Room

I would give the current revival of the Anne Bogart-Ellen Lauren collaboration a mixed but generally positive review. I would give the talk-back after Tuesday night’s show five stars.

 

Room is a one-woman show about Virginia Woolf, from a script drawn from Woolf’s writings, selected by Bogart and adapted by Joceyln Clark. Lauren starts the show in an aisle seat in the audience, severely dressed with a severe expression on her face. The only thing distinguishing her from a really mean English teacher (or Miss Hathaway in the Beverly Hillbillies) is the spotlight. There is no curtain on the nearly bare stage; just three huge scrims of the palest blue and an armchair. The play begins when, from row F one hears a commanding “GOOD EVENING.”

The show is largely drawn from A Room of One’s Own and Moments of Being and, I think every word uttered is a quotation from Woolf (although the interludes about a pear tree were said to be from Between the Acts and were not familiar to me, to my shame). The first few minutes are strangely discomfiting: Lauren is stern and a bit goggle-eyed and the play feels like parody, although it’s hard to discern what’s being parodied. However, as the play unfolded, the uncertainty about what we were to think and feel took an encouraging shape: the play deals honestly (albeit indirectly—I wanted more) with war, alludes to mental illness, and is direct about sexual abuse without imposing a reading and always, always with tremendous interest in and respect for Woolf as a mind.

Lauren’s movements are jerky and constrained and, as quickly becomes apparent, she is restricting herself to a very limited range of gestures: a Cassandra-like pose, hands upraised; a pedagogical gesture, finger pointing down at an imaginary text; an inward twist of pain, hands folded together and low to protect her most private parts and thoughts.

Some of the editorial decisions struck me as brilliant. All the names of women writers are stripped from the famous opening of A Room of One’s Own, so we just have the catalog of what one could do (anecdote, mention, etc.) without the list of forgotten women that would distract a 21^st century theater audience (even one as literary as those likely to attend a one-woman show on Woolf). She recites the long quotation from Jane Eyre and Woolf’s ensuing commentary brilliantly and the gothic lighting in that segment is fabulous. There is a gorgeous sound cue of an air raid, during which Lauren lies on stage, breathing hard. I only wish that afterwards she’d recited from “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid”—I longed for that 1, 2, 3, 4… that Woolf uses in that essay to mark how impossible it is to think during a bombing. Toward the end of the play, Lauren works herself into a frenzy of movement, a kind of final crescendo of word and gesture, emphasizing, over and over again, how hard it is to know a person.

At other moments, because there is no clear through-line to follow, I found myself a little bored. Sometimes, because Woolf is the chief intellectual companion of my life, I could float off on Woolf’s words, even when I disagreed with Lauren’s interpretations; sometimes Lauren brought new meaning to familiar phrases; sometimes I just worried about what my students in English 3502: Modern British Writing thought.

But the talk back was absolutely brilliant.

Lauren and Bogart described rehearsing in Bogart’s upstate home where the rule was that Lauren was to work on memorizing the script then, at some point in the day, to come upon Bogart in a room and intone “GOOD EVENING.” From there, Lauren would recite all that she’d thus far memorized, stop, and withdraw. Bogart then followed Lauren to a new room where they’d discuss what they’d done before.

The strangely limited choreography came from a series of 29 photographs of Woolf, the poses of which Lauren memorized. These were limited back down to 9 gestures which then became the language of movement for the play.

They said that they wanted Woolf to seem old-fashioned, limited as the play began and that then, as we were more and more confined in our seats and we saw, more and more, how much she had in her mind, how bravely she faced her life—its beauty and its despair—we would see that she was far more free than we.

I left thinking the show was interesting, feeling that the thought behind the show was brilliant—beyond what I’d been able to detect as an audience member. Was that failure mine or that of the production? I don’t know.

Room is playing through Sunday, 3/27, at the Julia Miles Theater on 55^th and 9^th and, if you’re interested, there are tons of discount codes on the theater’s website.

Here's an interview with Ellen Lauren: 

In New York magazine, Scott Brown says:

Lauren's delivery sounds a wee bit Mrs. Doubtfire at first, and for a good half-hour we wonder if we're watching nothing more than highfalutin semaphore. But halfway through, the flint hits the steel, and the show's soul catches the flame. Room isn't a perfect translation of Woolf's gestalt, but watching Lauren climb the walls of Neil Patel's terrifyingly empty set leaves one images, both haunting and heroic, of a great mind abandoned to itself — free and unmoored, equally.

Uncanny Room

About six weeks ago, a colleague whom I admire tremendously was diagnosed with acute leukemia. She died on Tuesday morning, a fact I learned just before going to teach the first class after spring break, the first class on Mrs. Dalloway.

My colleague, Margaret (Mimi) Lamb was an older woman, a Vassar grad who left North Dakota and never looked back. More than once she told me that her Vassar professors used to say “our marriages are our failures.” She was a pistol: kind to people but utterly straight-shooting and uncompromising about literature and plays. She was a great, great New Yorker: the kind of person who, without pretense, would always know one deeper, cooler, richer thing about any place, any theater, any stone, any street corner, you happened to mention. She loved being alive—in spite of years tending to a chronically ill husband (who predeceased her) and poor health herself)—she was full of a zest for life, curiosity, engagement, sharpness. I so admire her. We both loved our Norwegian sweaters and had the same J. Jill corduroy jacket.

When her diagnosis came, it fell to me to staff her freshman class. Still, she had been teaching at Fordham for 33 years and, for all that I admired her, she was not a close friend. Nonetheless, through a friend who knew her better, whose loss is so much greater, I sent her a card and a copy of Dolen Perkins-Valdez’ Wench to keep her company in hospital.

