TwP ~ questions about RETURN

Athena mourning or meditating

In this third section of Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue and Ann travel to Greece in 2000.  Chapter titles show us where they were.

RETURN

Ann ~ Palianis Nunnery ~ Crete
Sue ~ Palianis Convent ~ Crete
Ann ~ Restaurant ~ Delphi
        The Acropolis, Plaka, Electra Palace Hotel ~ Athens
Sue ~ Sanctuary of Demeter ~ Eleusis

A few more questions for you to choose from:

13. Sue reflected on "the hive of darkness" she had written into her novel and began to associate it with the world.  She sometimes felt overwhelmed by negative television images (p. 250).  Do you think her response is helpful?

"Cut off the TV," I would say to Sandy.  Maybe there is wisdom in limiting one's daily intake of bad news, but out of sight did not entirely prove out of mind for me.  Was the hive actually growing darker, or did seeing so much ceaseless news just make it seem so?

14.  Ann and Sue are at a point of thinking differently about their writing, as Sue muses here about Ann (p. 251).  What do you think?

She read in one of her writing books that a writer's job is to serve his or her work — not the ego, but the writing itself.  She took this to heart.  As I sit here with twenty-two years of writing behind me, thinking of Ann and the way she has plunged into her apprenticeship, which is what she calls it, I mull over the idea that a writer's job is to serve her work.  This notion consumed me for most of my writing life — for nearly the first two decades.  But now it flips over in my mind and I find myself wondering what the work ought to serve.

15.  If a  Greek dancer held out his hand to you, would you dance?  Someone did (p. 258):

On the next pass by the table, I see my video camera still rolling, its red light glowing, capturing me from the waist down as I dance at the center of the world.

TwP ~ questions about SEARCH

Black Madonna

In this second section of Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue and Ann travel to France and then home to South Carolina in 1999-2000.  Chapter titles show us where they were.

SEARCH

Sue ~ Jardin des Tuileries, St.-Germain-des-Pres, Louvre ~ Paris
Ann ~ Seine River, Notre Dame Cathedral ~ Paris
Sue ~ Island of Gavrinis
Ann ~ Garden of Venus de Quinipily, Font-de-Gaume Cave
Sue ~ Chapel of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour
Ann ~ Cathedral of Notre Dame-Le Puy
Sue ~ Charleston, South Carolina
Ann ~ Charleston, South Carolina
Sue ~ Charleston, South Carolina

These questions are suggestions, so write about whatever interests you in this part of the book.

8. Sue is 51 years old, but worrying about old women and being old.  Bernard Baruch said, "To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am."  At what point do you think a woman goes from being young to being old?
9.  Does this sort of sexist language (pp. 142-143) bother you, as it bothered Sue?

I watched a television piece not long ago about an art gallery / featuring paintings and drawings of women.  "Here you will see every variety of the female form," the male reporter said, "from the young woman to the old hag."

"Did he say hag?  Did he?" I ranted to Sandy.  "When did the opposite of young female become old hag?  For God's sake!"

10.  Have you ever heard about the Black Madonna before reading this book?
11.  For Ann, finding this poem by David Whyte (see p. 153) gave her a mission:  "to find the world to which I belong" (p. 154).  Have you ever felt anything was your mission, even if just for a season?

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

12.  Have you visited any of the places Sue and Ann wrote about in this section?

TwP ~ questions about LOSS

Erechtheion, atop the Acropolis, with its Porch of the Maidens (click to enlarge)

In this first section of Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue and Ann travel to Greece and Turkey and then home to South Carolina in 1998-1999.  Chapter titles show us where they were.  (Second section, next week.)

LOSS

Sue ~ National Archaeological Museum ~ Athens
Ann ~ The Acropolis ~ Athens
Sue ~ The Cathedral of Athens
Ann ~ Restaurant ~ Athens
Sue ~ Sanctuary of Demeter ~ Eleusis
Ann ~ Sanctuary of Demeter ~ Eleusis
Sue ~ Mary's House ~ Ephesus, Turkey
Ann ~ Aboard Ship ~ Patmos, Turkey
Sue ~ Charleston, South Carolina
Ann ~ Charleston, South Carolina

I came up with some questions as a way to get us started, but since this is neither school nor a test, let your interests guide you to write about anything you like.

1.  Do the alternating chapters by Sue and Ann work for you?
2.  Am I the only one who has to keep reminding myself this is a dual memoir, not a novel?
3.  Do you relate to either of the two women, the older or the younger?  In what ways?
4.  Have you ever noticed any synchronicities in your own life, like the bee landing on Sue's shoulder in Ephesus (p. 101)?

As we walk toward each other, a honeybee lights on my left shoulder.  I come to an abrupt stop, watching it from the corner of my eye.  Perhaps this visitation is nothing, but it feels purposeful. ... The bee is a mystery, a metaphor, a pure synchronicity. ... The awe is that the bee has come at all.

5.  Ann is depressed during this trip.  Does this have anything to do with her interest in the goddess Athena?
6.  Was Sue's way of looking at Mary surprising to you?
7.  Have you visited any of the places Sue and Ann wrote about in this section?

Traveling with Pomegranates (TwP)

Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story ~ by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor, 2009, memoir (Greece, Turkey, South Carolina, France)

Synopsis:  In this intimate dual memoir, the #1 New York Times bestselling novelist and her daughter, Ann, offer distinct perspectives as a fifty-something and a twenty-something, each on a quest to redefine herself and to rediscover each other.  Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel throughout Greece and France.  Sue, coming to grips with aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her grown daughter, struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel.  Ann, just graduated from college, heartbroken and benumbed by the classic question about what to do with her life, grapples with a painful depression.

