I’m settling into a literature seminar overlooking the Quad. Or at least it feels that way.
In reality, I’ve hurriedly pulled up an email invitation on my laptop after wrangling my three small kids into naptime. I sip some water and give my bangs a cursory finger comb. Zoom smiles on me today: I don’t have to install updates.
Book club is already underway when I join, and I’m welcomed with waves and quick hellos. Two years ago, I didn’t know most of the folks on this call. Now I smile and wave back, feeling myself shift gears. The busy working mom yields to a version of my undergrad English major self, something that I, one of three lawyers in our group of eight, don’t get to do very often.
The club, which we’ve informally named Stanford Still Reads, is organized by Stephen Hong Sohn, who, lucky for me, advised my honors thesis. Now an English professor at Fordham University, he got to know each of us one way or another during our shared time at Stanford. I took his rendition of Masterpieces of American Literature. Some of the other participants majored in Asian American studies and took one of the courses he taught that were cross-listed with that program. He was a dedicated mentor during our student days and made it easy for us to stay in touch with him after we graduated. Sometimes he’d even send us care packages full of books.
Something I’d experienced countless times in my Stanford classes begins to happen again.
Today we’re discussing Rental House, Weike Wang’s most recent novel. The plot was underdrawn: A couple visits two different rental houses, a few years apart. I had found myself speed-reading by the end of it, just wanting to be done, and, during the call, I discover I’m not the only one who didn’t particularly like it.
Over the course of the discussion, though, something I’d experienced countless times in my Stanford classes begins to happen again. As one person after another makes an insightful comment, my understanding deepens and my opinion morphs. Soon I’m jumping in with new observations of my own. Under our joint analysis, what had seemed flat or lazy starts to look more like a deliberate attempt by the author to put her conflict-averse, passive-aggressive characters into scenes that amplified, reflected, or were produced by those very traits. Discussing the book with eager, smart Stanford graduates makes it more interesting, and my intellectual life is richer for it.
All too soon, it’s time to hang up (and naptime is over). I stand up from my laptop and head for my kids’ bedrooms. And a part of me, too, walks down the stairs and out into the late-afternoon sunlight of the Quad, already looking forward to our next read.
Emma Trotter, ’10, lives in Missoula, Mont. Email her at stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