On Sunday, we learned she’d been moved to hospice and would be glad for visitors. Four of us planned to visit Tuesday afternoon. I put on a vivid flowered skirt and tried not to worry about the hospice. Tuesday morning, right before class, the word came that she’d died.

Such a strange feeling. At once, the sadness of knowing that never again would I see her shambling by my office, papers under her arm, maybe stopping to tell me what was on her mind, maybe wearing one of the sweaters that she and I both love. At the same time, the guilty relief of not having to learn, yet again, how bad I am at hospitals and, worse, the recognition that I had my afternoon back to catch up on email.

But there was that class to teach. Sure, it was on Mrs. Dalloway, but I didn’t have a plan.

I talked—about moments of being, about Septimus’ madness in the park, about Woolf’s esteem for Jane Harrison.

After class, a dear friend who has a real West Coast 70s yoga vibe stopped by my office. He offered his condolences, admired my skirt, and said he could tell that my “energy” was with Mimi, that I was helping her make her transition.

I didn’t think much of it--I love that sincere spirituality, but do I believe it?--until I went to the play. Somehow, the intensity of my loss, of my love for Woolf, of my raw unpreparedness for class meant that I quoted for my students almost every passage that was central to Anne Bogart’s production. It was uncanny and beautiful. Maybe we can count it as a tribute to Mimi. May she rest in peace. We miss her here. 

City of Immigrants

Ford’s The Soul of London (1905) has great praise for immigrants and the city’s ability to assimilate and absorb them. I hadn’t expected to find this sentiment about London of over a century ago; in spite of a different, more old-fashioned way of speaking about races, nationalities, and assmilation, (provincially) I tend to associate this sentiment—the wonderful metropolis that lets all become of it—with New York more than London:

London is the world town, not because of its vastness; it is vast because of its assimilative powers, because it destroys all race characteristics, insensible and, as it were, anaesthetically. A Polish Jew changes into an English Hebrew and then into a Londoner without any legislative enactments, without knowing anything about it. You may watch, say, a Berlin Junker, arrogant, provincial, unlicked, unbearable to any other German, execrable to anyone not a German, turning after a year or two into a presentable and only just not typical Londoner, subdued, quiet in the matter of collars, ties, coat, voice and backbone, and naturally extracting a ‘sir’ from a policeman. London will do all this imperceptibly. And, in externals, that is the high-water mark of achievement of the Modern Spirit.

Edited to add that my friend Beth Rosenberg of UNLV notes that 1905 was the year of the Aliens Act, restricting immigration. How blind, how willful is this vision?

In Praise of London

I’m trying to finish up an article on London and Woolf and came across Ford Madox Ford’s 1905 book (from Duckworth, Woolf’s half-brother’s publishing house), The Soul of London. This beautiful sentiment on London, as rich as Samuel Johnson’s familiar saw, deserves to be better known.

One may sail easily round England, or circumnavigate the globe. But not the most enthusiastic geographer…ever memorized a map of London. Certainly no on ever walks round it. For England is a small island, the world is infinitesimal among planets. But London is illimitable.

Lovely, yes?

The wig

I love this idea of la perruque, from Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life:

La perruque is the worker’s own work disguised as work for his employer. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of material value is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially on the job. La perruque may be as simple a matter as a secretary’s writing a love letter on ‘company time’ or as complex as a cabinetmaker’s ‘borrowing’ a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room. (25)

The book is wonderful, too, and I’m glad to have read it. I learned a lot. But I copied this passage out over a week ago to share with you and something's been making this post really hard to write. At first, I thought it was so exciting an idea: the notion of this kind of mild pilfering we all do at work. Then, too, since the advent of the internet, how much more must go on. Everyone I know pops onto a blog or facebook for fun at work. And I thought, too, of Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper, whose entire conceit is une perruque: the speaker, Pompey, is writing a novel on yellow paper so as not to confuse it with the white and blue paper she uses, in the same typewriter, for her secretarial work.

But, I must say, that quotation is bugging me. Something as small as a love letter or as big as a manly piece of furniture. Really? De Certeau is actually better on gender issues than most of these high flown theorists, but I get bored of pointing out all the unconscious hierarchies being perpetuated all the time everywhere.

Being a feminist is a full-time contact sport, people.

The need to call out all these theorists, all the time, saying “good idea, but you really haven’t thought through the implications for women…” makes me long to write a book that is, from its conception through its execution, feminist to the core.

BareBurger Japan benefit, 3/22

One of my wonderful former students manages the Village location & he convinced the owners to donate 20% of sales (not profits, but SALES) to Japan relief on Tuesday. Of course, direct gifts are better, but sometimes, it's also good to get a burger. If you need a burger anyway, show Joe and BareBurger that it does matter when our businesses support relief efforts. 

The Cambridge Edition of Virginia Woolf: here it comes!!!

Woolf scholars of the world, rejoice! Maybe you caught the brief celebratory mentions inthe Independent recently? In any case, the first two volumes of the Cambridge edition of the novels of Virginia Woolf are out. You can buy The Waves or Between the Acts for a mere $130 a volume and have the benefit of full textual and contextual annotations.
Or, if you’re me, you can burrow even more deeply in the library so that the Cambridge edition of Mrs. Dalloway doesn’t trail too too far behind.

Friends of the (New York Public) Library

I have written many times before of my debt to the New York Public Library. I have my seat at the Wertheim Study until the end of May and, believe me, I am making every use of it.

Librarian Jay Barksdale wrote earlier this week to say that budget woes have sharply curtailed the library’s book-buying budget. If you’re moved to help the library, this is the week to do it: every dollar you give will be matched by $2 from an NYPL Trustee (up to $100,000). This challenge has the potential to purchase 7,500 new books for the library. Click here to give.

These books are help scholars like me consult expensive monographs but they also help new immigrants learning to read, mothers reading to their children, students studying for the SAT, and readers across all five boroughs. If you are moved by the power of reading, please do consider giving a few dollars.