Helpful links

• Sue Monk Kidd's website
• Ann Kidd Taylor's website
• Excerpt ~ Sue
• Excerpt ~ Ann
• DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Questions (1-7) about LOSS
• Questions (8-12) about SEARCH
• Questions (13-15) about RETURN
• Questions (16-20) about AFTERWORD
• Complete discussion of TwP

Note to new Book Buddies:   If you would like to post your questions and opinions, either leave your email address in a comment here, or send me your email address. so I can add you to the list.  The email address for Bonnie Jacobs is emerging DOT paradigm AT yahoo DOT com

To sign up:  Let us know in the comments that you are interested, even if you are planning to "lurk" and read what others say.  It's okay to comment on our posts, even if you haven't read the book.  (However, comments by non-members are moderated, so spam and other totally off-topic comments will not be posted.)

Labels:  When you post, be sure to add two labels:  your name + TwP (Traveling with Pomegranates), which will keep all posts about this book together.  Notice just below that I labeled this post Bonnie and TwP

Bonnie and Shirley ~ LCL is tedious and tiring

Here's question #5 from the original Lady Chatterley's Lover post.

5. Do you think the novel is obscene or vulgar?

This book was banned in the United Kingdom and in the United States, and that's why I started reading it during Banned Books Week.  But I still haven't finished it.  I've found the endless descriptions to be tedious, and the characters do nothing but talk or take long walks (describing the scenery) or have sex, which seems almost more perfunctory (hasty, superficial, indifferent, apathetic) than obscene. Shirley's complaint, left on my earlier post, is similar.

The book has some somewhat erotic scenes (far less so far than the title suggests) with a rather tiring amount of discussion that makes one want to scream the Nike slogan, "Just Do It!"

Shirley also asked a question:

As we started to read this, Pat Robertson commented that the spouse of someone suffering from Alzheimer's disease has grounds for divorce. Rather startling given his conservative background. It did, however, make me think of the book as, even though Clifford does know his wife, he is unable to fulfill part of his marriage. Would that fall in with Robertson's approval of justification for divorce? Does Clifford's physical inability morally justify adultery especially given his approval?

Maybe she could get a divorce  if she wanted it, but I don't think Connie -- Lady Chatterley -- wants one.  Clifford annoys me, and his reason for "approving" of adultery is so Connie will have a child FOR HIM.  He wants one who will continue the Chatterley line and doesn't seem to care about Connie one way or the other.

Nature imagery in LCL ~ Bonnie

One of the main characters is the game-keeper, so it isn't at all unexpected that nature would play a large part in Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence.  However, it was not something I would have looked for except for seeing it on a list of discussion questions for the book.  Here's the way I re-phrased the question for us, though you are welcome to approach this subject (and this book) with any questions you like):

3. Did you notice the nature imagery in the novel?

Probably not much when I read it back in the early 1970s.  This time, with this question to guide me, I've been paying attention, trying to think about why — and how — the author used nature imagery.  I've read six chapters, labeling these notes "nature."

"The wood was her [Lady Chatterley's] one refuge, her sanctuary.  But it was not really a refuge, a sanctuary, because she had no connection with it.  It was only a place where she could get away from the rest.  She never really touched the spirit of the wood itself . . . if it had any such nonsensical thing" (p. 19).

"Clifford loved the wood; he loved the old oak-trees.  He felt they were his own through generations.  He wanted to protect them.  He wanted this place inviolate, shut off from the world" (p. 39).

One obvious way the author is using these first two sections is to contrast the way wife and husband think about the woods.  Somewhere early on — and I can't find it right now — the book says these woods are part of Sherwood Forest or Robin Hood's woods or something like that.

"In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell from the bare boughs, with a hollow little crash.  For the rest, among the old trees with depth within depth of gray, hopeless inertia, nothingness.  Connie walked dimly on.  From the old wood came an ancient melancholy, somehow soothing to her, better than the harsh insentience of the outer world.  She liked the inwardness of the remnant of forest, the unspeaking reticence of the old trees.  They seemed a very power of silence, and yet a vital presence.  They, too, were waiting:  obstinately, stoically waiting, and giving off a potency of silence.  Perhaps they were only waiting for the end; to be cut down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all things.  But perhaps their strong and autocratic silence, the silence of strong trees, meant something else" (p. 61).

This passage seems to be used to evoke an atmosphere of hopelessness, with everything gray and bare.  But there's waiting.  Lady Chatterley and the trees are waiting for something to happen.

Lady Chatterley's Lover ~ by D. H. Lawrence

Banned Books Week starts September 24, and that's this coming Friday.  An online friend and I plan to read Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928.  For me it's a re-read, so even if I fail to finish it, I'll be able to discuss the book.  The discussion here will last at least a month, as long as there's any interest.

Just so you know, there are sexually explicit scenes, which is why the book was banned in the United Kingdom until 1960 and, thus, first published in Italy.  (I read the "complete, unexpurgated" version in the United States in the early 1970s.)  Constance, the Lady Chatterley of the title, is a young married woman whose husband, Clifford, has been paralyzed and rendered impotent.  Her sexual frustration leads her to have an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (choose one at a time, in any order)

1. What do you think of Lady Chatterley? the gamekeeper? the husband? the situation?

2. Edwin Muir said about D. H. Lawrence that “we remember the scenes in his novels; we forget the names of his men and women. We should not know any of them if we met them in the street.” Do you think this applies in the case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover?

3. Did you notice the nature imagery in the novel?

4. Did you pick up on the theme of resurrection?

5. Do you think the novel is obscene or vulgar?