Thursday, March 1, 2012

Sense of an Ending


Mike summarized our last meeting and diligently researched all tangents we engaged in as follows: 

It was a crowded scene in the “Latte” on Thursday night.   Groups of diners and merrymakers threaded their way through the filled tables, looking for open seats.  Covetously circling the large table that Dave H. had secured for the Book Men, middle-aged women eyed him suspiciously, wondering why he and I insisted on holding such prime property when so many were left to drift about, unseated.    Finally, Christian appeared, giving some credence to our frail justification “we’re expecting others.” With a quorum of three, the pleas for sitting space faded, and our discussion was underway.   
Mike and Christian agreed that The Sense of an Ending was worth reading.  Dave held more mixed views--“too much naval contemplation” for his tastes.   All liked the Adrian Finn quote, though:  “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” As Dave noted, in the political world, history is easily rewritten and generally written by the powerful.   We briefly examined the life of the narrator, Tony Webster—safe and “peaceable” in his own estimation but mundane and empty relative to others'--and unreliably presented through his recollected memories.  We had a hard time recalling the  femme fatale’s name—Veronica—which only confirmed the insufficiency of memory for recounting history.  By then it was on to other topics though—swinging pumpkins, hitchhiking, Eurail passes, suicide by train, Aristotle’s lost works, and the birther rebirth in Maricopa county. 

Tom, who wasn't able to join us contributed nevertheless with the following link to a discussion on the Booker site about Barnes's book:
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/forum/topic.php?id=370&page
It raises some interpretations that we didn't consider--one (farfetched in my opinion) is that Tony was actually the father of Adrian Jr.   You might find the discussion interesting.  The book has its supporters, but there are detractors too.

We agreed that next time (sometime in April), we will gather again for a discussion of “Salvage the Bones” by Jessmyn Ward.  (NY Times Review):  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/books/review/salvage-the-bones-by-jesmyn-ward-book-review.html )
Below are links to a limited selection of the topics that flitted through the broken clouds of our discussion:
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