The FEVER...meeting notes

Got to the meeting late.  And got to writing this too many days after the meeting.
Since I rely on my memory...not good.
I am hoping that my shy book group colleagues will correct and/or add to this entry...Come on! Write up! Or...email me and I will post...

Here goes my best attempt to reflect the ideas expressed...

It seems that this play was liked by the majority of members.
Although the ones that didn't like it, really didn't like it.  They seemed to be really turned off by the circular, somewhat disjointed, stream of consciousness.  And they stopped reading.

However, during the meeting, we played  the audio of Wallace Shawn reading The Fever.  Just the first 8-minute segment, anyway.  As a result, (and most likely hearing the discussion motivated her as well) one member who stopped reading...wants to listen instead. And someone will be giving the CD to her husband instead of the book.

BUT, not everyone was converted in favor.  One member, who couldn't get a copy of The Fever electronically, was not going to pick it up after the discussion and even after listening to Shawn.  She said (paraphrased of course) she disliked intellectual rich upper class folks who bash intellectual rich upper class folks and got richer from doing so.

By the way...,
After listening to Shawn,  members felt hearing his voice revealed new insights into The Fever. When you hear his tone, you realize that he  is conscious of the absurdity of trying to escape one's  values, life, culture...to sacrifice everything...in order to save all humanity.  The narrator isn't going to do this...Saints are few.  And he isn't one.

We talked about what can be done to better the world--and we agreed that political action such as that of the Anti War Movement of the '60s can. Actions taking by people like Rachel Lloyd...Girls Like Us...can help save the world...girl by girl, woman by woman.


More ...

Members enjoyed Shawn's anecdotes...we assume he is the narrator who grew  up in Manhattan in the rarefied artistic and intellectual circle of his parents' world...but some of us are not sure we are supposed to take his getting stuck  in the middle of a revolution literally...Was Shawn ever in  Nicaragua?

Some examples of anecdotes:  we liked the wrapping paper and description of good and bad neighborhoods.

We also explored connections between Shawn's work and Woody Allen's exploration of class differences. Memory fails...Does anyone want to deepen this link?