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COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
ALUMNI BOOK CLUB
Alumni Book Club Carries On the Tradition
“The idea is to further our education and what we started in Lit Hum.”
Near Central Park, in the Midtown apartment she shares with
her husband, Lattman has laid out an antipasto platter, fruit and
wine for her fellow book club members. On the table is a translation
of Madame de La Fayette’s 1678 novel La Princesse de Clèves,
a seminal work of French literature and the subject of tonight’s
discussion. It was not the most leisurely or enthralling read, the
group will conclude, but as one of the earliest incarnations of the
modern novel — and given its place on the Lit Hum syllabus
from 1986–90 — it was a fitting choice.
Three of Lattman’s classmates, Ben Ryan ’01, William Tsu ’01
and Rodman Williams ’01,
along with Brette McSweeney
’04 SIPA, arrive punctually
at 7:30 p.m. Within a few
minutes, a seminar-style discussion
of the love triangle
in the book is under way, interspersed
with much more
laughter than would be
admissible in a classroom.
The novel, set in the court of
Henry II, was suggested by
Lattman, a trust and estates
attorney who majored in
political science and French.
With no designated moderator
— except for Williams’
asking the group “not to
lose the thread” when he deems a thematic point worthy of probing
— the conversation flows and sometimes swerves. The group
considers the nature of romantic love and compares their reactions
to how readers in the 17th century might have perceived the title
character’s infidelity. By the end of the session, they are pondering
whether she deserves their sympathy.
B y Nat h a l i e A l o n s o ’08
If a snapshot could capture the effect that a course like Literature Humanities
should have on students, it might very well depict the gathering at Laura Lattman
’01’s Manhattan home on a Tuesday evening in November.
As with any other book club, the members present tonight, as
well as those who were unable to attend — Jennifer Kim ’01, Ben
Wheeler ’02 and newcomer Nikhil Shimpi ’01 — are in it for the
company and community aspect. But here there also is a loftier
purpose: They consider their club a vehicle for exploring universal
themes, as most of them did 15 years ago as first-year students in
Lit Hum or, in McSweeney’s case, as an undergraduate at Georgetown.
In the spirit of the Core Curriculum, they select books that
have had a widespread impact on subsequent writing and thinking.
“I’m very thankful that I had Lit Hum as an experience because
it did what it was supposed
to do, which was give me a
solid foundation in the classics
of Western Literature,”
says Ryan, who majored in
English and had the idea to
start the club. “Our group is
focused on reading things
that are definitively canonical.
The idea is to further
our education and what we
started in Lit Hum.”
Ryan, a journalist who
recently completed his first
novel, reconnected with Tsu,
Kim and Wheeler, members
of his Lit Hum section,
at the Class of ’01’s 10-year
Alumni Reunion Weekend. (Wheeler, who as a student helped
relaunch CULPA, an independent, student-run evaluation site for
Columbia courses and professors, entered with the Class of 2001
but graduated in 2002 after taking a semester off to be a web developer.)
Their shared desire to engage in dialogues they had not
experienced since college, combined with nostalgia, resulted in
(Left to right) Brette McSweeney ’04 SIPA, William Tsu ’01, Ben Ryan ’01,
Rodman Williams ’01 and Laura Lattman ’01 discuss La Princesse de Clèves.
PHOTO: NATHALIE ALONSO ’08
the book club. The group later expanded
to include Lattman, Williams
and McSweeney, and, most
recently, Shimpi, an attorney for
the U.S. National Labor Relations
Board.
“After spending time away
from a university setting, I hungered
for intellectual rigor and
existential inquiry through the
humanities,” says Kim, a founding
board member and communications
coordinator for the Shantideva
Meditation Center in Manhattan.
“I love being among bright
minds who enjoy learning for the
sake of learning and sharing their
insights — people who make me
think more deeply and see things
from different perspectives.”
Though inspired by Lit Hum,
the group’s picks go well beyond
the scope of the course, both geographically
and chronologically.
To date, they have read mostly
fiction published in the mid-19th
century and later. Since their
first read, Moby Dick, the group
has tackled The Age of Innocence,
Crime and Punishment, The Sound
and the Fury, A Bend in the River,
The Optimist’s Daughter and
American Pastoral. Moby Dick and
Crime and Punishment have appeared
on the Lit Hum syllabus.
The club tries to meet every 10 weeks, though accommodating
everyone’s schedule often means varying the time between
sessions. In addition to Lattman’s apartment, they have held
meetings in Ryan’s home, at World Wide Plaza on Manhattan’s
West Side and at Coffee Shop in Union Square. The group gives
them the rare opportunity, they say, to go beyond the small talk
of everyday life. “As adults, what do you do You go to parties
or you go to dinners or out to bars. It’s really hard to have a deep
conversation,” explains Ryan. “This way, we have to; that’s what
we’re here for.”
