tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102467092024-03-18T05:48:21.482-04:00FernhamBooks, food, friends, and Virginia Woolf.
"I spare you the twists and turns of my cogitations, for no conclusion was found on the road to Headingly, and I ask you to suppose that I soon found out my mistake about the turning and retraced my steps to Fernham."--Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's OwnAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.comBlogger835125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-51941503795535715702012-11-05T21:39:00.002-05:002012-11-05T21:39:56.396-05:00Fernham has movedYou can find me <a href="https://anne-fernald.squarespace.com/home/">here</a>, with a spanking new website and all of <a href="https://anne-fernald.squarespace.com/https/anne-fernaldsquarespacecom/blog/">Fernham</a> folded within. If I were a better IT guy, you'd get an automatic redirect, but you're just going to have to click. And soon enough even the sad, temporary annefernald.com will point here, too. And <a href="https://anne-fernald.squarespace.com/https/anne-fernaldsquarespacecom/blog/2012/11/5/the-pitiless-logic-of-sandy">a new blog post</a> on Sandy the Terrible to get us started.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-26868881792287511472012-10-08T21:38:00.002-04:002012-10-08T21:38:44.184-04:00The blog is dead! Long live the blog!
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I miss blogging.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2012 has turned out to be my worst year for blogging yet.
And, alas, one of my best for facebook. Now, I love facebook. I would never
bore you with pictures of my daughters swirling apples around in a bowl of
melted caramel, but there, in that happy let’s-pretend stew of friends from kindergarten
up through now, there is something comforting in getting a few “likes” for that
image of happy childhood.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, this was better. A better discipline for me and
better for my writing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I submitted the mss of my edition of <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> on
January 31. But it wasn’t quite right, and so the editors asked for a bunch of
changes. I resubmitted it in June, but I didn’t send it to right batch of
editors. Finally, every superior editor signed off on my work in August and,
two Fridays ago, on 9/28, I submitted it a third time. I’m hoping it’s the
charm.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And, part of that hope is all about the hope that I can
return to writing little tiny essays here from time to time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We shall see.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-30149040525838213322012-09-10T22:04:00.000-04:002012-09-10T22:04:18.581-04:00Speaking of Woolf….
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve now done two of four sessions on Woolf for a book
discussion series at the Brooklyn Public Library. They have been amazing.
Preparing to talk about <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> and <i>To the Lighthouse</i> with
a group (how big? somewhere between twenty and forty) of adults, some of whom
have been reading Woolf since before I was born, others who’ve never read her
is thrilling and nerve-wracking. I can do little else on the day of a talk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But then, to get into a room with other adults who’ve chosen
to spend part of their day thinking and talking about a writer is a deeply
moving thing and, once we get going, the time takes care of itself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The conversation I had on Sunday, however, was unlike any
other conversation I’ve had about Woolf in all my quarter century of studying
her. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Luna Stage, just down the road from me in West Orange, is
mounting the <a href="http://www.lunastage.org/index.php/whats-playing/2012-2013-season/vita-and-virginia/">New Jersey Premier of <i>Vita and Virginia</i></a> (Eileen Atkins’
wonderful adaptation of letters to tell the story of Vita Sackville-West and
Virginia Woolf’s love affair and of their continuing friendship thereafter) and
they invited me to give a talkback after one of the performances. Of course, I
said yes. A friend and I were already planning to go.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then they asked me if I would speak with the director and
the actresses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
On Sunday, I did.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We planned to talk for an hour, but it quickly grew to two.
I did my best to tell them how to pronounce Lytton Strachey and Violet
Trefusis. I tried to explain, not as an intellectual, but in ways that would
help an actress, what I thought drew these women to each other, how I
understood their sexualities and their attraction to each other. By the end of
the time, the actresses were more in character than out, “I think I’m jealous…”
“I say you don’t get anything done, but you get so much done…” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What a magical thing: to knock on a door, meet a group of
strangers, and, within moments be passionately debating what it might have been
like to be another woman altogether. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m still smiling.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you’re in the area, I’ll be talking about <a href="http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/events/culture-arts/">Between the Acts on Wednesday, 9/19, 3:00-5:00</a> and about <i>Moments of Being</i> two
weeks later, on 10/3. Both of these events are at the Brooklyn Public Library.
