Short Story Book Clubs = Better Conversations?

Listening this morning to Olivia O'Leary's lovely programme on one of my all-time heroes (Theodore Zeldin) and his New (Better?) Conversation initiative made me realize that our Short Story Book Club is not intrinsically about great short stories (although of course we are conscientiously and pleasurably focused on the little blighters) but more about facilitating great conversation.


Zeldin-ish conversation, that is: inclusive, honest, genuinely interested in another persons take on a shared topic/story, and supportive.
In a sense, I see the Club's raison d'être as quite different to a lit-crit gathering. I'm sure we've all been-there, done-that, got the withering ("Oh-I-wish-you'd-shut-up") looks from snooty dons and People Who Know Better (Or More) Than Us.  I'm pretty sure though that Zeldin wouldn't see this competitive one-upmanship as a Conversation Killer rather than as a facilitator.


So I wonder if it might be an idea, following the format of his conversation dinners, to explicitly structure the evening a tad. Just so that we don't automatically fall into the groove of convo-stranger-dynamics where a modicum of unease clogs the conversational channels.  With this in mind, we've agreed to have a kind of short-list of stories that we'll mainly be focusing on. 

• Blackberry Winter / Robert Penn Warren (http://www.dancalloway.com/gecko_project/short_stories/BlackberryWinter_Warren.pdf)
• O City of Broken Dreams / John Cheever [my duet-with-drill read aloud version of this story]
• The Magic Barrel / Bernard Malamud (http://nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/5/malamud/barrel.htm)
• Good Country People / Flannery O'Connor (http://faculty.weber.edu/Jyoung/English%206710/Good%20Country%20People.pdf)
• Upon The Sweeping Flood / Joyce Carol Oates [Link]
• The Babysitter / Robert Coover (http://www.cs.ru.nl/~freek/books/babysitter.sat)

All these stories be great conversation-starters in themselves.But we might also brainstorm before we meet a few (simple, but honest) conversation-starting questions. Just to get the ball rolling:

• Blackberry Winter: Why doesn't the boy tell his father about potentially dangerous hobo who's just rocked up at the farmhouse?
• O City of Broken Dreams: Is this not a very early (1948) prediction of the PoMo surface-no-content culture we're living in NOW?
• The Magic Barrel: Is the final match a double-bluff on the father's part to get the two of them together?
• Good Country People: Who's more cruel in this story, the bible salesman or the writer?
• Upon the Sweeping Flood: Why, in God's name, does he do it?
• The Babysitter: Is the ending a cop-out?

If you fancy adding some questions to our conversation menu, for all the stories, or just some, please do stick those in the comments box either on meet-up, or the blog. Also, t'would be great if you (and friends/family etc.) could head on over and "LIKE" our FB page, as it seems we need 20 followers or more to get a dedicated Page Name, and put ourselves in the running for winning a goldfish.