The Worst Hard Time

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet this Thursday, December 8th  at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our December book: The Worst Hard Time by Tim Egan.

Here are some links for additional background and information:

The Plow that Broke the Plains 1936 documentary

short video of Dust Bowl memories from Pikes Peak Library

Woody Guthrie singing Dust Bowl Blues and Dust Cain’t Kill Me

Newspaper articles and photos of Dust Bowl (scroll to bottom for pictures of rabbit roundups)

History Channel short video of Dust Bowl with Tim Egan and video of Hugh Hammond Bennett (with some pre and post video political comments…)

Life on the Great Plains today

 Discussion Question are Below.

Coming up, we have the following titles to look forward to reading:

Thursday, January 12th – The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Thursday, February 9th – Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Thursday, March 8^th – Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Thursday, April 12^th – The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas

Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

bethmbg@gmail.com

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What does Egan present as the reasons for the dust bowl tragedy? Was it a confluence of unforeseen events that produced the perfect storm? Or was it a man-made disaster that might have been avoided, or at least mitigated?

2. Should everyone have known better—was there enough known at the time about the impact of farming techniques on erosion?

3. Who tried to warn about the dangers of farming in the grasslands and what were the gist of their warnings? Why were they ignored? Is it simply human nature to take heed in hindsight rather than in real time?

4. Which of the families' stories do you find particularly poignant? Which characters do you find most admirable?

5. What descriptions of the dust storms did you find most shocking or most tragic—Black Sunday, static electrcity, dust pneumonia, just to name a few?

6. During the disaster, 250 million people left their homes—a disapora about which Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is written. But most residents stayed. What made them stay? Would it have been better to have left? Which choice would you have made?

7. What was the political fallout of the dust bowl? How did Washington eventually respond? What have been the lasting effects?

8. What lessons, if any, have we learned from the dust bowl castastrophe—about how human actions, well-intentioned or not, can lead to environmental damage? Is there anything comparable on the horizon today?

9. Are there any comparisons to be made between the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 which freed up money to loan to farmers for tractors and land to the current mortgage crisis?

10. How does this nonfiction account of the dust bowl compare to Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath in their descriptions of the human tragedies—and bravery—in both accounts.

11. What examples does Egan give of community support during hard times and how did the disaster affect families and family values?

12. How did the Dust Bowl and the Depression affect Midwestern farm families?

13. What was life like for farm families who migrated to California?

14. How did the U.S. government try to help victims of the Dust Bowl and the Depression?

15. How does this book depict life in the 1930s and 1940s?

16. Are there parallels to the environmental impact of the Dust Bowl in relation to environmental concerns such as Global Warming.

17. How is this book relevant to read today?

18. How do you feel about Timothy Egan’s writing style?

19. What do you think the author Timothy Egan meant by calling the Dust Bowl “the great untold story of the Greatest Generation”?

20. The people who lived during the Dust Bowl era were from an agrarian culture and had the background knowledge to live off the land, to survive the extreme conditions. We don’t have that ability today. Are we more vulnerable?

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet this Thursday, November  10th  at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our November book: The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty. 

Here are some links for additional background and information:

Mississippi State University site with Eudora Welty info and links

Video interview with Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty, photographer

More photographs

Southern Funeral Food

Attached are several analyses of Eudora Welty and The Optimist’s Daughter, along with Discussion Questions, Book Review and an Author Interview.

Coming up, we have the following titles to look forward to reading:

Thursday, December 8th – The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Thursday, January 12th – The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Thursday, February 9th – Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Thursday, March 8^th – Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Thursday, April 12^th – One Book/One Marin selection (to be announced)

Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates

Friends of the Fairfax Library

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

1. What was your impression of Fay? Did she have any redeeming features? Did you feel sorry for her?

2. What sort of person was Laurel? Did your feelings about her change throughout the novel?

3. Were there any similarities between Fay and Laurel?

4. Welty reports that her father was an “optimist,” but that her mother was the more daring individual of the two. The critic Jay Tolson calls Welty a “necessary optimist,” one who has a tough-minded view of experience, but who also has a “credible optimism.” Does this biographical information shed any light on the novel? What does the term “optimist” mean in the novel? Does the novel ultimately have an “optimistic” vision or is the term ironic? What is Laurel’s vision of experience as the novel ends?

5. In Part 2 of One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty describes summer trips to West Virginia and discusses her mother’s youthful years there. To what extent does this autobiographical information inform The Optimist’s Daughter?

6. Discuss the characterization of Fay, Judge McKelva’s new wife? What values does she represent? Why might the Judge have married her? What did he see in here that others did not? Do her differences from Becky point to a key reason?

7. Why has Fay married the Judge? Is she merely a gold digger? How does Laurel respond to Fay? How do other characters in the novel respond to her? Why?

8. What is the cause of the Judge’s death? Is Laurel right to hold Fay responsible? If so, why does she take so long to speak to Fay about the death?

9. The novel’s opening section is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. How important is this setting? How do Laurel and Fay respond to Mardi Gras and to the revelers costumed as Death and the Medusa?