And if not to this challenge, you can always click here and, for $40/year, become a Friend. I just did. For all it’s done for me, it was the least I could do in return.

Pearls & Power, 2

My post from last week on the signification of pearls in literature and a dustup on the Woolf listserv has been nominated for a prize for arts & lit blogging over at 3 Quarks Daily.

Voting ends tomorrow. Vote for me!!!

Edited to add that I made the seminfinalist round! Hooray! Thanks so much for voting. Now, 3 Quarks Daily will send the top 8 or so on for judging.

Crumbs

I had never read Julia Stephen’s Notes from Sick Rooms (1883) until last week. It’s a short little book and a strange one. Written when Woolf was one, it’s Woolf’s mother’s long, impressionistic essay on nursing, or rather, on tending to the sick when a nurse or doctor is away or otherwise occupied.

The voice is amazing: brisk, efficient, and full of care. It made Woolf’s mother—and her resemblance to the fictional Mrs. Ramsay—clearer to me than anything else I’ve read. She trips along, associatively, from one subject to the next, beginning in praise of nursing as a practice and ending in the humble pride a nurse can take in her role in nursing someone to a good death. Along the way, she explains how to make a bed when the patient is too ill to get up, describing that amazing process I have occasionally witness of rolling a patient gently onto his side, removing the dirty and adding the clean sheet, and then completing the operation by rolling him back.

She loves nursing because “ordinary relations between the sick and the well are far easier and pleasanter than between the well and the well.” That impatience is wonderful, isn’t it? You can hear, in the book’s opening lines, this strong, practical preference for defined human relationships: none of this petty bickering, this nattering on and on about this and that. Give me a role and I will happily play it, nurse or patient, both are fine. Hardly sounds a bit like what Bloomsbury would become.

I leave you with two gems on crumbs, and hair:

“Among the number of small evils which haunt illness, the greatest, in the misery which it can cause, though the smallest in size, is crumbs… the origin of crumbs in bed has never excited sufficient attention” (5) 

“Hairs are not so bad as crumbs, but they are very tormenting bed-fellows, and there is little excuse for any nurse who, after brushing the patient’s hair, allows any stray hairs to remain on the night dress or bed-clothes” (20)

Overheard, Midtown Pret

Around the corner on the banquette, and to my right, sat two strikingly beautiful businesswomen, late 30s. The suited blonde ate her salad while the ballerina brunette in navy pashmina and dress and orange Prada bag talked, without cessation, about her amazingly perspicacious people skills. These skills seem to have lead her to work, unhappily, in consulting, for many years, and to have been a contributing factor in her divorce from a man who made a lot more money than she. Ballerina drank a diet coke, left her boxed salad unopened and untouched, and, when blonde went back for a lemonade, got herself a still water. I think ballerina was being recruited by blondie.

To my left, two scruffy cute Euro-hipster men, sweatshirts and jean jackets, early 30s. They purchased one cup of coffee between them. The one seated immediately next to me pulled two sandwiches out of his backpack and they proceeded to have a conversation that moved between English and a second language (Italian? Russian? Portuguese? I’m ashamed to be able to come no closer than that). So I would hear, “Well, it’s not really human nature, I mean it’s more xxxxx, xxx xxx Spinoza.” “Ah, Spinoza! Well, xxx xxxx xxxxx Heidegger xxx.”

To my immediate left in the corner seat sat, first, a middle-aged women, eavesdropping, and then a businessman reading the Knicks box scores from last night’s loss.

I was reading Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life. The Morroccan chicken soup was good.

In Memory of Peter Gomes

The Reverend Peter Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at the School of Divinity and the Pusey Minister of Memorial Church, has died at age 68. I am so sad to hear it.

I was a lecturer at Harvard from 1994-98 and, during those years, spent many Sundays at the Memorial Church. It’s an intimidating New England building, white, beautiful and austere, anchoring a side of Harvard Yard. To me, a young lecturer on the fringes of Harvard and on the fringes of Christianity, it took a lot of courage to even cross the threshold.

When Rev. Gomes was preaching, it was worth it to find the courage. He was the first and best minister at delivering sermons that made you think about the ethical world of the Bible, compare it to our ethical world, and then want to go back into that world, determined to make it better. I never judge ministers against his standard—none could meet it—but I always brighten a bit when I’m in a church and the minister gives a sermon that enacts the process of intelligence working on a great text.

What first got me to the church was not Gomes himself but my friend Janet Legro, his junior minister (after years of ministry, she’s now teaching in a Quaker school in Virginia). Part of her job was to line up a daily homily for morning prayers. She asked me if I would do one.

I balked. I told her that I wasn’t sure if I believed in God. I told her that I had never been confirmed. I told her I hadn’t read the Bible.

That doesn’t matter, Anne, look, there are 12 weeks in the semester and I need to find sixty people each semester, no repeats, to give a five minute meditation on a passage from the Bible. If you say yes, I only need to find 59 more.

Of course, I said yes. And, in saying yes, I found that I really should go to the church once or twice, and in going to the church once or twice, I found Rev. Gomes and I went many, many more times.

Many have been saying this all day in remembrance, I’m sure, but I will repeat that he was a great, charismatic man. Wholly his own person and one of those wonderful Ivy League originals who exudes intelligence, kindness, and confidence all at once. He was a short man but a great man with a huge, charismatic presence and a beautiful, booming voice. The obituary mentions James Earl Jones and that seems right. He was formal and even a little vain of his clerical robes and a profoundly New England, even Harvardian type. Though I have never met anyone like Rev. Gomes, he seemed to fit in to Harvard completely and the fact that this openly gay, African-American minister from Plymouth, MA seemed to fit in perfectly made me feel a lot happier about God and Harvard.

