Collectors of Classics

In addition to our monthly classics, we will be meeting quarterly to discuss longer classic books.

Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison's first novel, and the only one published during his lifetime. It was first published by the British magazine Horizon in 1947, and addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early 20th century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.

"Invisible Man" won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ellison the first African-American writer to win the award. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man 19th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its 100 Best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 list, calling it "the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century", rather than a "race novel, or even a bildungsroman". Malcolm Bradbury and Richard Ruland recognize a black existentialist vision with a "Kafka-like absurdity". According to The New York Times, Barack Obama modeled his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father on Ellison's novel.

Critic Orville Prescott of The New York Times called the novel "the most impressive work of fiction by an American Negro which I have ever read", and felt it marked "the appearance of a richly talented writer". Novelist Saul Bellow in his review found it "a book of the very first order, a superb book...it is tragi-comic, poetic, the tone of the very strongest sort of creative intelligence". George Mayberry of The New Republic said Ellison "is a master at catching the shape, flavor and sound of the common vagaries of human character and experience".

Anthony Burgess described the novel as "a masterpiece".

The Old Man and the Sea is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiago, an aging fisherman, and his long struggle to catch a giant marlin.

Hemingway began writing "The Old Man and the Sea" in Cuba during a tumultuous period in his life. His previous novel "Across the River and Into the Trees" had met with negative reviews and, amid a breakdown in relations with his wife Mary, he had fallen in love with his muse Adriana Ivancich. Having completed one book of a planned "sea trilogy", Hemingway began to write as an addendum a story about an old man and a marlin that had originally been told to him fifteen years earlier. He wrote up to a thousand words a day, completing the 26,531-word manuscript in six weeks.

Over the following year, Hemingway became increasingly convinced that the manuscript would stand on its own as a novella. Life magazine published the full novella in its September 1, 1952 issue. Hemingway's publisher, Scribner's, released their first edition a week later on the 8th. Thanks to favorable early reviews and word-of-mouth, popular anticipation was so high that both releases were heavily bootlegged. The magazine sold a record 5.3 million copies in two days, while Scribner's sold tens of thousands of copies. Translated into nine languages by the end of 1952, "The Old Man and the Sea" remained on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. In 1953, it received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was the only work explicitly mentioned when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Early reviews were positive, with many hailing what they saw as a return to form for Hemingway after Across the River's negative reception. The acclaim lessened over time, as literary critics began to think the initial reception overblown and over-enthusiastic. Whether "The Old Man and the Sea" is inferior or equal to Hemingway's other works has since been the subject of scholarly debate. Thematic analysis has focused on Christian imagery and symbolism, on the similarity of the novella's themes to its predecessors in the Hemingway canon, and on the character of the fisherman Santiago.

The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 gothic horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly from January 27 to April 16, 1898. On October 7, 1898, it was collected in The Two Magics, published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. The novella follows a governess who, caring for two children at a remote country house, becomes convinced that they are haunted.

In the century following its publication, critical analysis of the novella underwent several major transformations. Initial reviews regarded it only as a frightening ghost story, but, in the 1930s, some critics suggested that the supernatural elements were figments of the governess' imagination. In the early 1970s, the influence of structuralism resulted in an acknowledgement that the text's ambiguity was its key feature. Later approaches incorporated Marxist and feminist thinking.

The novella has been adapted several times, including a Broadway play (1950), a chamber opera (1954), two films (in 1961 and 2020), and a miniseries (2020).

As a piece of Gothic fiction, critics highlight the influence of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) on the novella. The Turn of the Screw borrows both from Jane Eyre's themes of class and gender, and from its mid-nineteenth-century setting. The novella alludes to Jane Eyre in tandem with an explicit reference to Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), wherein the governess wonders if there might be a secret relative hidden in the attic at Bly. One critic writes that the only "definite event" in the novel that does not "belong" in Gothic fantasy is Miles' expulsion from school.

Although the influence of the Gothic on the novella is clear, it cannot only be characterised as one. James' ghosts differ from those of traditional Gothic tales – frightening, often bound in chains – by appearing like their living selves. Similarly, the novella foregoes major devices associated with Gothic novels, such as digressions, as in Frankenstein (1818) and Dracula (1897), instead relating one whole, continuous narrative.

Angela's Ashes: A Memoir is a 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt, with various anecdotes and stories of his childhood. The book details his early childhood in Brooklyn, New York, but focuses primarily on his life in Limerick, Ireland. It also includes his struggles with poverty and his father's alcoholism.

The book was published in 1996 and won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The sequel 'Tis was published in 1999, followed by Teacher Man in 2005.

After traveling to America (where the book ends), McCourt worked at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City, where he remained until 1951. He was drafted during the Korean War to be stationed in Bavaria, Germany. After being discharged, he returned to New York and dabbled with several different jobs until he was accepted into New York University. After graduating in 1957 with a bachelor's degree in English, McCourt turned to teaching in New York schools. He then obtained his master's degree and traveled to Dublin in pursuit of his PhD, which he never completed.

McCourt was accused of exaggerating his family's impoverished upbringing by many Limerick natives, including Richard Harris. McCourt's mother denied the accuracy of his stories shortly before her death in 1981, walking out of a stage performance by her two elder sons; Malachy's recollection is that she said it was "all a pack of lies."

Local writer and filmmaker Gerry Hannan has compiled a list of 204 inaccuracies in Angela's Ashes; Hannan confronted McCourt on The Late Late Show in 1999. Hannan claimed that as McCourt was a member of the Boy Scouts, a middle-class pursuit the poor could not afford, and family photographs show the children and Angela as well-fed