Meetings are led by Patrick Brownson and Michael Sevy. They take place every Tuesday at 6:30 PM ET for 90 minutes via Zoom (email [email protected] for Zoom link). Each week we discuss the assigned reading (see breakdown below) with participation voluntary. Attendees are asked to mute when not speaking and raise their hand to be called on by the leader.
Weekly Page Breakdown
Thomas Pynchon helped pioneer the postmodern aesthetic. His formidable body of work challenges readers to think and perceive in ways that anticipate—with humor, insight, and cogency—much that has emerged in the field of literary theory over the past few decades.
“Gravity’s Rainbow”
Mar. 25: Beginning through Chapter 1 “with a look that says try to tickle me.”
Apr. 1: Chapter 1 “TDY Abreaction Ward” through Chapter 1 “would you say the next one will fall?”
Apr. 8: Chapter 1 “The very first touch:” through end of Chapter 1
Apr. 15: Chapter 2 through Chapter 2 “But perhaps, in the hours just before dawn . . .”
Apr. 22: Chapter 2 “The great cusp -“ through end of Chapter 2
Apr. 29: Chapter 3 through Chapter 3 “That’s where I broke through the speed of sound . . .”
May. 6: Chapter 3 “The Zone is in full summer” through Chapter 3 “They both start cackling insanely there, under the tree.”
May. 13: Chapter 3 “Slothrop comes to in episodes” through Chapter 3 “and the dogs run barking in the backstreets.”
May. 20: Chapter 3 “When emptied of people” through Chapter 3 “orchestra plays Tristan und Isolde.”
May. 27: Chapter 3 “They come out into the last of the twilight.” through Chapter 3 “Safe passage through a bad night . . .”
Jun. 3: Chapter 3 “The Schwarzkommando have got to Achtfaden” through end of Chapter 3
Jun. 10: Chapter 4 through Chapter 4 “There are things to hold on to . . .”
Jun. 17: Chapter 4 “You will want cause and effect.” through Chapter 4 “just at the other aide of dawning, you can see a smile.”
Jun. 24: Chapter 4 “In her pack, Geli Tripping” to End
Three short novels about life under authoritarianism
These novels share a common exploration of the effects of authoritarianism on individuals and societies. Gordimer’s stark realism, Hwang’s blend of tradition and modernity, and García Márquez’s magical realism offer unique perspectives on living under oppressive rule. The synergy of mixing different literary genres from well-regarded writers linked by this theme should promise interesting discussions
Nadine Gordimer July’s People Penguin Books Edition
July 8, 2025 start to page 80
July 15, 2025 page 81 to end
other editions:
July 8, 2025 start to “then understood it was hers.”
July 15, 2025 “Good meat, mhani?-“ to end
Hwang Sok-Yong The Guest Seven Stories Press
July 22, 2025 chapters 1-3
July 29, 2025 chapters 4-7
August 5, 2025 chapters 8-end
Gabriel García Márquez The Autumn of the Patriarch Harper Perennial Modern Classics
August 12, 2025 start to page 79
August 19, 2025 page 80 to 156
August 26, 2025 page 157 to end
other editions:
August 12, 2025 start to “somewhere between 107 and 232 years.”
August 19, 2025 “That was how they found him” to “because it was shit general, his own shit.”
August 26, 2025 “Shortly before nightfall” to end
Vladimir Nabokov Ada, or Ardor First Vintage International Edition
A sprawling love story between a pair of possibly incestuous aristocrats. A novel of memory, desire, and the fluidity of time, dense prose and playful language. Ada is equal parts love letter and intellectual puzzle, weaving through philosophy, time, and literary in-jokes. Like Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Ada, treats time not as a linear progression but as a fluid, recursive dimension. Like Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, revels in historic distortions, unreliable memories, and the eroticism of forbidden knowledge. Reads like a dream.
September 9, 2025 Part One chapters 1 – 12
September 16, 2025 chapters 13 – 21
September 23, 2025 chapters 22 – 33
September 30, 2025 chapters 34 – 39
October 7, 2025 chapters 40 – Part Two chapter 2
October 14, 2025 chapters 3 – 8
October 21, 2025 chapters 9 – Part Three chapter 6
October 28, 2025 chapter 7 to end
Franz Kafka The Trial Schocken Books (trans. Breon Mitchell)
The Trial is a haunting novel about Josef K, a man who is suddenly arrested without explanation by a mysterious bureaucratic court. As he struggles to navigate an absurd and nightmarish legal system, he encounters bizarre officials, cryptic messages, and an overwhelming sense of helplessness. The novel explores themes of power, alienation, the dehumanizing nature of modern institutions, and the absurdity of life, making it a deeply unsettling yet thought-provoking read. Readers drawn to existential questions, psychological tension, and surreal storytelling will find The Trial both fascinating and eerily relevant. It remains a compelling and timeless masterpiece.