And my homily? It became an essay here.

For the Record

Years ago, I heard a charismatic Marxist professor give a lecture on modernism, the General Strike of 1926. One of the main points he made was an anti-Woolfian one: how could people claim such great political credentials for a woman who barely wrote a thing about the General Strike?

In fact, Woolf did take notice of the strike. More than that, she supported the miners and the workers striking alongside them. More than that, she bicycled around London (no buses or tube, of course, for it was a strike) collecting signatures from other artists and writers in support of the strikers.

But that, for this Marxist critic, was not enough. Clearly he was wrong, but I was shocked to think of all the world events that some (narcissistically imagined) future biographer would be able to claim I had shockingly failed to take an interest in. It’s a distressing standard.

In my head, I can compose the self-condemning judgments: “In spite of Fernald’s commitment to feminism/Africa/workers, she had surprising little to contribute to the discussion of how the revolutionary changes in North Africa/Wisconsin might affect women’s rights/political freedom/economic stability for the working and middle class…”

Let me just say, for the record, that my feelings about these exciting changes are about as complex as the complexities of the situations require. I have no insights. I have many fears. I have great hopes that the downtrodden and disempowered will retain and regain the dignity that we all deserve.

I know my house is glass; I cast no stones.

Pearls and Power

There was a dust-up on the Woolf listserv over the weekend.

Someone posted, innocently enough, “Did Virginia Woolf own pearls?” To be honest, when I first read the post, I thought that we had reached a new level of triviality in Woolf studies, wondering about every last little detail of her life. What, I thought, can come of this?

The answer is: a lot.

The first few answers came in as references—Vita Sackville-West had pearls, Orlando wears pearls, have you read the articles by Reginald Abbott and Kathryn Simpson?—and, once again, a tiny detail revealed itself as utterly interesting. Immediately, a strong theme of female sexuality emerged, linking pearls to the clitoris. I had forgotten that. The conversation ranged around, with eight or nine people chiming in with thoughts, suggestions and references. That’s high volume for the Woolf listserv. Even with nearly 500 subscribers, it can go days with only a message or two. The original questioner mentioned that her interest arose from Leonard Woolf’s involvement with the Sri Lankan pearl industry.

Then, someone wrote in to assert the link between pearls and power, linking Vita’s pearls with those of Queen Elizabeth I. For neither woman, this poster suggested, did pearls signify anything as tedious as the clitoris.

That got us off to the races.

A passionate advocate for lesbian and queer studies posted simply “Ah, the tedious clitoris.” That made me laugh. Then, a man posted, with equal brevity, his surprise that anyone would ever find that part of the anatomy remotely tedious. That made me laugh even harder.

But suddenly, it seemed, lines were drawn, and those who took an interest in power and trade stood on one side while those who wanted to see the pearl as sexual on the other: I began thinking of them as the “No sex, please, we’re British” camp versus the acolytes of the clitoris. I checked my email from time to time as temperatures rose, and when the attacks got personal, I intervened as “owner” of the listserv (the so-called “mistress” of the list—that would be me--had already been “tsk’ed” by one irritated member).

But why did temperatures rise so heatedly on the signification of pearls on the listserv? I’m not sure. Listservs are funny things. I think of them as strange eddies in the currents of new media. Among the first ways we made community in the digital age, they persist but are strangely private compared to blogs, facebook, twitter, and tumblr. Because a post to a listserv only goes to subscribers, one can feel perhaps a little too comfortable that everyone in the conversation is like-minded. This particular manifestation still strikes me as a little quaint, a battle of first wave feminism with the Vassar alums tossing their pearls in the faces of the dungareed co-eds from the public university down the interstate.

Still, resistance and offense-taking are interesting. One posts that she never confuses her pearls with any part of her anatomy and that the metaphor strikes her as specious. (For the record, I have never thought cigars or carrots were perfect representations either.) But that's beside the point. Such refusal seems to fly in the face of aphrodisiacs 101: Oysters anyone? More to the point, the refusal struck me--and others--as an attempt to deny that the metaphor could work sexually when it plainly does, often, in Woolf and elsewhere. I kept my counsel, but I could feel my own irritation growing and I expected some other poster would turn that grain of insult into a pearl of a post. Soon enough, another poster struck back, accusing the first of denying the work of great lesbian and queer scholars.

Once attacks become personal—and only then—do I step in to moderate. And I did. The personal attacks have subsided for the moment, but the discussion has broadened out to jokes about Earl ‘the Pearl’ Monroe and reference to Ariel’s song in The Tempest. Fascinating to remember how much literature still matters, how it can move us to passion, to rage, to work, to insult, to rethink what we thought we knew.

(Want in on the listserv conversation? Email me--fernham AT gmail DOT com & I can sign you up or subscribe directly by sending the message SUBSCRIBE VWOOLF [email] [name] to listproc AT lists.acs.ohio-state.edu)

AROHO Retreat for a Disabled Woman Writer

Thanks to the very generous donations of many, the A Room of Her Own Foundation--a very Woolfian nonprofit--has a fellowship, honoring my friend the writer and disability activist Kenny Fries, to fund a disabled woman writer's attendance at a retreat.

If you are or know a disabled woman writer, please encourage her to apply!

Deadline for Kenny Fries Fellowship for a disabled woman writer to attend the A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO) Retreat this summer is March 1. For more info click here.

NYPL Research Fellowships

I’ve written here about how transforming my space in the Wertheim Study of the New York Public Library has been. I have use of that spot till the end of May and, believe me, as soon as I finish a few pedestrian errands, I’m heading right over there for a quick Friday research fix.

Jay Barksdale, the wonderful librarian who manages the Wertheim and Allen Rooms sent along this link about short term fellowships for scholars. If you live far from New York and have research that depends on the collections at the NYPL, why not apply?

