dick's 1968 novella, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The following evening, Wednesday March 1st at 7pm, John Sundman will give a talk on Dick’s groundbreaking novel VALIS, the first book in his defining trilogy. The talk will be held at the Katharine Cornell Theater.

The "Islanders Read the Classics" series is presented by the Martha's Vineyard Library Association in partnership with the Martha's Vineyard Times. Once each month, an island library will host a free talk by an educator who has a passion for a specific book. Participants are encouraged to read the book in advance, however it is not required. Copies of the books may be requested through your local CLAMS library. For further details, contact the hosting library.

Currently scheduled events in the series:

Tuesday, February 28st at 7 pm - The Vineyard Haven Library
Film screening Blade Runner with John Sundman

Wednesday, March 1st at 7 pm - The Katharine Cornell Theater
John Sundman on Philip K. Dick’s novel VALIS

Tuesday, March 21 at 7pm - Oak Bluffs Library
Paul Karasik on Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus

Wednesday, April 5 at 5:30 pm - Chilmark LIbrary
Celebrating National Poetry Month
Holly St. John Bergon on the work of Elizabeth Bishop

Register for Phil Weinstein's Seminar "American Baroque"

Beginning in September, Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of Literature emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present a six-part workshop entitled American Baroque, on Melville’s Moby Dick and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! The series will be presented at the Katharine Cornell Theater, 54 Spring Street, Vineyard Haven, on Wednesday evenings at 7pm. Professor Weinstein will cover Moby Dick on September 7th, 21st, and 28th, and Absalom, Absalom! on November 2nd, 16th, and 30th.

Professor Weinstein describes these two works as "larger than life, harder to read than any bestseller, yet unforgettable once you’ve made them yours. Making them yours is labor, but as you succeed in making your way in, it can become a labor of love. Our three September sessions on Melville, like our later three on Faulkner, aim to enable your journey."

Professor Weinstein will use Norton's 2nd Critical Edition for Moby Dick, and the 1966 corrected edition of Absolum, Absolum! A limited number of copies will be on reserve at the library, or may be requested through CLAMS. In order to allow the library to prepare class materials and communicate with students, please register in advance at the library or by visiting our website at www.vhlibrary.org.

Click here to access the registration form.