These discussions are free and open to the public.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My talkback at Luna Stage is after the 3:00 PM performance
on Sunday 9/30. The actresses are amazing and tickets are only $25.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-84776257486120814802012-08-31T16:06:00.001-04:002012-09-01T12:25:45.778-04:00Convocation<i>In the spirit of the new year, here are the remarks I gave earlier this week at a Convocation for first-year students at my university:</i><br />
<br />
<div style="font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times;">A Jesuit educator wrote about the challenges of
designing a curriculum for the rapidly changing world: “Current problems will
in all probability no longer be current when the youth completes his [or her]
education, and so by attempting to fit him for the present the school may unfit
him for the future.” Now, Allan P. Farrell was writing about the 1930’s and it
would be easy for us to laugh--if he thought that was a rapidly changing
world, he should take a look at 2012.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">But it’s not so simple as that: one of the
challenges of college education, whenever one embarks on it, is the
challenge of trying to learn what one might need for a future that one cannot
fully imagine. What I love about liberal arts education is that, in all its
wild impracticality, it refuses to try to predict. In fact, rather than narrowly
striving to guess about the thing that’s about to happen in a year or two, the
liberal arts education that you’re embarking on is designed to teach you about
the past, help you ask big questions, and to demand that you work to shape the
future--your own and that of your generation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">In order to get the most out of your education,
however, you are going to have to step away from the now for a moment.
This morning, Colum McCann said that some of what you’re facing will be very
hard. One challenge that you can be sure to face is the challenge of moving
being a consumer of information to being an active thinker, striving to educate
your mind. We live in a thrilling world, one full of evil and danger and also
full of great joy and we know this because every time we look down at our
devices, every time we pass a monitor, every time we turn on our tablets and
laptops, we can see what is happening anywhere in the world. But that glorious
instant access comes at a price. We skim and click, we text, forward, like, and
share, but rarely do we ask ourselves to pause and think. As one journalist
describes his own love/hate relationship to Google “Once I was a scuba diver in
the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr
227).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">I exhort you to dive. Dive as deeply as you can.
You are great Jet Skiers. But you didn’t come to Fordham to get better at
skimming the surface. That’s not what this four years of your life is for. Your
college education is the moment to learn how to dive, to dive deeply and
discover the treasures buried far beneath the surface. That means training and
practicing, remembering how to be still and just read--doing nothing other than
reading--for longer and longer stretches of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">In her 1929 essay on women’s education, Virginia
Woolf writes about trying to follow an idea as it swims away from her--her
thought, she writes, “to call it by a prouder name than it deserved, hat let
its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and
thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink
it until--you know the little tug--the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the
end of one’s line…” Her thought swims away from her grasp when a guard shoos
her from the riverbank--she’s interrupted by another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times;">Now, it is we who interrupt ourselves. As you
embark on your college education, I wish you patience and I exhort you to
cultivate the strength to dive deeply into your studies. You can always go jet
skiing next summer. </span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<br />
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-39131482638088963002012-07-30T11:30:00.000-04:002012-07-30T11:30:03.582-04:00Cathi Hanauer’s Gone<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I read this book because I needed a summer beachy read and
saw that Hanauer was the editor of the collection <i>The Bitch in the House</i>.
Knowing she was a feminist, I hoped that this would be a light book that also
wouldn’t make my reading stop short with some moment of feminist outrage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was all right but not nearly as great as it could have
been. Boy, does it ever capture something about the <i>zeitgeist</i>,
though—both of my own life right now and, as I understand it, of a big sliver
of lives of people in their 40s. So, on balance, I am glad I read it to the
end. <i>Gone</i> tells the story of Eve Adams (that name! So unsubtle—it in
itself almost made me stop), a nutritionist, and her husband, Eric, a sculptor.
