Introduction to the Kay Falk Literary Project and the Book Study Resources
What is the Kay Falk Literary Project?
The Kay Falk Literary Project is essentially a book group, called the All Souls Book Group, which meets on average twice a month at the Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, NC, as part of the cathedral’s teaching mission. The group reads fiction—short stories and novels—non-fiction—memoir and essays–and poetry. The Kay Falk Project also includes a fund for inviting writers to the cathedral, either to read their own literature, give a talk about someone else’s, or both. The writers who have read and/ or lectured at All Souls as part of the Kay Falk Project include memoirist Norah Gallagher, fiction writers Peter Turchi, Kevin McIlvoy, and Gail Godwin, and poets Gary Hawkins, Landon Godfrey, Sebastian Matthews, Debra Allbery, and Mark Jarman.
Who are the members of the All Souls Book Group?
The All Souls Book Group is open to anyone in the larger Asheville community who wants to join it. I’d say that about two thirds of our members are parishioners at All Souls, the remaining third friends of those members, or friends of friends, who bring to discussion other religious affiliations, or no religious affiliation. Some of our meetings have been very large—we’ve had as many as forty at the table—others much smaller: an especially thoughtful discussion about the poetry of George Herbert held only seven.
The Practice and Mission of the Kay Falk Literary Project
The Kay Falk Literary Project was founded about four years ago by myself, Emilie White, as a way to help adults interested in reading complex creative literature read it more attentively. In every original work of literature there are depths to be fathomed only through looking closely at the forms of that work, and so during discussion I have tried, roughly speaking, to do two things: to let all the kinds of reader in the room read and respond as they naturally do; and, almost as a refrain, intermittently to return our focus to formal considerations so as to approach, as I say, the work’s “depths.” The objective of the All Souls Book Group in nearly every discussion we’ve enjoyed has been to approach the work of literature really as though it were a foreign world, a world whose “meanings” exist at all only because of a unique formal arrangement that made those meanings possible. John Ames, the narrator of Marilynne Robinson’s first person novel, Gilead–a book the group has read together twice–speaks of the individual soul as bearing its own “separate language,” its own “separate aesthetics,” its own “separate jurisprudence.” This description serves as a fitting and even logically sustainable analogy for the singular and integral life of the work of literature.
What are the benefits of reading such complex literature, and from reading it so closely? Again, there are no all-literature answers. While I myself am inclined to believe that literature can increase one’s capacity for compassion, I am soberly and not a little delightedly aware that many fine readers and writers would disagree with me, or would tell me they’d never thought to pose such a correlation in the first place. Vladimir Nabokov, for instance, if asked whether he had written his fiction to increase his readers’ “compassion”–well, would probably go take a nap. (From his autobiography it sounds like he wasn’t such an enthusiastic sleeper, so maybe it would be a short nap.) Then, if I were ever able to get him interested enough just to answer the question, I might hear him tell me that “increasing his reader’s compassion” was never how he had conceptualized his reader, that for him the capacity to be cultivated was the capacity for play, and that the exchange, writer with reader, is best analogized as a game of chess—ecstatically undertaken, for sure, but also sterilely, but also fancifully. Yet I am not the only reader who has been inspired to feelings of extraordinary tenderness by Nabokov’s novels–one of which, Lolita, is represented at this website with a document of study questions meant to help readers engage that difficult and beautiful book. And for those wanting to know more about Nabokov’s fascination for chess and how chess might have stood for him as an analogy for reading and writing, you might check out Chapter Fourteen of his autobiography, Speak, Memory, also treated at this website with a document of study questions.
Flannery O’Connor, too, if asked whether she intended “compassion” for her reader, or for anyone, for that matter, would have some very interesting things to say, among them that compassion, or, a term I introduced above, “tenderness,” mean nothing if cut off from their “source,” which for O’Connor was the figure of Jesus Christ. (See her book of essays, Mystery and Manners, in particular the remarkable “Introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann.”) “Tenderness,” “compassion,” “respect for the other”: these are just a few of the possible benefits of reading one might emphasize out of a mission-statement or grant-proposal rationale, rationales urgently and very sadly necessary in a world in which literature departments are routinely having to defend their existence, this at the threat of severe cutbacks, if not outright extinction. But the argument for reading doesn’t get settled by any one author; it never gets settled; its terms are re-established every time we open a new novel, story, essay or poem. Literature contains multitudes, and so, in a funny way, does the on-average twenty person community-based book group. This multitudinousness, a radical democracy of vision embodied right there on the shelves of one’s local library or bookstore, is itself a cause for wonder.
The missions, then, of the Kay Falk Literary Project have been three: 1) to help participants read with greater care than they had before, 2) to look to reading as an opportunity to occupy one’s own subjectivity, the subjectivities of other people, one’s own life, the lives of other people, with a freshness and challenge—a transformative challenge–most abundantly on offer in excellent novels, stories, essays and poems, and, 3) to create and support community through the study and enjoyment of literature.
Who was Kay Falk?
A deep and careful reader, Kay Falk was the sister of All Souls parishioner, Sheila Ingersoll. It is in Kay’s memory that Sheila and her husband, Jack Ingersoll, contributed the initial funds for a literary project at All Souls that would include a salary for a project leader, and reserves for a reading series. I am but one of many long-time All Souls Book Group members who remain profoundly grateful to the Ingersolls, without whose generosity the Kay Falk Literary Project would simply never have happened. In addition to the Ingersolls I would like to thank the members of the All Souls Book Group for the charity and discernment of their approach to the work of literature, and for the heavenly gift of their friendship.
What is the purpose of the study documents at this website? How might I use them in my own book group?
The study questions at this website are meant to help you start your own book group, or to maintain the one you’re already in, whether your group is faith-oriented or secular. And by faith is meant any faith; if I had years in this position, I would expand the website’s representation to reflect a more heterogeneous reading community, so that anyone—again, any and all soul–could find in the title list something of his or her background, experience, sensibility. (The study questions I hope to add to this website in the coming years will treat novels by Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Nadine Gordimer, and single stories by Salman Rushdie, Richard Ford, and Bharati Mukherjee.) Each set of questions provides a variety of approaches to the work of literature, on the understanding that within any community-based book group there will be as many kinds of reader as there are participant. In every set there will nearly always be a question about content; always a question about the work’s particular forms; often a question about whatever controversial issue the work may raise; sometimes a question about a work’s metaphysical and/ or theological offering, if there is one; and nearly always a question meant for personal reflection. Many of these study questions are the result of my first encounter with the work, and so do not reflect the work as fully or as adequately—adequate to the literature—as I would like; but each set derives from intense (if intensely confused) engagement, and each is written with the goal of motivating and/or inspiring the reader to go back to the work and read it again.
Emilie White, July 2010