10. The bridesmaids from Laurel’s wedding greet her at the Mt. Salus train station and still call themselves the bridesmaids. What does this title tell us about Mt. Salus and Laurel’s friends? How does Laurel seem to be different from her old friends?

11. Has Laurel throughout most of the novel kept the past in a silver frame, a set piece which does not threaten her? Does her night alone in her parents’ house bring her a more complex vision of the past? Does she learn that the past is subject to our changing, evolving understanding of it?

12. Discuss Laurel’s memories of her husband Philip, of their wedding journey, of the breadboard he made for her mother. What is the significance of the confluence of rivers, birds, lives that she and Philip see from the train bound to Mt. Salus? Why is the breadboard important to Laurel, and why does she leave Mt. Salus without it? How do these memories fit into the thematic structure of the novel?

13. The episode with the bird in the house receives a great deal of emphasis in the novel. The bird drives Laurel into the room where her mother’s letters are stored; the bird remains in the house the next morning when Mr. Cheek arrives, and Missouri comments on the bird when Laurel finally manages to set it free outside. What seems to be the thematic import of this episode?

14. In what other ways do references to birds underscore the book’s themes?

15. Chestina Welty was an ardent gardener and dearly loved her rose garden. The character Becky McKelva is like Chestina in this regard. And in the novel Laurel discusses a rose known as Becky’s Climber. Does that rose seem symbolic in any ways?

16. Discuss Welty’s portrait of Mt. Salus, Mississippi, of its class structure, its changes over time, and its racial dynamic. Who are the members of its white upper class? Of the white lower classes? What sort of relationship do they have with Missouri, the McKelva’s African American maid? How has Mt. Salus changed from the time of Laurel’s marriage to the time of her father’s death?

17. How does The Optimist's Daughter reflect the social issues of the late 60s?

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet this Thursday, October 13th at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our October book: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

Here are some links for additional background and information:
Video of TV reporting of the Vietnam war Check out some of the other video links

Analysis of The Things They Carried

A discussion of meta-fiction in the book

Interesting paper about Urban Legends and Folklore in The Things They Carried

Video interview with Tim O’Brien: 20 Years Later

Good website with lots of links for more information about the history of the Vietnam war


Coming up, we have the following titles to look forward to reading:

Thursday, November 10th – The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

Thursday, December 8th – The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Thursday, January 12th – The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Thursday, February 9th – Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Thursday, March 8th – Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner


Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax Library

Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet this Thursday, September 8th at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our September book: Emily, Alone by Stewart O’Nan.

Here are some links for additional background and information:

Fresh Air interview with Stewart O'Nan

Buck Institute for Research on Aging

100 ways to age with grace, elegance and joie de vivre

Coming up, we have the following titles to look forward to reading:

Thursday, October 13th – The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Thursday, November 10th – The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

Thursday, December 8th – The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Thursday, January 12th – The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Thursday, February 9th – Freedom by Jonathan Franzen


Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax Library

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann

It’s time to talk books with the Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group!

When? Thursday, August 11th at 7 p.m.
What Book? The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann

Check out these links for additional information:

Diane Rehm show transcript discussion of The Imperfectionists
The Death of the Reader
Please stop whining about the death of journalist (Huffington Post)

Upcoming Book Choices:

Thursday, September 8th: Emily Alone by Stewart O'Nan
O'Nan checks back in with the Maxwell family from Wish You Were Here in this bracingly unsentimental, ruefully humorous, and unsparingly candid novel about the emotional and physical travails of old age.

Thursday, October 13th: The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
Weapons and good-luck charms carried by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam here represent survival, lost innocence and the war's interminable legacy. "O'Brien's meditations--on war and memory, on darkness and light--suffuse the entire work with a kind of poetic form, making for a highly original, fully realized novel (Publishers Weekly)

Thursday, November 10th: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
Pulitzer Prize-winning short novel by Eudora Welty, published in 1972. This partially autobiographical story explores the subtle bonds between parent and child and the complexities of love and grief.

Thursday, December 8th: The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since.
Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones.

I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Thanks for reading with us!

Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax Library

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

It’s time to talk books with the Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group!

When? Wednesday, July 20th at 7 p.m.
What Book? Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

Check out these links for additional information:
Sarah Addison Allen’s website
What is Southern Literature?
Genres of Southern Literature

Upcoming Book Choices:
Thursday, Aug 11th The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
In his zinger of a debut, Rachman deftly applies his experience as foreign correspondent and editor to chart the goings-on at a scrappy English-language newspaper in Rome. Chapters read like exquisite short stories, turning out the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce the paper-and one woman who reads it religiously, if belatedly.

Thursday, Sept. 8th Emily Alone by Stewart O’Nan
O'Nan checks back in with the Maxwell family from Wish You Were Here in this bracingly unsentimental, ruefully humorous, and unsparingly candid novel about the emotional and physical travails of old age.


I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Thanks for reading with us!

Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax Library