Original hummus
Pita bread
Pirate’s booty (white cheddar)
Lemon wafer cookies

I also have other junk at home from another meeting last week: chocolate-covered raisins and ginger snaps.

So I encourage you to order in or pick up food on your way in.

See you at 6:30 tomorrow to discuss The Penelopiad. You all are welcome to arrive as early as 5:30 which is when I should get home.

Wednesday June 6th at Julia’s at 6:30 pm. Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad.

From Myths Made Modern. Alexander, Carolyn. December 11, 2005. New York Times.

…
Thus with much anticipation does one turn to the actual novels, the myths, these “universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives” as the series’ preface states. “The Penelopiad” by Margaret Atwood is inspired by the story of Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, and particularly by the grisly denouement of Book 22 of the “Odyssey”: Odysseus, returned to his kingdom in Ithaca, has slaughtered the parasitic suitors who trashed his home and courted his wife in his absence. Next, he commands his son to slay those of the palace handmaids who had been faithless to him by sleeping with the suitors. The young heir obeys his father, but decides an “unclean” death is warranted and instead of killing them with his sword, he hangs them.

Atwood has done her research: she knows that penelopeia means “duck” in Greek; that ribald stories about a Penelope – whether “our Penelope” or someone else – were circulated; and that virginity could be renewed by the blood of male sacrifice. Here, amid the moon cults and palace of women and the returned king, “spattered over with gore and battle filth,” as Homer tells us, is fabulous Atwood territory. Unfortunately, she does not grasp this thorny nettle, but chooses instead to blow feather-light dandelions. There are a number of witty devices, like a recurring chorus of maids whose saucy songs fix attention on themselves as opposed to the royal subjects. Atwood tells the story in determinedly irreverent modern argot, apparently to dislodge her tale from its epic moorings. Sometimes it works, in the blunt chapter heading “Helen Ruins My Life,” for example. But when it comes to creating characters, the ploy does not pay off. Atwood’s Penelope, in her studiedly offhand narration of her own story, is wholly unconvincing, both as a 15-year-old Spartan princess bride and as the older and wiser survivor who has lived to outmaneuver the suitors. Each Odyssean landmark is inverted with a broad wink. In this telling Penelope is a dutiful but hardly love-struck wife; the treacherous maids were in fact her loyal allies; the faithful nurse, Eurykleia, was a controlling old bag; Odysseus never fooled Penelope in his disguise – she just played along. Much of the story’s rich material has been dumped at the back of the book in a single chapter, “The Chorus Line: An Anthropology Lecture” (“Yes? You, Sir, in the back? Correct!”). This marvelous material seems not to have been metabolized by Atwood’s imagination, and the result is merely a riff on a better story that comes dangerously close to being a spoof. Most fatally, the maids, whose tragic end in the “Odyssey” is what in part inspired Atwood to choose this story, also remain mere outlines of characters.
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All write-ups have been received. I did not, of course, edit anything; just cut and pasted the entries under the member page. Looks lovely, no?

We will meet on the second Wednesday evening of every month chez Julia. First official group meeting will be June 13, 2007. But how about we meet once prior to meet one another and to choose our first read? Will everyone be able to make Wednesday, May 23rd 6:30/7? What works for everyone?

(1) none of us can have too much in common
(2) all of us must commit to completing each book selection in time for our monthly gathering and – I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but -
(3) all of us must make an honest effort to attend our gatherings.

Papyri’s gonna blow the other one out of the water. May the partay begin.