A memoir of loss, friendship, and literature explores how the author and her husband, devastated by the deaths of family members and the loss of their home in Hurricane Katrina, established a reading group with friends who also endured difficult life setbacks.
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A memoir of loss, friendship, and literature explores how the author and her husband, devastated by the deaths of family members and the loss of their home in Hurricane Katrina, established a reading group with friends who also endured difficult life setbacks.
Read Less
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My participation over many years in a book group with friends attracted me to Anne Gisleson's 2017 memoir of her reading group, "The Futilitarians: Our year of Thinking, Drinking Grieving, and Reading." While our book group reads novels, Giselson's group focused on "existential" philosophical issues about finding meaning and purpose in life in the face of tragedy, loss, and superficiality. Her group covered a broader range of literature than my book group, and generally shorter selections, including philosophy, religion, poetry, biography, and more.
To be more specific, I wanted to read this book when I learned that one of the writers considered was the American idealistic philosopher, Josiah Royce (1855 -- 1916), through a collection of his early writings, the "Fugitive Essays". I have read a substantial amount of Royce. He is not widely read today, especially the posthumously -published (1920) collection of rare works researched and gathered together as the "Fugitive Essays" by his student, Jacob Loewenberg.
A teacher of creative writing in New Orleans, Gisleson and her husband founded their existential crisis reading group (ECRG) at the end of 2011, and it was dubbed "The Futilitarians" by the participants. Consisting of about a dozen members, the book met monthly with a different person responsible for choosing the texts each month and leading the discussion. The book usually met in members' homes, but sometimes elsewhere, and the meetings featured snacks and ample quantities of alcohol in addition to the books and discussions at hand. The group consisted of people of varied ages and educational backgrounds, but all were somehow driven by a search for finding meaning under a philosophy and condition loosely described as existential.
The ECRG made some excellent reading choices as shown in Giselson's memoir. The group began with Epicurus and Ecclesiastes and continued through many works, ancient and modern, well-known and obscure. The group read Tolstoy, Dante, Shakespeare, Kafka, and Satre as well as figures including Jacques Brel, Shel Silverstein, and Clarice Lispector. I was pleased to see the inclusion of the Irish writer George Moore's 1906 book, "Memoirs of My Dead Life" which is little known today.
"The Futilitarians" held a lot of promise, but for me it was only partially fulfilled. The focus of Giselson's memoir is less on the reading group and more on the events of her own life and to an extent the lives of other participants in the group. There is a lot to discuss. Giselson's father had just died and, some short years in the past, Giselson had lost her two youngest twin sisters, each of whom committed suicide about a year and one-half apart. Then too, Giselson's life had become chaotic during the time of Hurricane Katrina. She describes at great length how she and her family had been forced to leave their beloved New Orleans and the difficulties they and their fellow citizens felt in the following years in rebuilding their city and establishing their lives.
The materials in the book make a fitting and interesting subject for a memoir. The book, however, goes on with them far too long and too repetitively at the expense of the books and the reading which are the apparent subject of the story. The events of Giselson's life and the readings of the ECRG are interlaced not always convincingly. The group members have interesting things to say about their readings but much of the time the books are glossed over in favor of the author's own personal experience which helped lead her to form the group. While interesting and moving, her story tended to ramble and to be self-centered. There is also a good deal of discussion about drinking. I would have much preferred a greater attention to the books and the discussions of the ECRG.
The philosopher Josiah Royce is featured in the final chapter of the book. Still tipsy after some New Year's drinking, the author goes to the philosophy section of a used book store in the hope of finding a book for the ECRG. She had no knowledge of Royce but when she happens upon his "Fugitive Essays" she purchases the book, describing doing so as one of the few good decisions she had been able to make when under the influence. When Giselson opens the book a few days later, she turns to Royce's essay, "Doubting and Working" and is moved by the doubts Royce expresses about the possibility of human knowledge when individuals are beset by finitude and by their own demons. She quotes a lengthy passage from Royce's essay about the value of skepticism and honest doubt and about the need for perseverance in the search for the truth. Giselson finds that Royce's wise words were mirrored in the search and in the discussions of the ECRG. She determines to continue with the group and with her own search for meaning in her life. Apparently, with some changes in membership, her ECRG is still meeting and reading.
I found this book got too heavily involved in Giselson's own story and was overly long. Still I enjoyed learning about the ECRG and sharing in its discussions. I enjoyed learning about the books the group read, and I particularly liked the attention Gisleson gave and the wisdom she found in an early essay of Josiah Royce, particularly because Royce receives little attention in popular literature.