When the novel starts, Eric has run off with the babysitter. I can see why.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eve is my worst version of myself: wound way too tight,
working way too hard, primarily responsible for the home, food prep, and
children, she is also having a great moment in her career: things are really
taking off for her. Eric, by contrast, is struggling. Uninspired, he hasn’t
completed—or sold—a sculpture in a long time and is wondering if he has it in
him to ever create art again. (Now, since I’m identifying, let me clarify and
say that this—the dry spell or the running off with the babysitter part—is
emphatically <i>not</i> a parallel to my beloved’s life.) There’s no room for
Eric in their lives at home and he’s frustrated with his career. They need a
marriage reset. It’s a great and interesting problem and the unfolding of the
novel is interesting—just the right combination of surprising and predictable
to make it a reasonable read. And, having spent time this year renegotiating
some of the balances in our marriage now that I’m (still) working too hard but
that our youngest is in school and the demands of parenting have changed, too,
I was interested in their problems.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I was disappointed to see Northampton, Mass. given a
fake name: after all the pleasures of recognition in <i>Goodbye, Columbus</i>,
I felt the lack in <i>Gone</i> (which I read first) all the more keenly: why
not name the town where the poor, obese white client lives? The juxtaposition
of poverty with the appealing, fancy, yoga-and-tolerance filled communities of
the Happy Valley are one of the most interesting things about that region. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
More than that, again and I again I found sentences that I
wanted tighter and assumptions that I wanted looser. Too often characters are
identified by their census categories and shown to be lovable for conforming to
what we expect of the black teen mom, the plump chatty Jewish lady, the hippie
white girl in the coffee shop. It was never offensive, but it felt lazy and
unimaginative. When Eve plays her “game” of trying to see if she can find
twenty people in the food court who do not need to lose twenty pounds, I hated
her. Listen, Eve, I wanted to scream, stop being so judgy! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, as a fictional counterpart to those lifestyle pieces
about families where the wife outearns the husband, <i>Gone</i> held my
interest even as it made me feel like I’d be boxed into one of Eve’s narrow
categories: just another tired mommy in the food court who could stand to lose
a few pounds.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-19800226958739538382012-07-27T12:56:00.003-04:002012-07-27T12:56:50.182-04:00Goodbye, Columbus; Hello, Newark<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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When we moved from Jersey City out to South Orange not quite
two years ago, my friend Lenny, who’d been in nearby Millburn for a while, took
me under his wing, driving me around, taking me to lunch in various spots
around Essex County.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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We were talking about Short Hills and he said, in passing,
that of course I’d read <i>Goodbye, Columbus</i>. But I hadn’t. I didn’t know
it and didn’t know that it was all about a version of the very move we had just
made, for it’s the tale of Neil Krugman, a young worker in the Newark Public
Library, and his love affair with Brenda Patimkin of Short Hills.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s a wonderful story about a summer romance across class
barriers—funny and sharp and sweet. And there is a great, jolly pleasure in
reading the real names of the towns that I pass through every day on my commute
in to the city—to listen to Neil look at the Lackawanna Train—which then went
into Hoboken but now is my train into Penn Station—and imagine the commuters
from Maplewood and the Oranges, whizzing through Newark on their way to New York.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Philip Roth published <i>Goodbye, Columbus</i> in 1959 and
so I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but if you’ve never read it or
haven’t read it in a while, let me tell you, this novella is a great little
summertime read.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-38994747082745399172012-07-26T20:50:00.000-04:002012-07-26T20:50:10.132-04:00Summertime<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">‘</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">Indeed, if we want to describe a summer
evening, the way to do it is to set people talking in a room with their backs
to the window, and then, as they talk about something else, let someone half