November 11, 2025 Arrest – In the Empty Courtroom The Student The Offices
November 18, 2025 The Flogger – Lawyer Manufacturer Painter
November 25, 2025 Block, The Merchant Dismissal of the Lawyer – end
Helen DeWitt The Last Samurai New Directions
The Last Samurai tells the unconventional story of single parent Sybilla Newman and her young son Ludovic just getting by economically in London. They both are geniuses and this intellectual novel initially focuses on the making of a young boy prodigy. To provide Ludovic with male role models, mother and son watch repeatedly Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai ( No connection to the 2003 Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai). The novel’s second half focuses on Ludovic’s search for a father figure.
Dewitt’s erudite and experimental novel introduces multiple languages, philosophy and the arts with a humorous bent albeit a bit off kilter.
December 9, 2025 start to page 76
December 16, 2025 page 77 – 145
December 23, 2025 page 147 – 215
December 30, 2025 page 217 – 292
January 6, 2026 page 293 – 373
January 13, 2026 page 375 – 428
January 20, 2026 page 429 – end
other editions:
December 9, 2025 Prologue – “his pale face glowed in the cold dark room.”
December 16, 2025 Interlude – 5 We Never Go Anywhere
December 23, 2025 6 We Never Do Anything – “I said,’I think it solves everything.’”
December 30, 2025 Part iv If we fought with real swords I would kill you – “But who ARE these people?”
January 6, 2026 “Hugh Carey and Raymond Decker” – “Be sure to mention my name.”
January 13, 2026 3 A good samurai will parry the blow – “I took the Circle Line.”
January 20, 2026 5 A good samurai will parry the blow – end
Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (trans. Lydia Davis)
When published in 1857, Madame Bovary was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for this heroine. Today the novel is considered the first masterpiece of realist fiction. Flaubert sought to tell the story objectively, without romantizing or moralizing (hence the uproar surrounding its publication). In this landmark new translation of Gustave Flaubert’s masterwork, award-winning writer and translator Lydia Davis honors the nuances and particulars of Flaubert’s legendary prose style, giving new life in English to the book that redefined the novel as an art form.
“The best English version by far, because its deadpan reminds us that the book is both a great realist novel and a satire of realism.” —Merve Emre, The New Yorker
“Madame Bovary, c’est moi” – Flaubert
February 3, 2026 page 1 – 58
February 10, 2026 page 61 – 135
February 17, 2026 page 135 – 202
February 24, 2026 page 205 – 261
March 3, 2026 page 262 – end
other editions:
February 3, 2026 Part I
February 10, 2026 Part II chapter 1 – chapter 8
February 17, 2026 Part II chapter 9 – chapter 15
February 24, 2026 Part III chapter 1 – chapter 6
March 3, 2026 Part III chapter 7 – end
Intro to the French New Novel
The French New Novel as exemplified by these 3 short novels was not a school or movement but a further exploration of the novel in its use of language and its portrayals of relationships between people and the objects that surround them. Taking off from the reinvention of the novel from Flaubert, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner and especially, Beckett, each of these authors brings something new to the reading experience. There are nods to traditional forms, the detective story, the romance, but with an emphasis on objectivity and voyeurism. Lovers of French New Wave cinema would feel at home with these authors.
Alain Robbe-Grillet The Erasers Grove Press
March 17, 2026 page 1 – 90
March 24, 2026 page 93 – 169
March 31, 2026 page 173 – end
other editions:
March 17, 2026 Prologue – Chapter 1
March 24, 2026 Chapter 2 – Chapter 3
March 31, 2026 Chapter 4 – end
Marguerite Duras The Ravishing of Lol Stein Grove Press
April 7, 2026 page 1 – 78
April 14, 2026 page 79 – end
other editions:
April 7, 2026 start – “not to accept Lol’s invitation this first time.”
April 14, 2026 “John Bedford has retired” – end
Nathalie Sarraute Tropisms New Directions
April 21, 2026 entire book
Amis: father and son
Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim NYRB
Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers back in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.
May 5, 2026 page 1 – 79
May 12, 2026 page 80 – 158
May 19, 2026 page 159 – end
other editions:
May 5, 2026 Chapter 1 – chapter 7
May 12, 2026 Chapter 8 – chapter 15
May 19, 2026 Chapter 16 – end
Martin Amis Money A Suicide Note Vintage
Time Magazine included the book in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The story of John Self and his insatiable appetite for money, alcohol, fast food, drugs, pornography, and more, Money is ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage; a tale of life lived without restraint, of money and the disasters it can precipitate.
