Jennifer Egan: Manhattan Beach
Tuesdays, February 5-26, 2019 (four sessions)*
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Guide: Danielle Frandina, Tuition: $175
*Tuition includes admission to Jennifer Egan’s Portland Arts & Lectures event on February 21 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
In Jennifer Egan’s latest novel Manhattan Beach, she explores the underexplored in a well-mined setting—WWII-era New York. Through multiple narrators, Egan focuses on richly imagined characters: a young woman who works in the Naval Yards and becomes a pioneer diver, an Italian gangster and nightclub owner, a bagman who leaves his family and becomes a merchant marine. We will approach this reading from the central technique of Egan’s storytelling: her masterful and nuanced rendering of human relationships—familial, romantic, adversarial, and unconditional.
Reading List: Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
Before the first meeting, please read Parts One and Two of Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
SEMINAR GUIDE:
Danielle Frandina is an educator, writer, and editor who earned her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts and taught at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, where she chaired the school’s humanities department. Danielle is founder, curator and host of the Portland reading series Tell It Slant. Her stories and essays can be found in Numero Cinq, Avalon Magazine, Conceptions Southwest and 1001.