A few preliminary details, more at the website:

The New York Public Library is pleased to announce the availability of 20 fellowships to support visiting scholars conducting studies in the Library’s unique research and special collections between June 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012. The Fellowship stipend is $2,500. Scholars from outside the New York metropolitan area engaged in graduate-level, post-doctoral, or independent research are invited to apply. Applicants must be United States citizens or permanent residents with the legal right to work in the U.S. Applications must be received by April 1, 2011, in order to be considered. 

Room at Women's Project in March

Three years ago, I took students to a wonderful production of Woolf's only play, Freshwater, at the Julia Miles Theater. Now, the Women's Project is back with an adaptation of A Room of One's Own. It should be wonderful! I'm taking my students--though they don't know it yet! 

ROOM

based on the writings of Virginia Woolf

directed by Anne Bogart

adapted by Jocelyn Clark

starring Ellen Lauren

Harvested from a lifetime of Virginia Woolf's writing, Room traces the movement of a creative spirit in exquisite crisis, an artist in a pressure cooker of articulation who seeks room to move, room to breathe, and room to imagine. The New York Times calls it “a theatrical representation of the writer's mind, an abstraction painted with theater's animated tools.” And the L.A. Times raves “Ellen Lauren's masterly economy of movement, combined with Anne Bogart's unerring compositional sense, is breathtaking.”

Only 16 Performances!

MARCH 12-27, 2011

Tuesdays & Wednesdays at 7:00

Thursdays-Saturdays at 8:00

Sundays at 3:00 & 7:30 

Exceptions: Matinee only--no 7:30 show--on Sunday March 13.

Join Anne Bogart & Ellen Lauren for a post-performance discussion on Tuesday, March 22nd & Wednesday, March 23rd. 

Julia Miles Theater

424 West 55th Street, just west of 9th Avenue, New York City

Tickets on Sale 

Click Telecharge.com

Call 212.239.6200

Regular Tickets = $60

Premium Tickets = $75 

Groups = $25/ticket for 9+ at 212.765.1706 or "tickets at womensproject.org".

Re-reading, Richardson & Lawrence

At the moment, I’m not reading anything new. Instead, I’m re-reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa for the Dalloway edition and re-reading Women in Love for teaching. Both are such intense experiences.

I read Clarissa in the first weeks of graduate school, in Patricia Spacks’ 18^th century novel class. We used to hole up on the big orange blocky chairs at the back of Cross-Campus Library with the huge Penguin edition and read for hours, checking in with each other: “What letter are you on? Are you at volume 4 yet?” I remember the book as a hazing ritual. I didn’t like it or understand it that well. It was a torture to me, though I remember loving—and writing my seminar paper in part on—Anna Howe, Clarissa’s best friend.

Now, reading it a second time (on my Kindle, not on this massive Penguin that gives me flashbacks), I am amazed, again and again, by how sadistic it is. Knowing how brutally it will end, it’s hard to understand the depths of Richardson’s depravity, setting up this appealing, annoying chatty girl for humiliation after humiliation.

But then, it is so amazingly well-written. It’s just incredible how Richardson manages to convey the voices of writer after writer. When Lovelace’s uncle pops in with his tired sermonettes and aphorisms, it’s fantastic comic relief. So the writing—and my own project on Woolf—keeps me going even as I feel more outrage and wonder than ever at how cruel Richardson is. It is an amazing document and I don’t expect to ever read it again in this lifetime.

Women in Love, by contrast, I might read many times more, but reading it, too, brings back such memories. I was working on Lawrence—on the essays he wrote alongside Women in Love—when I fell in love with my husband and so much of that urgent sincerity in Gudrun and Ursula feels like myself to me (for better and for worse, as I’ve often recognized).

I’m off  to Macy’s tomorrow for some purple and orange tights. It’s just not right to teach Lawrence with legs entirely clad in black.

(Janeite Deb is reading Clarissa for the first time at her mostly Janeite blog: worth a click!)

New Essay Up Elsewhere!

I wrote an essay about my Yankee grandmother and her love of Virginia Woolf. It's been published by Open Letters Monthly & you can read it there, if you like.

Anne is as good as any man

The semester started just after Martin Luther King Day. Right around then, I got an email from a colleague whom I really like. Her son is in 6^th grade. The 6^th graders in his class were doing reports and, as part of their assignment, had to interview someone. Would it be o.k. for a 6^th grade girl to interview me about women’s suffrage.

Sure. After all, I had just been reviewing the suffrage movement in preparation for my beginning of semester lecture (something I ended up not giving, as it happened).

But then I got her email. She was researching Seneca Falls. 1848. America.

That’s not my specialty.

I panicked, then calmed down. After all, this was for a 6^th grader. Her very smart, focused email was as much about women’s lives before and after the vote as anything. I could do this.

Oh, and when would I be available to come to her school to be videotaped.

Oh, no! Part of me did not want this at all. Part of me wanted it a little too much. On the first day of teaching, I took a taxi across town to meet this young student. Was I really so narcissistic that I would travel across town to be videotaped by a middle schooler? Was I such a procrastinator that I would take time out of my day for this rather than create that calendar for program administration that I always mean to create? Half mad at myself for wasting my own time and hers, half excited, I signed in at the school.

As soon as I met her, I knew I had been right to come. We went to the library where I met the AV teacher. We talked about how she got interested in the topic (through a longstanding interest in equal rights for women). She set her flip camera up on a tripod and set the tripod on top of a stack of thin books, a series about marine invertebrates. She asked me to kind of repeat the question in my answer as she planned to edit her own voice out. She had a couple other coaching questions for me. And when I answered one question honestly, she laughed nervously and, departing from script, said, “Oh, that turns out to be a stupid question, doesn’t it? Let me ask a different one.” Once or twice, my answer pleased her and she squeezed her arms in tight to her sides, lifting up her shoulders and scrunching her eyes in delight.