May 26, 2026 page 1 – 77
June 2, 2026 page 77 – 168
June 9, 2026 page 169 – 252
June 16, 2026 page 252 – 317
June 23, 2026 page 318 – 391
June 30, 2026 page 392 – end
other editions:
May 26, 2026 start – “shut up safe for the night, far from my touch.”
June 2, 2026 “Something is missing from the present” – “Look around! Of course She is.”
June 9, 2026 “Above the entrance to the saloon” – “to be back in civilization again.”
June 16, 2026 “I want to thank you, John” – “It’ll all turn out right in the end.”
June 23, 2026 “At this moment in time” – “she’s all too human in the end.”
June 30, 2026 “And one, and two, and three” – end
Maugham and Kazantzakis
W Somerset Maugham The Razor’s Edge Vintage International
Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham’s most brilliant characters – his fiancee Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham’s novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.
July 14, 2026 page 1 – 51
July 21, 2026 page 55 – 94
July 28, 2026 page 97 – 184
August 4, 2026 page 187 – 239
August 11, 2026 page 243 – end
other editions:
July 14, 2026 Part 1
July 21, 2026 Part 2
July 28, 2026 Part 3 – part 4
August 4, 2026 Part 5
August 11, 2026 Part 6 – end
Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek Simon & Schuster
First published in 1946, Zorba the Greek, is, on one hand, the story of a Greek working man named Zorba, a passionate lover of life, the unnamed narrator who he accompanies to Crete to work in a lignite mine, and the men and women of the town where they settle. On the other hand it is the story of God and man, The Devil and the Saints; the struggle of men to find their souls and purpose in life and it is about love, courage and faith.
August 18, 2026 page 1 – 69
August 25, 2026 page 70 – 132
September 1, 2026 page 133 – 201
September 8, 2026 page 202 – 270
September 15, 2026 page 271 – end
other editions:
August 18, 2026 Prologue – chapter IV
August 25, 2026 Chapter V – chapter IX
September 1, 2026 Chapter X – chapter XV
September 8, 2026 Chapter XVI – chapter XXI
September 15, 2026 Chapter XXII – end
Mircea Cărtărescu Solenoid Deep Vellum Publishing
Based on Cărtărescu’s own experience as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. The novel is grounded in the reality of Romania in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including frightening health care, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life, while on a broad scale Solenoid‘s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines attempt to reconcile the realms of life and art.
September 9, 2026 page 1 – 69
October 6, 2026 page 70 – 133
October 13, 2026 page 133 – 194
October 20, 2026 page 194- 269
October 27, 2026 page 269 – 324
November 3, 2026 page 327 – 411
November 10, 2026 page 411 – 492
November 17, 2026 page 495 – 569
November 24, 2026 page 570 – end
other editions:
September 9, 2026 Part 1 – chapter 8
October 6, 2026 Part 1 chapter 9 – chapter 12
October 13, 2026 Part 1 chapter 13 – Part 2 chapter 18
October 20, 2026 Part 2 chapter 19 – chapter 24
October 27, 2026 Part 2 chapter 25 – chapter 28
November 3, 2026 Part 3 chapter 29 – chapter 34
November 10, 2026 Part 3 chapter 35 – chapter 39
November 17, 2026 Part 4 chapter 40 – chapter 43
November 24, 2026 Part 4 chapter 44 – end
Haruki Murakami The Wind-up Bird Chronicle Vintage International
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is many things: The story of a marriage that mysteriously collapses; a jeremiad against the superficiality of contemporary politics; an investigation of painfully suppressed memories of war; a bildungsroman about a compassionate young man’s search for his own identity as well as that of his nation. All of Murakami’s storytelling genius—combining elements of detective fiction, deadpan humor, and metaphysical truth, and swiftly transforming commonplace realism into surreal revelation—is on full, seamless display. And in turning his literary imagination loose on a broad social and political canvas, he bares nothing less than the soul of a country steeped in the violence of the twentieth century. Deceptively simple, wise, poignant, funny, and horrifying.
December 8, 2026 page 1 – 80
December 15, 2026 page 81 – 150
December 22, 2026 page 151 – 221
December 29, 2026 page 222 – 302
January 5, 2027 page 303 – 376
January 12, 2027 page 377 – 445
January 19, 2027 page 446 – 522
January 26, 2027 page 523 – end
other editions:
December 8, 2026 Book 1 start – chapter 6
December 15, 2026 Chapter 7 – chapter 12
December 22, 2026 Chapter 13 – Book 2 chapter 5
December 29, 2026 Book 2 chapter 6 – chapter 13
January 5, 2027 Book 2 chapter 14 – Book 3 chapter 5
January 12, 2027 Book 3 chapter 6 – chapter 14
January 19, 2027 Book 3 chapter 15 – chapter 26
January 26, 2027 Book 3 chapter 27 – end
Richard Wright Native Son Harper Perennial Modern Classics
It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago’s South Side in the 1930s. Thomas accidentally kills a white woman at a time when racism is at its peak and he pays the price for it. While not apologizing for Bigger’s crimes, Wright portrays a systemic causation behind them. Bigger’s lawyer, Boris Max, makes the case that there is no escape from this destiny for his client or any other black American, since they are the necessary product of the society that formed them and told them since birth who exactly they were supposed to be.
February 9, 2027 page 1 – 93
February 16, 2027 page 97 – 189
February 23, 2027 page 190 – 270
March 2, 2027 page 273 – 363
March 9, 2027 page 363 – end
other editions:
February 9, 2027 Book 1: Fear
February 16, 2027 Book 2 : Flight – “yes right away I’ll be waiting”
February 23, 2027 “He had to get back to his room.” – end of Book 2
March 2, 2027 Book 3: Fate – “I don’t want to die . . . .”
March 9, 2027 “Having been bound over” – end
New England Readers and Writers is a voluntary group hosting free workshops serving curious readers and aspiring writers. Our current workshop leaders are:
Michael L. Sevy – Literature Group
…Currently co-leading the Literature Group, Michael recently retired from a career beginning in advertising (including writing and editing for various trade magazines) then working as a database administrator for a financial software company. Composing and playing music from punk rock to ambient and classical minimalism has been a constant throughout. A fiction writer, he has been published in 3:AM Magazine and minor literature[s].
Michael tries to keep the Lit Group weekly sessions lively with an emphasis on deep analysis of difficult works and explorations of experimental prose and form. Leaning toward long, slow non-narrative fiction in his own reading, favorite authors include László Krasznahorkai, Clarice Lispector, Natsume Sōseki, Marguerite Duras, Robert Musil and Georges Perec.
Short stories by Michael published here: https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-melodic-line-that-obsessed-my-thoughts/ and https://minorliteratures.com/2025/02/04/the-barco-the-american-pneumatic-the-chicago-pneumatic-michael-l-sevy/
Some of Michael’s music can be heard here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL35AAAEE961CAC765
Patrick Brownson – Literature Group
…got his B.A. in Honors English Literature and Western Society & Culture from Concordia University, in Montreal, QC. He is currently co-leader of the Literature Group which started as a small group of readers tackling “Infinite Jest” in the summer of 2013, and became a year-round Lit. group in the summer of 2015. He has also spent time as fiction co-editor and manuscript reader at the Mud Season Review. He is the father of a boy, Wallace and a girl, Sylvia.
Below are the books previously discussed in the group:
Elena Ferrante – My Brilliant Friend
Don DeLillo – White Noise
Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
William Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom
Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room
James Joyce – Ulysses
Ali Smith – How To Be Both
Clarice Lispector – The Passion According to G .H.
George Eliot – Middlemarch
Dennis Johnson – Angels and Jesus’ Son
Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
Georges Perec – Life, A User’s Manual
Anna Burns – Milkman
Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
Enrique Vila-Matas – Mac’s Problem
Gerald Murnane – Barley Patch
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah
Octavia E. Butler – Parable of the Sower
Don DeLillo – Underworld
Albert Camus – The Plague
José Saramago – Blindness
Giovanni Boccaccio – The Decameron
Vladimir Nabokov – Pnin
Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire
Samuel Beckett – Three Novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)
William Faulkner – The Hamlet
Malcolm Lowry – Under The Volcano
Yoko Tawada – The Emissary
Yoko Ogawa – The Memory Police
Edna O’Brien – A Pagan Place
Alice Munro – Lives of Girls and Women
Nikolai Gogol – Dead Souls
Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children
Lucia Berlin – A Manual for Cleaning Women
Alfred Doblin – Berlin Alexanderplatz
Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook
Philip Roth – Zuckerman Bound
W. G. Sebald – Vertigo, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn
Mariam Petrosyan – The Gray House
Olga Tokarczuk – Flights
J. M. Coetzee – Age of Iron and Disgrace
Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse and The Waves
William Gaddis – The Recognitions
Annie Ernaux – A Man’s Place, A Woman’s Story and Shame
Orhan Pamuk – My Name is Red
Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
César Aira – An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Varamo, The Little Buddhist Monk and The Divorce
Roberto Bolaño – Distant Star
Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon and Jazz
László Krasznahorkai – Seiobo There Below
Patrick Modiano – Missing Person and Suspended Sentences
Iris Murdoch – Under the Net and The Black Prince
David Foster Wallace – The Pale King
Colum McCann – Let the Great World Spin
Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King and Herzog