The Order of Eliot is a book club of 11 Northsiders who have spent the last 24 years working their way through selections from the Harvard Classics.
A “curious group,” that’s how some members of the Order of Eliot refer to themselves. The Order of Eliot is a book club that reads selections from the Harvard Classics.
“It’s named for Charles Eliot, and his notion was that you could get a liberal education if you read from a list of classics,” said David Glaze. “So, he devised the Harvard Classics, and that’s kind of what we were based on.”
There are 11 members of the Order of Eliot, including John Garrard, David Glaze, Lynn Wentworth, Bryan Barksdale, David Dunbar, Jay Jacobus, Roy Liddell, Brooks Mosley, George Norfleet, David Segrest and Bill Sneed.
“These books are a foundation,” Garrard said. “They are timeless. They are considered great works of art for a reason.”
Several times a year, the men gather to discuss a book of one of the members’ choosing. They take turns selecting a piece to read. Whoever’s turn it is to select the next reading also hosts the group to mull over their thoughts about the piece over food and drinks.
“This is all the brainchild of David Dunbar, our founding member,” Glaze said. “We got to talk about how much we enjoy reading, and it started from there. He had the notion that we all should go back and read the things we should have read in college and didn’t.”
The group, which started small in 1995 and has evolved into the 11-member club it is now, has been meeting for 24 years.
“Dunbar’s idea was that over time you get tired of talking about sports and politics, you want to talk about ideas,” Garrard said.
Over the years, they have read approximately 126 books from the list of Harvard Classics and some that are not.
“However, that is from 1909, remember, so everything past that is not in the Harvard Classics,” Glaze said. “So, we’ve been picking and choosing things that are worthy of our time in the 20th century as well, such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck and others.”
“The more modern books that we read have the characteristics of what you would call great works of literature,” Garrard said.
Being from the South, it is only natural that they would include the works of William Faulkner and southern gothic literature, according to Glaze.
For Garrard, works by Russian writers have been particularly interesting.
“The great Russian writers, like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov,” Garrard said. “Those writers to me are in some ways similar to the great Southern writers, to me. You can find similar characteristics in their writing.”
In fact, the group recently read The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy, and Garrard said it was good for him as it is a work that he might not have read if not for their book club.
“John chose the book The Cossacks, and the book was written by Tolstoy in mid-1850s or so, so you’re talking about pre-revolutionary Russia,” Glaze said. “We grew up here in Mississippi, so we don’t know a lot about that. So, he provided us with some context. He gave us information about pre-revolutionary Russia and Czar Alexander on up so we could get a sense of what this was going to be about.”
“It gives a lot of us the opportunity to read books that we might not even know about or have read,” Wentworth said.
However, they won’t pretend that all the books they have spent time on have been winners in their eyes.
“One that comes to mind – and we love Dickens, he’s our second most-read author – is Bleak House,” Glaze said. “It was truly bleak. That’s part of the risk. We’re all in discovery here. We’re trying to find things that we think are worth each other’s time.”
Although some of the books may not always be the most interesting, the conversations that they spark always leave a lasting impression on the members of the club.
On the other hand, each of the men have a book that they’ve read as a group that has resonated with them personally throughout their journey through the classics.
For Garrard, it’s The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck.
“I still think about that book regularly,” he said. “Another of my favorites is the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.”
The works of Dostoevsky particularly resonate with Glaze. His favorite being The Brothers Karamazov.
“For comedic relief, I like The Confederacy of Dunces,” Wentworth said. “Also, Look Homeward, Angel and The Prince.”
Their curiosity and excitement to learn leads them from genre to genre. They’ve covered various topics in fiction and non-fiction, from philosophy to biographies.
It also fuels them to venture beyond the books and into the life and world of that particular author.
“The story of the author is often as compelling as the book itself,” Glaze said. “Many, many of these authors that we have read over the years, their backstories are really important and gives you the context of where they’re coming from.”
Typically, whoever is hosting the meeting and chose the book will take the time to do some research into the author and some background on the time period the book was written.
That person also typically has a list of questions or discussion points to steer the conversation as the night goes on.
“Sometimes we spend almost as much time on the author or the context of when it was written, what was happening, what the author may have been influenced by,” Garrard said.
“Some books don’t lend themselves to lengthy discussion, but the author’s background does,” Glaze said.
They also spend some time discussing what they think the author was trying to impart on the reader.
Each of the men are in various professional fields, which makes the discussion more interesting as they each pick up on different themes or ideas.
“The last thing I would want to see is 11 of me around a table,” Glaze said.
“It would be really boring,” Wentworth added.
Their different backgrounds mean they may disagree during their discussions, but they can all agree on one thing: they’re always learning from each other as much as they do from the books themselves.
“I think we all share enough commonality given our age and where we grew up, to me it’s helped us find or think about our place in the world,” Garrard said.
“The human experience, the same problems, all of that is the same across the board. It’s interesting to see these authors’ different takes on that,” Glaze said. “It kind of helps you learn a bit about yourself along the way. A really good artist is going to transcend time. Some of these authors are crystal clear even today.”
shown above: Front row, from left to right are Bryan Barksdale, Bill Sneed, David Glaze, David Dunbar and Roy Liddell. Back row, left to right, are John Garrard, George Norfleet, David Segrest, Brooks Mosley, Jay Jacobus and Lynn Wentworth.