I don’t know why it took me until then to see that this was the very best thing about teaching, this was really one of the coolest, most exciting things I had done in a long time. I am so glad that I let that young student interview me!

After all, when I was in 6^th grade, I ran for president (and lost) on a platform of unilateral disarmament and the Equal Rights Amendment. My slogan? "Anne is as good as any man." One of my favorite talking points was why I chose "as good as" in lieu of "better than." (I felt that my superiority was for me to prove.) My campaign poster—with a picture of me in my favorite batik unicorn t-shirt--is in my office to this day. 

A new course blog over here

My students are going to be blogging on modern british writing over here all term. Follow along & enjoy! We've already been reading and listening to a lot--we finish A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tomorrow!

Happy Birthday Virginia Woolf!

129 years ago today.

I celebrated over pizza with two storied litbloggers, pizza, and the gift of a couple Princeton (the band) EP's for them.

Traffic Lights and Full Stops

This poor little blog has come to a full stop. I miss it and I miss you. I gave a lecture on Woolf on October 21 at the New York Public Library. On October 22, we closed on a house. On October 27^th we moved. We hung pictures during the snow days that followed the Boxing Day blizzard. We are all still tired, still disoriented, loving our new house and our new community, but reeling from the loss of friends and neighbors in Jersey City.

It’s true, Jersey City is just thirty minutes away, but I lost three great women friends whom I would see a couple times a week, just in passing. About twice a week, I would walk my dog in the mornings and would often see Kadee taking her kids to school. Usually, I didn’t even bother to flag her down—I had just bid my kids good-bye, she was in her last few moments of the morning with them, she would have two in tow, I had my elderly dog and often, a poop bag. It’s hard to imagine that luxury now. Then, I could count on seeing Laura in the mornings when I dropped the kids off at school or, more often, in the late afternoons, as we passed her apartment on the way home. And checking to see if Lizzie was home—and to see if she looked like she wanted us to bug her—was a nightly ritual for the girls and me. These are big losses.

Having enough room, having a proper study of my own with a door are big gains and we love the community.

In any case, to re-ignite this blog, I bring you the link to my October lecture, available here and on the NYPL website.

Wishbones

We had our turkey with my mother-in-law in Utica and then came back down to Jersey with the carcass. I boiled it down to make stock and used that for a turkey soup. The wishbone has been drying on our sill since last Saturday.

Tonight, I let the children break it, explaining the principle of the wishbone to them. They wanted to know if they had to make a wish before or after breaking. Before, I said.

“I can make a quick wish!” boasts Izzy (4½). “I make the princess wish, the pony, and the unicorn. And that’s it. That’s three wishes. I can do ‘em quick.”

And off she scampers to brush her teeth.

Still holding the wishbone, I am joined by Livie (nearly 8). “Can I tell you my wish? That everything goes all right with moving in to our house and that I have a nice birthday. ‘Cause I don’t really need anything, right?”

And in comes the little one, teeth brushed. They grab the bone and pull.

To everyone’s surprise, the big girl won.

Oh, Charles

The errands continue to proliferate. Between the move and an unusually busy semester, I find myself swimming upstream in turbid waters at all times.

My husband and I have been working as hard as we can to make our new house into a home. Still, each box unpacked is mitigated by a new surprise. A bit of water damage at my little one’s new daycare led a mommy to call the city with a worry about mold. Suddenly, the daycare was shut down for a week and, desperate, we had to ship the little one off to my in-law’s. Then, the former owners left us with a filthy oven and, in cleaning it, I put the racks into the sink to soak. Alas, the weight of the racks and the water caused the under-mounted sink to break free of the counter, so now it sits, ¾ of an inch below the marble, on its plywood frame. You can imagine three or four more of these and you’ll have a sense of the domestic side of our lives lately. Add to that a similar set of comic mishaps, all leading to more work for each of us, at our respective jobs, never forgetting, of course, that there are two young children to feed and bathe on occasion, and you’ll have a snapshot of our life in November.

At the moment, my stamina is on low, and, though my mouth runs on as ever, I find myself wanting to channel Ma on “Little House on the Prairie.” As my beloved continues to find the energy to unpack, as I just really want to curl up in a corner and read, I need to talk less and express more. What I remember most of Karen Grassle’s Ma was the many, many inflections of “Oh, Charles.”

“Oh, Charles” could mean “thank you so much for replacing the waxed paper in the windows with real glass.” It could mean “I’m both pleased and embarrassed that you’re flirting with me in front of the children.” It could mean “I’m so grateful that you brought home four new chickens, but where are we going to put them?” Or it could mean “I’m so proud and happy that you’re willing to make this run into town in the blizzard, as we have neither food nor fuel, and yet, it’s terrifying to me that you propose to leave me alone here in the prairie with three young children and no food or fuel.”

Oh, Charles.

Julia Briggs Essay Prize for 2011

The Woolf Society of Great Britain is holding another essay competition in honor of the late, great, dearly missed Woolf scholar and feminist Julia Briggs. Here are the details: 

The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain (VWSGB) is holding an essay competition in memory of acclaimed Virginia Woolf scholar and VWSGB Executive Council member Julia Briggs, who died in August 2007.

The competition is open to members and non-members (except for the Executive Council and Editorial Committee of the VWSGB, the judges, and families of the above). Entries should be sent to Ruth Webb, 15 Southcote Road, London SE25 4RG, to arrive by 10 January 2011.

Entrants should read these carefully and return the signed form with the entry. If you have any queries or would like an entry form, please email Sarah M. Hall on smhall123@yahoo.co.uk.

Please note that student membership of the VWSGB costs only £10 for those at UK addresses and £15 for those at overseas addresses, per calendar year.