turn her head and say, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">“</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">A fine evening</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">’ (Woolf <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">E3 </span>239). </span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-43182534012804753252012-06-20T11:59:00.001-04:002012-06-20T11:59:41.153-04:00Listening, grading, trying not to worry<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="380" src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:5ztRM5oqemv4vvyH156PWc" width="300"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-28986516219159327602012-06-19T14:44:00.000-04:002012-06-19T14:44:29.218-04:00Sisyphus<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white;">It’s been a hard month at Fernham. I was so excited to turn
in the first submission of </span><i style="background-color: white;">Mrs. Dalloway</i><span style="background-color: white;"> in January. Making the
revisions in May, however, was less exciting. Still, I thought we were moving
closer to proof stage. I worked around the clock, as hard as I know how, sure
that I was making progress toward a book. Now, it turns out that what I’ve done
has to go to the series editors one more time and then to the Advisory Board. The
goal posts haven’t just moved, they have receded from sight. I’m not sure why I
didn’t understand the process, but it’s considerably lengthier and more
involved than with my first book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The good news is that the series editors tell me that what
they’ve seen is good. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The good news, for you, is that this will make for a better
book. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bad news is that I am beyond done with thinking about
this project. The bloom is off the rose, the flowers have wilted, and I’m ready
to quit. On top of everything else, the editors are also asking me to excise
all my Americanisms. Not knowing what those are, I’ve asked them, with all due
respect, to do it themselves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the end, this is probably only a two-month delay, but I’m
so discouraged that it feels like this book is never going to be done.
Sometimes, unfortunately, the scholar’s life is even less than it’s cracked up
to be.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-895338995322405562012-06-19T14:34:00.002-04:002012-06-19T14:34:44.873-04:00Still listeningJust about the most romantic song I know. <iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="380" src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:3HNp9HQ33wdDhAvEc4arE8" width="300"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-77255138003014717722012-06-17T20:32:00.002-04:002012-06-17T20:32:40.358-04:00LIstening...<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="380" src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:2KSm2iIMPv95bHvoj8AjLc" width="300"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-36846385615081920342012-05-28T10:30:00.001-04:002012-05-28T10:30:52.150-04:00Memorial Day & Mrs. Dalloway<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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This Memorial Day, I’m doing what I’ve been doing for most
of this year: working on the final details of my edition of <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>.
While the big push was for first submission in January, I have now received
comments on my work from the editors and need to incorporate those corrections
by Thursday, so this is another moment of stressed and constant working on
details.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To honor those soldiers who have died at war, I offer part of one
more footnote from my forthcoming edition of the novel. This one is on the models
for Septimus Warren Smith, the novel’s veteran. What struck me, in writing this
footnote, was the overwhelming abundance of young men Woolf had to choose from
in painting a portrait of a shell-shocked soldier grieving for the death of his
friend (and this footnote doesn't even mention Woolf's brother-in-law, Philip Woolf, injured by the shell that killed his brother Cecil. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">Upon seeing Philip shortly
after, Woolf wrote: ‘I can imagine that he is puzzled why he doesn’t feel more’
(D1 92), a thought she gives to Septimus in the novel</span>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Septimus
Warren Smith</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> [….] Critics
have linked Septimus to real life soldiers whom Woolf knew, including Rupert
Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Ralph Partridge, and Gerald Brenan. For more on
these real-life models for Septimus, see Introduction. Steinberg suggests T. S.
