Table Talk in Troubled Times
The Luncheon Society intrigued me by its very name. My grandmother attended women's society "luncheons."
So how could I refuse a Zoom invitation ("you might enjoy") out of the ether to join a virtual conversation mixing yesteryear and tomorrow?
Speakers and guests are all over the map. Somehow Bob McBarton, the ebullient host, curates gatherings, inviting authors, journalists, historians, even generals and astronauts to a sophisticated show-and-tell.
In my short time as a guest, I've heard elegant poet Rose Styron, in her Martha's Vineyard home, and author Amy Tan speak of Tan's "obsession," sketching and writing on birds. Tan's new book is "The Backyard Bird Chronicles." Constitutional law ace Laurence Tribe is on the spring docket.
Novelist Joyce Carol Oates in her Princeton study seemed as ethereal as I imagined. Perhaps a bit lonely, in a solitary writer's life.
From his California home, McBarton says he prizes "long-form conversations" that last a meaty hour and a half. He encourages all 50 or so guests (whose bios go out to all) to stay awhile on Zoom. And they do, across time zones.
"You discover a ball of string that gets bigger as you go along," McBarton adds. This avocation is apart from his career in financial technology.
Since the '90s, he says, the purpose elevated from a circle of close school friends and gained altitude. "It's a graduate course in American culture."
Proving there is such a thing as a free lunch?
Actually, McBarton sends out titles of new books and urges us to buy them, the better to listen and discuss the work in the meeting. As a courtesy, he sends out book plates signed by the author afterward. Yearly dues are $40.
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