Competition Rules

The essay, on the topic ‘Why is reading Virginia Woolf still so crucial today?’, but with a title of the entrant’s choosing, should be between 2,000 and 2,500 words in length. It should be the original work of the named entrant, and previously unpublished in print or any other medium. Student coursework is acceptable. 

Entrants should supply THREE typed copies of the essay on A4 paper, printed on one side only, double-spaced (or 1.5) and in a font size no smaller than 10-point. The VWSGB regrets that no emailed entries will be accepted, because of printing costs.

The competition will be judged by acclaimed Woolf scholars Lyndall Gordon and Maggie Humm, and VWSGB Vice-Chair and Woolf biographer Ruth Webb. The decision of the judges is final. The VWSGB reserves the right not to award the prize if, in the judges’ opinion, none of the entries attains the required standard. Otherwise the winner will be contacted in mid-March.

The winner will receive a cheque for £250, presented at the VWSGB’s AGM in central London on 2 April 2011, and the winning essay will be published in the Virginia Woolf Bulletin. If the winner is unable to attend the AGM, the prize will be sent by secure mail.

In Praise of Libraries

It's been a long time. There have been highs and lows. But that's for another day. For now, some Wyndham Lewis. This quotation, about a curmudgeon's private library, comes courtesy of John Whittier-Ferguson's paper at MSA12 (the Modernist Studies Association Conference) in Victoria, B.C.:

This was 1939, the last year, or as good as, in which such a life as this one was to be lived. Parkinson was the last of a species. Here he was in a large room, which was a private, a functional library. Such a literary workshop belonged to the ages of individualism. Its three or four thousand volumes were all book-plated Parkinson. It was really a fragment of paradise where one of our species lived embedded in books, decently fed, moderately taxed, snug and unmolested.--Self Condemned (79)

Wonderful. I love the Lewisian misanthropic soupcon of paranoia added on to the praise of the library: the library in 1939 as a tiny little paradise, under siege from all sides. Wonderful.

T-16 days and counting

Gentle readers, I know that posting has been light. I am writing--more than ever--but the work I'm pouring into my lecture (just eleven days away!) on Mrs. Dalloway is sufficiently consuming that I'm finding it hard to digest it into little blog-friendly tidbits.

On top of that, we have bought a house--or are buying one--and will close on the sale the very day after my lecture!

I pack a box. I write a paragraph. I lie awake at night worrying about where the couch will fit, what the new daycare will be like, and whether I really should include that anecdote about Lytton Strachey in my lecture.

All of this makes for a rather manic interior life, but not one that I want to blog about.

Never fear. In November, I'll be unpacking at my leisure in our new home (with my very own study) in the melodiously named and lovely town of South Orange, New Jersey (where, yes, the middle school does have a giant orange on a pole out front!) and blogging should resume at its usual sporadic pace.

Until then, I hope to see you--in reality or in spirit--on 10/21 at 4:00!

The Art of Captivity

My friend and colleague Lenny Cassuto has curated a wonderful small exhibit on the idea of captivity. In American literature, captivity narratives have a very particular connotation: a subgenre of stories of whites who were kidnapped by (or ran off with) Native Americans and then wrote of their experiences. And, of course, in American history, the word captivity always recollects the sorry fact of slavery. This exhibit keeps its focus on the political while opening that category up, for us to think about mythology (Demeter and Persephone).  As I walk past the show up to work each morning, I find myself particularly drawn to the play on celebrity wives, looking on in poses of “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” by Karen Yama.

But that is not the only amazing image. Kara Walker never disappoints, and four of her gorgeous and disturbing silhouettes are on display. As is an amazing, Jasper Johns or Glenn Ligon-like print of the lyrics of Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.” And then, anchoring the gallery with a stunning pop of color is Anne Sherwood Pundyk’s painting.

If you’re around Lincoln Center, pop your head into Lowenstein and ask the security guard to let you see the art. Or better, pop by tomorrow.

The show will have a formal opening receptions and artists’ panel discussion tomorrow, Tuesday, October 5^th. Reception is 5:00-6:30; panel discussion is 6:30-8:00. The gallery is located on the street level of Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus, 113 W 60^th St., just west of Columbus Circle.

Part two of the exhibition will be held at Susan Eley Fine Art (46 W 90^th), beginning on October 26, 2010.

More on Sissinghurst, elsewhere

My review of Adam Nicolson's Sissinghurst is now live at Open Letters Monthly.

Opening Doors: Girls Write Now Party!

You have heard me rave and rave and rave about Girls Write Now. If you are in New York and want to see for yourself why it's such an amazing organization, why it continually inspires me, and why I'm taking a quick break from writing to celebrate with them, why not stop by their new space next Tuesday, October 5th? I'll be there!

Community Soccer, Jersey Style

My seven-year-old is playing community soccer for the first time this year. Her team is sponsored by the Friendly Son’s of St. Patrick. I both love and cringe at the apostrophe error on the back of her uniform. With her blue eyes and freckles, she certainly has the map of Ireland on her face much more than I do and that makes her very cute indeed in that dark green jersey. 

So, last night, I sat on the aluminum bleachers and watched her first practice. Two men, looking like extras from central casting for “Jersey dad/Sopranos extra” called out “Hey, kick the ball at the goal!” to their son, and I began to fear a season of coaching from the sidelines. (It’s actually decent advice, of course, and not very aggressive, but I am a timid mommy when it comes to sports.) Still stereotyping all these strangers, I glanced at the Patagonia-clad, athletic-professional dad for support, but he didn’t look at me. A few minutes later, his beautiful daughter came to him in tears. She had been hit in the face with a ball. He gave her a sip of water and a hug and then, confirming she was o.k., sent her back on the field, “all right now, go out there and kick someone else in the face.”

Jersey is as Jersey does.

