You’re invited to share your stories
I have belonged to four book clubs in my life.
Two in Canada, two in the United States. Different people, different places, the same experience. A bit disappointing.
I love the impulse behind a book club. In my estimation, the purpose of a book club is to spawn conversation that creates community. Syntax and literary devices are worthy considerations, but the reason I’m there is to get to know you better.
For me, author Carol Shields summed it up best when she said, “We want, need, the stories of others. We need, too, to place our own stories beside theirs to compare, weigh, judge, forgive and to find, by becoming something other than ourselves, an angle of vision that renews our image of the world.”
In my view, book clubs often fail in service of this objective.
Right now, I really need the stories of others. Right now, I really need to renew my angle of vision as, heavens knows, there’s a new world taking shape out there. It scares me. I bet it scares you, too.
I miss conversation. My mind is going to weeds without it. Just as a child learns to be in the world by witnessing his parents’ daily exchanges, I’ve come to see that those exchanges are the larger part of me. Cecilia at Shoppers Drug Mart, Lolita who hands me my daily coffee, Omar at the hardware store — the warp and weft of my daily life. Who am I without them? A woman who picks at scabs and nests spoons in a drawer. It’s hardly a life.
As my body gets softer, my mind gets harsh and brittle. My unvarnished self stares back at me from the mirror and, frankly, I don’t like what I see. There’s no amelioration. No social self to offset the unadulterated self. I am distilled to self-reproach. Most days, I walk in circles. I return to the kitchen time and again with the question, Why did I come in here? Ah, yes: scissors! Why did I want scissors? Hmmmm ... why indeed?
Little gets done.
When it comes to physical distancing, I’m a veritable sasquatch.
But in the process, I’m vanishing.
We’ve all been given the great gift of foresight. Old age? The pandemic has been a crash course in what to expect. We know now — incontrovertibly — that warehousing people without sufficient social engagement can be a death sentence. Hope, as Emily Dickinson said, is a thing with feathers, but it takes a lot of circulating air to keep hope afloat.
So, here’s the idea:
You. Me. A provocative little story.
Your thoughts.
I call it The Bookless Club as it’s just like a book club, only there’s no club and no book.
You can participate as the material appeals to you.
It doesn’t require scholarship or rumination. Just your thoughts in the moment of reading.
You can email me these thoughts at thebooklessclub@gmail.com. We’ll print some of them.
The Bookless Club will appear each Saturday in the pages of The Vancouver Sun.
I’ll be waiting like a five-yearold at the gate for you. Eager to hear “the stories of others” during this most trying of times.
Join me, won’t you?
Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. Her garden is her major distraction during COVID-19. She will be writing on The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Sun.