As in a typical Lit Hum section, the members of this book
group bring a variety of interests, experiences and perspectives to
the table: Kim has been v.p. of a software company and lived off
the grid in a Buddhist retreat center in California’s redwood forest;
Tsu, an East Asian studies major, works in asset management;
Wheeler, who is married to Kate Cortesi ’01 and is the group’s
only parent, majored in history and computer science and now
develops algorithms for a high frequency trading company. Williams
also majored in history and is an administrator at Fordham
Law’s research library and McSweeney is the executive director
of Eleanor’s Legacy, which works to advance women in elective
office in New York State. Yet what is perhaps most interesting
about the group seated around Lattman’s drop-leaf table is their
newfound bond. While most knew each other in the College,
none would describe another as a close friend during those years.
Capital Club
New York-based alumni are not the only ones reconnecting
thanks to Lit Hum and the Core Curriculum.
Take Joseph Feuer ’87, ’91 SIPA, an international
development consultant who in 2010 co-founded a
Core-inspired book club in the Washington, D.C., area.
Feuer is on the board of the Columbia University Club of
Washington, D.C. Through his initiative, each month a subset of
club members gathers at the home of Ralph Stephens ’58, ’60
Business in Chevy Chase, Md., to discuss a text or author that
has appeared on the Lit Hum or Contemporary Civilization syllabus.
Of roughly 25 committed participants — a mix of College
alumni and graduates of other Columbia schools — 12–15 attend
any one meeting. “I thought it would be interesting, whether
you’ve been out of the College 10 years or 50 years, to take
another look at these texts, which are so profound,” Feuer says.
Each month, Feuer, who started the group with Montse
Ferrer ’06 (she has since left the D.C. area), gives members a
few options from which to choose. Lucretius’ “On the Nature
of Things,” Plato’s Republic and Dante’s Inferno are among
the works they have tackled. “It was going to be almost like a
second year of CC and Lit Hum with more secondary texts, but
we decided to really just stick to the Core,” Feuer says.
The group rarely reads an entire work; instead, Feuer identifies
excerpts with Deborah Martinsen Ph.D. ’82 SIPA, ’90 GSAS, associate
dean of alumni education. Martinsen then collaborates with
Gareth Williams, the Violin Family Professor of Classics and Lit
Hum chair, to develop study questions for the group. Feuer usually
leads the conversation although, at his invitation, a fellow from
Harvard’s D.C.-based Center for Hellenic Studies has facilitated.
“It’s a very bright group,” Feuer says. “Some do outside reading
and bring a lot to bear. People come from a wide range of
fields and they generally have many interesting things to say.”
— N.A.
In September 2011, David Lipscomb
’98 GSAS, who taught the
Lit Hum section in which the book
club’s four founding members met
and now is a consultant based in
Washington, D.C., participated in
the group’s discussion of American
Pastoral via Skype. That meeting
ran more than three hours, making
it one of their longer sessions
to date. Lipscomb remembers that
particular Lit Hum class as having
a special chemistry. “I remember
thinking it was somehow wrong
when the class ended — like a
great rock band was breaking up
too soon,” he says. “That sounds
hyperbolic, I know. But they really
were amazing together — building
off each other’s comments,
challenging each other, never
taking themselves too seriously
while really digging deeply into
the literature.”
It is gratifying for Lipscomb,
but not entirely surprising, that
members of that Lit Hum section
would reconnect in such a
way and that Ryan would be the
one to bring them together. “Ben
Ryan would talk about characters
in Homer or Jane Austen
as if they were personal friends
who drew strong reactions from
him, sometimes amazing him
and sometimes really annoying him,” Lipscomb recalls. “He had
that rare ability to be insightful and hilarious at the same time,
and he still does. And others in the class would quickly respond
to Ben and we’d be off and running. Jennifer Kim, Ben Wheeler
and William Tsu also had that ability to spark things.”
Following their discussion of La Princesse, as they do after most
meetings, the group debates what to read next. While the club’s
premise is clear, the wide range of options — and opinions —
means that it does not always translate into obvious book selections.
Ultimately, at Wheeler’s suggestion, they settle on a foray
into East Asian literature — the 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes
by Japanese author Kobo Abe and a few stories and essays by Chinese
writer Lu Hsun — though it is not a unanimous decision.
If there is one thing they all agree on, however, it is that they
are more poised now, with more life experience under their belts,
to engage with literature. “I’m a little bit more comfortable in my
own skin in this stage in my life. That makes the sharing and respect
even more possible than when you are in a class theoretically
competing with other people,” says Lattman, to which Williams
adds, “Our reading lives have deepened because our actual
lives have deepened.”
Nathalie Alonso ’08, from Queens, is a freelance journalist and an
editorial producer for LasMayores.com, Major League Baseball’s official
Spanish language website. She writes “Student Spotlight” for CCT.
SPRING 2013
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SPRING 2013
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