Our events, classes, and seminars bring the community together to hear, learn, and discuss the most compelling issues and ideas of our day. We hope you will join us in our downtown Literary Arts space, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.
Vanity Fair (“A Novel without a Hero”), by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848), belongs on the same shelf with other towering novels of the Victorian age: Bleak House, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, and The Way We Live Now. Its protagonist, Becky Sharp, is one of the most tantalizing, bewitching, infuriating, charming, scheming, and amoral characters in all
Novels of ghosts and haunted landscapes can open the door to discussions of sociology and repression, trauma, and the cathartic function of horror. In this seminar, we will examine themes of possession, repression, haunting, and the mad woman in the attic in three Victorian and American horror novels from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries:
The Symposium by Plato asks: what is love? It is the story of a banquet in classical Athens, attended by Socrates and his friends, at which each person tells a story about the origin of Love. These stories are full of deep psychological insight, powerful mythic imagination, and profound philosophical reflection that have made The
The American novelist Walker Percy described The Brothers Karamazov as “maybe the greatest novel of all time . . . . almost prophesies and prefigures everything—all the bloody mess and the issues of the 20th century.” It’s fair to extend Percy’s observation to include the mess of the present century as well. The Brothers K
Though published many decades apart, these two texts share similarities both in their subject matter and their experimental qualities. Just as Dictee cannot be merely labeled as a memoir and
What is a border? Who does it serve? Who gets to draw it? This seminar will interrogate our understanding of the border as a static entity by witnessing its creation, listening to those who have documented its development and studying how ever-changing policies continue to influence the lives of those on all sides of the
“It’s the little things that count”; “Good things come in small packages”; “Brevity is the soul of wit”; “The Devil’s in the details”… We’ll put these aphorisms to the test
Proust’s magnum opus is often considered to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. It richly repays the careful attention it demands, and becomes unforgettable. First-time readers, however, may
Published in 1936, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! takes his favored subject--the legacy of slavery and the Civil War--and his imagined setting--Mississippi's Yoknapatawpha County--to new heights of development. Set in the
“A list of furniture is not a good beginning to a letter, though I dare say a clever person with a fantastic turn of mind could transform even a laundry
With the death of Hilary Mantel in September 2022 we lost one of the greatest writers of our time. Mantel’s books are so original, and so different from one another,
Thoreau’s Journal is one of the greatest piece of American nature-writing and one of the greatest intellectual achievements in world literature. As Virginia Woolf said, in the Journal "we have
Proust’s magnum opus is often considered to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. It richly repays the careful attention it demands, and becomes unforgettable. First-time readers, however, may
Blending the novel and the short story format, Tower satirically examines modern life through six interconnected stories that all take place in a 674-story skyscraper. Bae Myung-hoon is one of
Reviewing A.S. Byatt’s Possession in The New York Times, Jay Parini declared it “a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to inspection without, for a
Zadie Smith is a critically acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, and playwright, whose work includes the novel White Teeth, winner of the Guardian First Book Prize, and On Beauty, winner of
The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest, & The Dispossessed are three of the most iconic novels by the legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin. Written
Proust’s magnum opus is often considered to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. It richly repays the careful attention it demands, and becomes unforgettable. First-time readers, however, may
Nathaniel Hawthorne marveled at Anthony Trollope’s talent for conveying the truth of human experience, declaring his fictional world to be “just as real as if some giant had hewn a
Published in 1990, Omeros is the masterwork of the Nobel Prize winning Saint Lucien writer Derek Walcott, a book-length epic poem that invites comparisons with Homer while also probing the
Catherine Sloper is young—not clever, not quick, not ugly—and rich. Into her life in New York City’s fashionable Washington Square comes Morris Townsend—“the most beautiful young man in the world.” Her aunt Lavinia is impressed but Dr. Sloper, Catherine’s father, is not. Is Morris in love with Catherine, or merely after her money? In only
Proust’s magnum opus is often considered to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. It richly repays the careful attention it demands, and becomes unforgettable. First-time readers, however, may find the style and size of the work daunting. This seminar is intended for participants who have always wanted to read Proust, but who would
Young and beautiful Gwendolen Harleth is poised at a roulette table at a German spa, where she is observed by Daniel Deronda, an exceptionally handsome upper-class Englishman. Later, a reversal of fortune forces Gwendolen toward a troubled marriage with a rich older man and Daniel encounters Mirah Lapidoth, a troubled young actress and singer. In
The Faust Legend takes up the question of selling your soul to the devil for magical success in this world. This Delve seminar looks at the legend in three famous instantiations: in the German chapbook, in Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy, and in Goethe’s iconic drama. We can trace these authors’ evolving view of evil, sin, the
So the saying goes, “You should never meet your heroes.” The fact that this is such a common expression implies a longtime acceptance that the artist and the art they
Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) was maybe the greatest short story writer in English that you might not have read. In this Delve, we will read the two dozen stories she wrote describing life in London and throughout Britain during World War II. She describes a world coming apart at its most intimate level—the homes, the lives
A translated collection of short stories from one of Korea's most renowned writers, Pak Kyongni, Age of Doubt explores the postwar Korea of the 50s and 60s. A time of
In this Delve, we will read Portuguese Nobel-laureate José Saramago’s breathtaking novel, Blindness (1995), focusing in particular on the concept of “community.” The novel posits the trope of community as
The Wild West has always been a fiction. The heroic cowboy settling the frontier is a myth. The Western novels of the mid-20th century rewrote genocide & colonialism to justify
Emily Wilson's new translation of the Iliad, building on the accomplishment of her recent translation of the Odyssey, has kindled fresh interest in Homer's perennially relevant war epic. In this
DELVE FOR WRITERS: An occasional Delve series that offers seminars that focus on close readings of narrative, form, and stylistic choices that writers can incorporate into their own writing practice.
Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is the quintessential modern novel. This is the paradigmatic “show don’t tell” writer who, by sheer force of talent, sweat, style, and restraint was able to turn
Willa Cather (1873–1947) is one of the most beloved writers in the American canon and is one of those writers whose works are embraced both by a mass audience and
“The simplest answer is that a writer who gardens is sooner or later going to write a book about the subject–I take that as inevitable,” writes Eleanor Perenyi in her
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