Eliot as another possible model for Septimus, noting Woolf’s intimacy with him
at the time. Eliot’s hasty marriage to Vivenne Haigh-Wood came just after the
death of his friend Jean Verdenal at Gallopoli (8-9), a circumstance that
parallels Septimus’s hasty marriage after Evans’s death. (Verdenal is the
dedicatee of Eliot’s 1914 ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’.) [….]<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I repeat my daily prayer with extra fervency this Memorial
Day: Honor the dead. Work for peace.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also: <a href="http://fernham.blogspot.com/2005/08/women-must-weep-or-prepare-for-war.html">This old post</a> on women and war might be worth
revisiting on Memorial Day:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-45367247533819934532012-03-28T21:31:00.001-04:002012-03-28T21:31:24.626-04:00Car Wheels on a Gravel Road<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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Songs evoke memories, sure. Every day I listen to music and
every day a song reminds me of some earlier self. But twice this week, Lucinda
Williams’ great song, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” has come on the radio and
has brought me back not just to a period, but to an eerily precise time and
place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In August of 1998, I drove my little 4-door Civic from my
beloved home in </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cambridge to Lafayette, Indiana, to take my first
tenure-track job at Purdue. Driving behind me, in <i>his</i> nicer 4-door
darker blue Civic was my boyfriend. As the land got flatter and Boston receded,
I could see his terror mounting. Why, I could feel him thinking, have I
followed this woman away from the East?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had found a charming apartment: the top floor of a Victorian
house facing a tiny pocket park on the top of a hill. Unfortunately, the prior
tenants refused to leave in time. When I called the landlady to insist on our
rights, she demurred: “He’s from <i>India</i>,” she explained by way of
apology. “I think he’s a <i>rajah</i>!”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Rajah or no, I wanted in to our new apartment, but there was
nothing to do. The moving company left our stuff in the garage and our landlady
put us up in a vacant apartment a few blocks away. This apartment was a tiny
one bedroom in a largely abandoned small apartment building with a distinctly
Sunset Boulevard feel. One vacant apartment in the same building had a ballroom
with French doors leading to a small garden. Although I’d seen it when I was
apartment-hunting and had been momentarily charmed by the faded glamour and the
promise of parties to come, in the end, it was too much to live up to. My
boyfriend and I had never lived together before, and it seemed like a bad omen
to move into a house that reminded me of Miss Havisham.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Nonetheless, there we were, in the very building I had known
to avoid, in a tiny furnished apartment, waiting for the rajah and his
girlfriend to move out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Guilty, our landlady had stocked the fridge with cold cuts.
I had never seen so many in my life. We had a pound of roast beef, a pound of
turkey, a pound of corned beef, a pound of ham, a pound of swiss, and a pound
and a half of American, a loaf of bread, some mayonnaise, and a jar of yellow
mustard. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No sooner had we arrived, then my boyfriend had to head off
on a sad errand: to the Mayo Clinic to be with his family while his dad
underwent treatment for the cancer that would kill him a year later. He lived
to see us married, but not much more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alone with a boombox and pounds and pounds of sliced meat, I
spent my days planning my classes and listening to Lucinda Williams on a bulky
black boombox: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Can't find a
damn thing in this place<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Nothing's where
I left it before<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Set of keys and
a dusty suitcase<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Car wheels on a
gravel road<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Child in the
backseat about four or five years<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Lookin out the
window<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Little bit of dirt
mixed with tears<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Car wheels on a
gravel road</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wouldn’t want to live through that week again, and I
couldn’t have made it without that song.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ainIBDO6a8E?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-82048316797764492612012-03-08T13:59:00.002-05:002012-03-08T13:59:56.255-05:00It's an honor just to be nominated....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0168e8903e90970c-800wi" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0168e8903e90970c-800wi" width="146" /></a></div>
Here's a little bit of good news for International Women's Day: My blog post on rape for <a href="http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2778/anne_fernald_rape_revisited/">Guernica</a> is a finalist for the 3 Quarks Daily blog prize! Thanks for voting. Wish me luck with the judging!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-61783452879196146482012-02-21T20:13:00.002-05:002012-02-21T20:13:34.824-05:00Reculer......pour mieux sauter.<br />
<br />
