Meeting Dates:
7/1, 7/22, 8/12
In Person at The Center for Fiction

In this reading group, we’ll look at three novels where walking and wandering play a central role. Casting off habitual perceptions and preoccupations, our narrators take long, rambling walks, creating a free-wheeling narrative momentum which ignites potent and surprising meditations on history, memory, art, and culture. Two of our three narrators draw on the tradition of the flâneur/flâneuse, urban wanderers who explore the ever-shifting creative possibilities of the city. Using short passages from Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust and Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse for context, we’ll consider the ways in which our three novels use wandering as a structural device and as a metaphor for the labyrinthine possibilities of the self.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Open City by Teju Cole

What to expect from this reading group: This group is seminar-style and participant-driven, with some initial structure and observations to focus and warm up our conversations.

Reading List:

• Session I: Open City by Teju Cole

• Session II: Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys

• Session III: The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald