Sharing our experiences with one another through conversation is a vital part of friendship (2024-2025 topic), seeking advice, help, or simply solace. Multiple studies have shown the importance of sociability to longevity and well-being. Further, listening to one another’s views and perspectives on how to live life, private and public (e.g., civic life), is a vital part of a well-functioning society — a timely topic. Our readings will range from poetry to prose, fiction and non-fiction, and in time from Seneca to Slack.

This group will meet on the 4th Tuesday of the month (with one exception) in the mezzanine-level Art Room at the Athenæum, 5:30-7pm.

Tues, September 23 | Conversation and Sociability
Rambler #188, Samuel Johnson (1750) 2-3 pages [link]

“The Art of Conversation” and “General Rules for Conversation”, from Martine’s Hand-Book of Etiquette, and Guide to True Politeness, Arthur Martine (1866), 39 pages [link; this contains both pdf and epub versions]

Tues, October 28 | Listening
“Men Explain Things to Me” in Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit (2015), 15 pages
“Love Is”, Nikki Giovanni (2013), 1 page [link]

“The art of listening”, M. M. Owen (2022), Aeon, 13 pages [link]

Tues, November 25 | Conversations at Work: Bosses, Colleagues, and AI, Oh My!
Several People Are Typing, Calvin Kasulke (2021), 256 pages
Optional companion piece: “Reading a Novel Set Entirely in Slack,” Katy Waldmann, New Yorker, Nov. 23, 2021.

Tues, December 16 | Conversations about the Holidays (note date change)
“Conversations about Christmas”, Dylan Thomas (1947), 2 pages [link]

“Gift of the Magi”, O. Henry (1905), New York Sunday World, 2 pages [link]

Tues, January 27 | Conversation as Delight
“On the art of discussion”, Michel de Montaigne (1580), 20 pages [link]

Optional companion piece: “My Father, Montaigne, and the Art of Living,” Ann Tashi-Slater, Princeton Alumni Weekly, January 27, 2022, 5 pages [link]

Tues, February 24 | Conversation as a Verb
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Albert Hirschman (1970), [Especially Chapters 1-4, 8, and 9], 126 pages
“Million Man March Poem,” Maya Angelou (1995), 3 pages [link]

Optional companion piece: “The Choice: To Squawk or to Go?” Roger Lowenstein, Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2013, 2 pages [link]

Tues, March 24 | Conversation as Therapy
The Story Game, Shze-Hui Tjoa (2024), 272 pages

Tues, April 28 | Letters as Conversations
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King (1963), 3 pages [link]

“An Open Letter to The Kansas School Board”, Bobby Henderson (2005), 2 pages [link]

“On Groundless Fears”, Lucius Annaeus Seneca to Lucilius (65), 2 pages [link]

Tues, May 26 | Conversations of Disconnection
“Hills Like White Elephants”, Ernest Hemingway (1927), 4 pages [link]

“A Small, Good Thing”, Raymond Carver (1983), 9 pages [link]

Bryan Olin is a retired medical device industry executive and statistician currently residing on Cape Cod. He has lived across the US and in London, receiving his Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa State University. He has had a long-time love of learning literature and philosophy, and has enjoyed participating in many discussion groups on these subjects.