Some cross-country skiing. A renewed commitment to health. Yoga DVDs. Checking back in with friends.<br />
<br />
#dalloway took her toll.<br />
<br />
I'll be back soon.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-12983157769846933132012-01-30T21:47:00.002-05:002012-01-30T21:47:31.284-05:00One last draft footnote<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">31:9 Princess Mary</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Princess Mary (1897-1965) was the third
child and only daughter of George V and Queen Mary. She married Viscount Henry Lascelles
(1882-1947) on February 28, 1922. Lascelles had been an early suitor of Vita
Sackville-West and would be the model for the Archduke Harry in <i>O</i>. Michael
North notes that, for many people in England, this royal wedding was a sign
that the war was finally over (5). Woolf took a passing interest in the wedding
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Please</i> tell me why Pr. Mary married
Ld. Lascelles’ (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L</i>2 511). Later Clarissa's
maid Lucy imagines herself as attending Princess Mary (59). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-76485726835726718652012-01-25T15:42:00.002-05:002012-01-25T15:42:13.600-05:00Happy Birthday, Miss Jan<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Adeline Virginia Stephen, later Virginia Woolf, was born on
this day in 1882. One of her family nicknames was Miss Jan, on account of her
January birthday. In the Monday 21<sup>st</sup> December [1891] issue of the <i>Hyde
Park Gate News</i>, young Virginia, nearly 10, this fictional love letters,
part of a regular series in the HPGN:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My own Tom I love you with that fervent passion with which
my father regards Roast beef but I do not look upon you with the same eyes as
my father for he likes Roast Beef for its tast [sic] but I like you for your
personal merits.</blockquote>
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Happy Birthday, Miss Jan!</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-9211184333641260502012-01-22T15:09:00.002-05:002012-01-22T15:09:44.336-05:00Draft footnote of the day: the green dress<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><b>58:14-15 By artificial light the green
shone</b></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><b> </b>The green dress
that becomes magical by artificial light reverses a distressing memory of a green
dress gone wrong: ‘Down I came one winter’s evening about 1900 in my green
dress […] All the lights were turned up in the drawing room; and by the blazing
fire George sat, in dinner jacket and tie, cuddling the dachshund [….] He said
at last: “Go and tear it up”’ (<i>MB</i>
151).<u style="font-weight: 800;"><o:p></o:p></u></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<!--EndFragment--></span><br />
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-57830330712872106182012-01-14T16:13:00.003-05:002012-01-14T16:13:36.859-05:00Draft footnote of the day: red flowers in Flanders Fields<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">104:19-20 Red flowers grew through his
flesh</b> John McCrae’s 1915
poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ commemorates the fact of red poppies blooming
abundantly in battlefields that saw some of the heaviest casualties during
World War One: ‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row
on row’ (1-2). Line six begins ‘We are the dead.’ Since 1920, the red poppy has
been a symbol of remembrance of the war dead.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-22520892242720723012012-01-11T15:06:00.003-05:002012-01-11T15:06:32.323-05:00Hampstead<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Not her most charitable mood, but sometimes I find myself thinking something similar about those #occupy kids. Yeah, they're my heroes, but they're kind of weird...</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><b>266:20 Hampstead</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Village in North London dating from the
eighteenth century, where artists and freethinkers have resided. The poet John
Keats, who, like Jim Hutton, Woolf imagines in red socks, lived in Hampstead
from 1818-1820 (see EN 265.28). He wrote ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ there. Adjacent
is the preserved open space of Hampstead Heath. Cf. ‘It’s unfortunate the
civilization always lights up the dwarfs, cripples, & sexless people first.
And Hampstead provides them’ (D 1:110; 21 January 1918).</span></blockquote>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-61447065122579077202012-01-10T11:00:00.000-05:002012-01-10T11:00:02.078-05:00Draft footnote of the day: Voltaire<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">An oldie but a goodie:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><b>77.27-28 getting books sent out to them</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> In 1904, when Leonard Woolf went to Ceylon as a young colonial
administrator, he brought with him the complete works of Voltaire in seventy
volumes (Glendenning 66).</span><!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-10134273013903718062012-01-09T11:00:00.000-05:002012-01-09T11:00:11.083-05:00Draft footnote of the day: Albanians<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">181:8 Albanians</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> Albania, too,
was in the news at this time, although for far different reasons than Armenia and with much
less public sympathy from Britain. By 1921, Albania was bankrupt, having been
at war continuously since 1910. The discovery of oil led the British-based
Anglo-Persian Oil Company to send significant financial support to Ahmed Zogu.
