June 5th: The Symposium
Hey everyone!
Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Gap Year’s newsletter. Stay subscribed for updates about upcoming readings, meetings, and various housekeeping items. Speaking of which…
The first meeting of The Gap Year will be Saturday, June 5th. Exact time TBA.
We will be discussing The Symposium, by Plato. What better way to start a dinner-party based reading group than by reading something about a dinner party? If you can, please read the Penguin classics translation, available here. I purchased my copy in store at New Dominion Bookshop, so you might wanna check there first.
Please read the entire text by the time we meet. While we’re excited to hang out and eat with everyone, please come prepared to actually discuss the book. I (Robbie) will try to come up with some initial questions to get our conversation going. Of course, this is meant to be a collaborative effort in which we learn together, so please feel free to pose your own questions too.
The Symposium is pretty short. Between the introduction and the text itself, the Penguin Classics edition clocks in at 103 pages. If you read five pages a day starting this Saturday, May 15, you’ll finish the book on June 5th. While you don’t necessarily need to read the introduction, I’m finding it very helpful, since Plato’s dialogues are an unfamiliar genre. If for some reason you are unable to finish all of the reading, you’re still welcome to attend; we just want you to make an honest effort. Challenging and growing ourselves is one of the many reasons we read old books.
While the exact amount is TBD, expect the cost to be about $10/person for food. It could be less, and we’ll keep you posted. However, we don’t want this to be cost prohibitive either. We’re adopting a policy of “those who can pay, do, those who can’t, don’t need to ”.
Stay tuned for more updates. We’re excited and honored to have you all on this journey with us.
Robbie