Dear classics reader,
At this week’s masked ball you will find:
A report from our conversation about The Catcher in the Rye at the Hatchards Classics Book Club last night;
Birthday wishes to Anna Kavan;
A preview of coming attractions and other notices;
And for paid subscribers:
The week’s new classics – including a Bolshevik love triangle (and a post-Thatcherite witch);
And our first discussion of Dream Story – with a note on vehmic court judges.
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The Catcher in the Rye Book Club
Firstly, last night we had an excellent discussion of The Catcher in the Rye at the Hatchards Classics Book Club. Here’s my report:
And here are links to our previous The Catcher in the Rye posts:
The Schedule (13 February)
J. D. Salinger (27 February)
0. Holden Caulfield (6 March)
1. Chapters 1-7 – and Pencey Prep (13 March)
2. Chapters 8-16 – and the American Museum of Natural History (20 March)
3. Chapters 17-26 – the Biltmore Clock and the Central Park Carousel (27 March)
If you would like to come to our next Hatchards Classics Book Club discussion, you’d be very welcome! We will be discussing Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story on Thursday 7th May.
We meet at Hatchards (187 Piccadilly, London) on the first Thursday of every month at 6.30pm – tickets cost £5 with a free Hatchards Reward Card and include a glass (or two) of wine.
Happy Birthday Anna Kavan
Anna Kavan was born on this day in 1901, 125 years ago.
Helen Woods was born in Cannes, the only child of wealthy British parents. She claimed she was introduced to heroin as a young woman by her tennis coach. She soon became addicted, describing her syringe as her ‘bazooka’. When her second marriage collapsed, she was hospitalized with depression and addiction, the first of many such confinements.
Initially she published under her married name, Helen Ferguson, but in 1940 she dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to Anna Kavan, a character from her own novel Let Me Alone (1930). Today she is best remembered for her apocalyptic novel Ice (1967). The science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss described Kavan as ‘De Quincey’s heir and Kafka’s sister’.
Ice by Anna Kavan (1967)
Ice will soon cover the entire globe. As the glacial tide creeps forward, society breaks down. Hurtling through the frozen chaos is a nameless narrator, seeking the white-haired girl he once loved, desperate to rescue her – or perhaps to annihilate her. Through nightmarish, ever-shifting scenes, she flees him and his powerful enemy, the Warden. But none of them can outrun the ice.
[UK / US] Pushkin Press Classics | 192 pages | introduced by Christopher Priest
Coming Attractions and Other Notices
Future monthly read-alongs
For a sneak preview of our upcoming monthly read-alongs, take a peak here. I’ve just added our September read-along to the list.
May – The Master and Margarita
Next month we will be reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantastical, satirical, spectacular The Master and Margarita, which is set in Stalin’s Moscow on a few sweltering days in May. Join us! We will be reading over five weeks, starting on Friday 24 April. Here are the details.
Catalogue
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Penguin Classics series this year, Penguin are publishing a complete catalogue of every Penguin Classic title currently available in the UK. Catalogue is beautifully produced — and I’m proud to say that I helped to assemble the text inside.
This 400-page clothbound hardback will be available from next Thursday. Here is Penguin’s description:
From Achebe and Austen to Zola and Zweig, and from the Epic of Gilgamesh to twenty-first century dystopias and autofiction, here is the complete list of every Penguin Classic in print. Published in a beautiful clothbound format, the list is arranged alphabetically by author and also includes key bibliographic information such as sub-series, genre and ISBN. Comprising 3,500 entries, this is the essential reference guide to the world’s largest and best-loved classics list.
Annual book subscription
And if you’re enjoying our read-alongs, why not treat yourself to the Hatchards Classic Book Club annual book subscription?
You (or a friend) can receive all the books we read each month here on Read the Classics, beautifully gift-wrapped and delivered to your door, anywhere in the world, as well as a year’s complimentary subscription to Read the Classics, so you can choose to read along with us, if you wish.
To find out more, follow this link or email Hatchards directly: subscriptions@hatchards.co.uk