Zogu was elected prime minister in 1922, then, president in 1925. In 1928,
Albania became a monarchy and Zogu, its king, Zog I. See Vickers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-83737335353785797442012-01-08T08:34:00.002-05:002012-01-08T08:34:29.570-05:00This morning's mysteryI'm off to read 'The Rape of Lucrece' for <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> and it strikes me as a pretty grim task. I was summarizing <i>Cymbeline</i> yesterday, trying to describe how Imogen's husband makes a bet that she is faithful, sets up a friend to test her, and he sneaks into her bedroom and spies on her while she's asleep. Later he pretends to have raped her.<br />
<br />
Then, I spent all that time re-reading <i>Clarissa</i> last spring which is all about rape.<br />
<br />
And the other Clarissa in literature is the rapist's accessory in 'The Rape of the Lock.'<br />
<br />
And Jane de Gay's book pointed me to the links between Clarissa's thought that there will be no more marrying and Hamlet's 'Get thee to a nunnery' speech.<br />
<br />
So why, I want to know, is Clarissa Dalloway's happy memory of love also Othello's feeling? Why, when she remembers feeling in love, does she remember the feeling of a lover who will become a murderer, a man who will go mad from suspicion of his wife's infidelity?<br />
<br />
Looked at from this angle, the violence and the threat of rape seems to be in too many places with no one untainted.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-9913260094284494952012-01-07T13:02:00.001-05:002012-01-07T13:04:19.638-05:00Draft footnotes of the day: The Tempest & CymbelineJane de Gay's <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-7486-3302-9/virginia-woolfs-novels-and-the-literary-past">excellent book</a> led me to look again at Ariel's song in <i>The Tempest</i>. Earlier, I had heard 'those are pearls that were his eyes' more strongly through Eliot's quotation of it than through Shakespeare himself. Jane's work taught me to think differently and led me to a great dog footnote too. Enjoy.<br />
<blockquote>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">61:18</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Fear
no more</b> From <i>Cymbeline.</i> See EN 16:23. See also 46:26, 211:1. Jane
deGay notes that Woolf’s earlier allusion to Ariel’s song from <i>The Tempest</i>
(47:21) informs this allusion to <i>Cymbeline</i>: ‘Fear no more says the heart, committing its burden to the sea’
(61:18-19). Both songs are dirges sung for characters presumed dead who turn
out to be alive (de Gay 89). See also EN:61:24.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">61:24 the dog barking</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> See <i>The Tempest</i>: ‘Hark, hark! | <i>burthen
dispersedly, [within].</i> Bow-wow. | The watch-dogs bark! (1:2:381-383). This,
from the first half of Ariel’s song, closely follows the combined allusion to <i>Cymbeline
</i>and <i>The Tempest</i> above
(61:18).<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246709.post-34032424015341327412012-01-02T12:00:00.002-05:002012-01-04T21:03:45.796-05:00Shakespeare, the sun to our little moons<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">One of the puzzles in writing footnotes to Mrs. Dalloway is that the direct allusions don't necessarily correlate to the writers who most influenced Woolf. This makes a lot of sense--we often talk a lot about influences that bother us and talk seldom at all about those who are so important to us that they run in our veins. Still, one of my challenges as an editor has been to think about ways to depict this accurately. Woolf herself offers an explanation for this phenomenon in this discussion of Shakespeare from the 1924 essay
‘Indiscretions’: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">‘Of Shakespeare we
need not speak. The nimble little birds of field and hedge, lizards, shrews and
dormice, do not pause in their dallyings and sporting to thank the sun for
warming them; nor need we, the light of whose literature comes from
Shakespeare, seek to praise him’ (E 3:463)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's a beautiful metaphor. I've certainly found a lot more Shakespeare than I expected in Mrs. Dalloway and, thank to other critics, will be able to cite many more.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03281027116636227323noreply@blogger.com0