Twenty Years Of Books, Discussions And Great Friendships:

The Bienvenuto Cellini Society Of Newtown

By Shannon Hicks

Twenty years ago Gordon Williams used to listen with envy when his wife Lina would come home from her book club meetings raving around the gatherings she had been to.

“I was jealous of my wife, who would tell me about these wonderful discussions she had been involved in, and of the fun she was having,” Mr Williams said recently. It was after listening to someone else while at a cocktail party that the wheels started moving in Mr Williams’s head.

“I was listening to John Reed talk about a book he had read, about Reagan’s Secretary of State, and I was enthralled,” said Mr Williams. “So I gathered people around me, friends who like to read, and it just went from there.”

Founding members of the then-unnamed book club were, in addition to Mr Williams and Mr Reed, Scott Conover, Jim Larin, Don Schuman, Dreux Spengler, and Bob Walker. The first meeting was in November 1988, and the first book was The Prince of Tides.

The success of the club, feels Mr Williams, is simple.

“We enjoy each other’s company, and we all like to read,” he said. “We like eclectic subjects, which helps, and we like discussing them.”

When the club started, each member would bring one or two books with him to a meeting, offer a presentation about each book, and then a vote would be taken to determine which book would be discussed at the next meeting.

Now a group leader for each month is chosen and it is up to him to select a few titles, present those to the group, and then the group decides what they will discuss from there. The club also has a rule that the discussion leader has to have read the book and can stand behind it before he presents it to the group for consideration.

“We’ve had disasters where a leader went in thinking of an author’s credits and then the book he suggested turned out to be just awful,” said Mr Williams. Once the book leader and title are selected, it is up to each month’s leader to prepare the questions for discussion and does research about each book’s author.

The best books are those that elicit strong — and varied — opinions.

“Sometimes our discussions are very short, especially is everyone likes a book or we all have the same opinion,” Mr Williams said with a laugh. “One discussion, the one about The Rocket Boys, lasted about 25 minutes. There wasn’t enough to say after we agreed that we all liked it.”

Another reason for the club’s longevity is that its reading list has been eclectic, offering something for everyone. There have been classics, histories (“When Don Studley is the discussion leader, you know he’s going to bring three nonfiction history titles for suggestion,” said Mr Williams), biographies and autobiographies, current and recent best-sellers, and more.

It was while the club was working on The Autobiography of Bienvenuto Cellini, six months into the club’s existence, that it found its name. According to Mr Williams, credit for the group’s moniker goes to Bob Walker.

Mr Williams and the other members of The Bienvenuto Cellini Society of Newtown are celebrating a men’s book club that continues to meet 11 months each year. The club meets once each month, usually in a member’s home, September through July.

Meeting in homes means the group stays on a small scale, usually no more than ten members.

“Too many members would make meeting in our homes difficult,” said Mr Williams. The limit on the number of members also means there is sometimes a waiting list before a new member can join. Members will sometimes suggest a friend of theirs, but new members are brought in sparingly. Nevertheless, the group’s size has crept up over the years and now rests at just under 20 members.

“Sometimes there’s not enough space for the group at its current size,” said Mr Williams. “The wait for someone to join us may be a few months.”

When newcomers enter the circle, however, they find a comfortable social club.

Perhaps another reason for the group’s longevity is that it hasn’t all been about the books. There have also been group treks — adult field trips, if you will — from time to time. Bienvenuto Cellini Society members have done group outings to Tanglewood with their wives, and have also done a number of progressive dinner programs.

Former member Don Chuman, who now lives in Maine, hosted the group for off-site meetings a few times.

“Don owned a camp in the Adirondacks and he hosted the whole group up there a few times,” said Mr Williams. “That was so much fun. We did that about three years running.”

Then there was the night the society went into New York City for its discussion of Russell Andrews’ Icarus. That trip started forming when society member Dreux Spengler, who is a private pilot, was having a discussion with one of his clients, Barnes & Noble chairman and founder Leonard Riggio. When Mr Spengler told Mr Riggio about his book club and what they would be discussing at an upcoming meeting, Mr Riggio not only invited Mr Spengler and his friends to his apartment for a book club meeting, he also arranged to have the author of their book to be there.

“We went to this amazing apartment in the middle of Manhattan. The author came and talked about the book, and we enjoyed some very nice wine and then we had this great dinner,” said Mr Williams. “It was a special, special night. It was really nice.”

A Major Milestone

 Two decades and more than 170 book discussions after the first meeting of The Bienvenuto Cellini Society of Newtown, the group marked its 20th anniversary with a special dinner meeting at The Dana-Holcombe House.

“It was a traditional book club meeting,” said Mr Williams. “We always have dinner and discussion, but not so formal and with full cocktail hour.”

Eighteen of the 19 current members were in attendance that night. The one person missing was H.D. Bassett, who was already in Florida for the season. There is something about the club that makes some members continue their routine even after moving out of town. Scott Conover now lives in Guilford, but makes the meetings regularly as does Dreux Spengler, now a Sherman resident. Former Newtown resident John Warner planned a trip from his current home in New Hampshire in order to attend the anniversary dinner.

There were notes and photos from former residents and club members, including Steve Gordon, Don Schumer, and Bob Walker. The group also placed a call to Mr Walker, one of the club’s original members, who lives in North Carolina.

The November meeting was a celebratory one. It opened with cocktails and dinner, during which time founding member Scott Conover read a poem he had written for the occasion. The group played a version of 25 Questions that focused on books that have been discussed over the past 20 years (members were giving handicaps based on when they joined the club, making the competition a little more even). Jason Hsu won that competition.

During dessert the friends shared a lot of recollections of previous meetings and outings.

“There were lots of toasts, and a lot of laughs,” said Mr Williams.

And after all the toasts, laughs, discussions and phone calls, there was also some talking. November’s books, John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony and Of Mice and Men, needed to be discussed, after all.