The next NY Salon book discussion will be on Wednesday, November 14 at 7pm.

Cormac McCarthy – The Road

The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth.

Stealing across this horrific landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief. McCarthy’s impressions of mankind have left very little place for love.

The entire world is, quite literally, dying so the final affirmation of hope in the novel’s closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father’s rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith.

These discussions are open to NY Salon members only. If you are a non-member you may join now or attend one session as a non-member. Please contact jean@nysalon.org for more information.The New York Salon aims to raise the level of discussion of our culture – from politics and business to science and the arts. We seek to provide environments in which ideas can be robustly debated among critically-minded people from a variety of backgrounds. Whatever the forum – discussing a novel, arguing the merits of a museum exhibition, or organizing a public debate – our goal is the same: to ensure that the assumptions underlying the pressing issues of the day are thoroughly examined.

Jean SmithDirector NY Salon

‘The NY Salon in association with the Manifesto Club…

A dinner Salon with Josie Appleton, journalist and Director of The Manifesto Club(www.manifestoclub.com) on Saturday 3 November 2007 at 7pm.

Josie will introduce the topic for consideration based on her summary below:

There is a paradox at the heart of environmentalism: the more distant somebody is from nature, the closer they feel to it. Often, the more a person consumes, the more do they seek to consume ‘responsibly’ and in a way that is in ‘harmony’ with the natural world.

Why is this? Why is it often that members of the elite – politicians, business leaders, pop stars – who identify most with environmentalism, and who make tackling climate change their priority?

Is environmentalism a form of anti-capitalism – a recipe for buy-nothing, produce nothing? Or is it a new and modern ideology – a new mechanism for governing society? Or is it something else entirely?

This will be a salon for trying to come to grips with the rapid rise of environmentalism in the past few years – and trying to work out where progressives should stand on it.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3406/ http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3738/

Places are limited so please rsvp asap to jean@nysalon.org or alan@nysalon.org.