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    Xingu 1916
    Xingu 1916
    Xingu 1916
    Ebook63 pages40 minutes

    Xingu 1916

    By Edith Wharton

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateOct 1, 1939
    Xingu 1916
    Author

    Edith Wharton

    EDITH WHARTON (1862 - 1937) was a unique and prolific voice in the American literary canon. With her distinct sense of humor and knowledge of New York’s upper-class society, Wharton was best known for novels that detailed the lives of the elite including: The House of Mirth, The Custom of Country, and The Age of Innocence. She was the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and one of four women whose election to the Academy of Arts and Letters broke the barrier for the next generation of women writers.

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    Reviews for Xingu 1916

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Classics are not my thing although I try, but this is such an entertaining story
    • 4/5
      This is a story of contradictions. Even though this story is less that fifty pages long, it packs a wallop of a punch. Though billed as a satire it is also a humorous and witty commentary on human psychology. Some even think it is a cerebral jab at Henry James after he criticized Wharton's writing. No matter how "Xingu" is perceived or meant to be perceived, Mrs. Roby is my hero.In a nutshell, a group of snobbish high society women form a lunch group to gather and discuss didactic topics and one-up each other. In their view, the weakest link is Mrs. Roby, a seemingly not-so-bright woman who doesn't appear to fit in with them. She asks all the wrong questions and clearly doesn't know societal protocol. When the group invites an even snobbier author to discuss her latest book, "The Wings of Death," the event falls apart. Osric Dane is even more dismissive than the snobs in the group. It isn't until Mrs. Roby one-ups them all by mentioning a xingu philosophy. No one has ever heard of xingu but they all, including author Osric Dane, must pretend they know it well. Only after Mrs. Roby and Ms. Dane leave does the group dare to look up the word xingu and discover they have been duped. Xingu is actually a river in Brazil.
    • 3/5
      Have you ever pretended to know what was going on just to keep up with a conversation and researched the topic afterward? This is a very short story that deals with just such a conversation. Amusing, quick read.
    • 4/5
      Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition.I don't normally review individual short stories, but one of my reading resolutions this year is to read works by Edith Wharton, and this story was available at Project Gutenberg.It's an amusing tale about a group of ladies who meet to discuss artistic and intellectual subjects over lunch. When they invite the author of the acclaimed novel "The Wings of Death" to attend a meeting, they find themselves tied in knots by the argumentative author and the mischievous Mrs. Roby, whom they have always considered insufficently intellectual and a failure as a member of the Lunch Club.
    • 5/5
      This was pretty funny!
    • 4/5
      Thin was a comical short story about a pretentious group of woman who met weekly to discuss culture and the likes. The funny thing about it is they really didn't know what they were talking about and this new member Mrs. Roby really put them in their place.
    • 5/5
      A short story first published in the early twentieth century, Xingu deals with intellectual pretension. So long as the reader does not have a problem with reading a book with the earlier setting, this book is a clever, engaging, quick read.

    Book preview

    Xingu 1916 - Edith Wharton

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Xingu, by Edith Wharton

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: Xingu

           1916

    Author: Edith Wharton

    Release Date: January 3, 2008 [EBook #24131]

    Last Updated: January 8, 2013

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK XINGU ***

    Produced by David Widger

    XINGU

    By Edith Wharton

    Copyright, 1916, By Charles Scribner's Sons

    Contents

    I

    Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that the entertainment of distinguished strangers became one of its accepted functions; in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated Osric Dane, on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge, an invitation to be present at the next meeting.

    The club was to meet at Mrs. Bellinger's. The other members, behind her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive setting for the entertainment of celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fall back on.

    Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded it as one of her obligations to entertain the Lunch Club's distinguished guests. Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep a footman clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff of responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted that Mrs. Ballinger, whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow scope of two parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to entertain Osric Dane.

    The question of that lady's reception had for a month past profoundly moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt themselves unequal to the task, but that their sense of the opportunity plunged them into the agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the author of The Wings of Death, no forebodings disturbed the conscious adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. The Wings of Death had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluyck's suggestion, been chosen as the subject of discussion at the last club meeting, and each member had thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to appropriate whatever sounded well in the comments of the others.

    Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the opportunity; but it was now openly recognised that, as a member of the Lunch Club, Mrs.

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