A Room of Her Own Foundation: Kenny Fries Scholarship

If you would like to support a woman writer with disabilities or if you ARE (or know) such a woman whose writing would benefit from a retreat, here is a great opportunity:

In honor of my friend, the writer and disabilities advocate Kenny Fries' 50th birthday, A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO) is sponsoring a scholarship for a disabled writer who without financial support could not attend the AROHO 2011 Retreat for Women Writers. Kenny will choose the recipient in an open application process.

AROHO is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that champions women writers. The suggested donation is $45. But any amount, even $5 or $10, will help us come closer to a fully funded scholarship. Donations to AROHO are tax-deductible. You can give online by choosing "Kenny Fries Scholarship" from the drop-down menu here, which will take you to PayPal. If you prefer you can mail a check to AROHO, PO Box 778, Placitas, NM 87043, mentioning that the check is for the Kenny Fries Scholarship for a Writer with a Disability.

The Flu at Sissinghurst

Vita Sackville-West to Leonard Woolf, January, 1940: 

“Dear Leonard, I ought to have answered your letter long ago, but both the boys came home fro 24 hours leave and immediately took to their beds with ‘flu. You may imagine that Sissinghurst is at no time an ideal place for invalids, but when it means carrying trays, hot water bottles and other requirements through snowdrifts some sixteen times a day it is really hell….Pipes froze; lavatories ceased to function; snow came through the roof and dripped on to my bed. So perhaps you will forgive the delay.”

From Adam Nicolson's Sissinghurst.

And one in URUGUAY!

I was interested to see that the University of Montevideo in Uruguay was dedicating its 7^th annual literature conference to Virginia Woolf this coming June, 2011. The call for papers (due February 28^th, 2011) makes lovely use of the South American setting of The Voyage Out to explain the thinking behind the focus.

But I cannot remember a more exciting email ever than the one I got a few weeks later inviting me to give one of the talks there. I am still gobsmacked and very excited.

All my fantasies of Tobermory are on hold as I imagine the reality of a few days in Montevideo next June. Wow. In honor of the trip, my student sent me the song "Skipping Down the Street" by My Little Pony which includes the lyric If I'd fallen in love in Montevideo....

I’ll be speaking about The Common Reader and eating a chivito, the national sandwich.

From the CFP:

These South American places imagined by Woolf are an invitation to the possibility of reflecting on her work from a transatlantic perspective, as Victoria Ocampo did in 1929 when she first read A Room of One´s Own. The essay confirmed many of Ocampo´s ideas on the woman-writer, and inspired her to promote critical readings and translations of Virginia Woolf´s work in the River Plate, especially through Sur, the literary journal she founded in Buenos Aires in 1931.

Seventy years after Virginia Woolf´s death, Montevideana VII calls for papers presenting innovative readings, translations, and exchanges in connection with the multiple dialogues which her work continues to establish, either directly or indirectly, with this part of the world.

Abstracts should be submitted by February 28th 2011.

For further information click or email.

Two New York Appearances

Part of the quiet around here comes from the overwhelming wave of adminstration that crashed upon my head at the end of my sabbatical. Part of it comes from my need to prepare for two upcoming public events. If you're in New York--or inclined to visit--please come to one or both--and say hello!

On Tuesday, October 16^th, I’ll be participating in the post-matinee talk-back of Orlando, Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Woolf’s novel. It’s in previews now. 

Then, on Thursday, October 21^st at 4:00, I’ll be giving a free, public lecture on my ongoing work as the editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of Mrs. Dalloway at the New York Public Library on 42nd & 5th. My lecture will be the third in a 3-day festival of lectures on Woolf: Jean Mills will speak on Woolf and Jane Harrison on Tuesday at 4:00 and Isaac Gewirtz will speak on the proofs of A Room of One's Own on Wednesday at 4:00. 

Barbara Holland, RIP

Why do I not know her work? She is my new hero. From the Times obit, via the Woolf listserv:

Her fight for ground to stand on as a young woman remained central to her reading of the world. A steady paycheck and self-respect were the keys to her brand of feminism, not the allowance and room of one’s own proposed by Virginia Woolf. “No, Mrs. Woolf,” she wrote in her memoir. “A job, Mrs. Woolf.”

Holland was the author of the essay collection “Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences” (1995) which has risen to the top of my TBR pile. 

Sissinghurst, again

Having loved the op-ed on Sissinghurst earlier this summer, I’m writing a review-essay on Adam Nicolson’s Sissinghurst, a very engaging book about his life as a donor-tenant on the NT site. How engaging is it? As an aristocrat who doesn’t use his title and who lives as a tenant in his grandma’s castle, Nicolson has a wonderfully wry sense of humor about other lords, as here, in a description of a National Trust committee meeting:

When a man called John Smith was proposed as a member, the chairman, Viscount Esher, said ‘I suppose it is a good thing to have a proletarian name on the Committee—anyone know him?’ ‘Yes,’ said the earl of Euston, ‘he is my brother-in-law.’

As the descendant of a long, long line of New Hampshire Smiths (I have the forehead to show it), I loved this.

Almanzo Wilder's Farm

Blogging is light because sabbatical is over and administration is heavy. Still, you can get one last taste of summer by clicking on over to Writer's Houses to read my guest post on our visit to Almanzo Wilder's farm.

Little Magazine Fail

Back in January, 2009, I wrote an essay about Virginia Woolf and my grandmother. It’s a good essay. My parents think it’s good. Some pretty famous Woolf scholars have read and enjoyed it. I hope, one day, to publish it in a little magazine.

I entered it in a contest. It came in second. I was disappointed but still hopeful that it would find a home.

I sent it to the Yale Review. I got my PhD at Yale. Woolf published some essays in The Yale Review in the 1930s. I thought an old-fashioned personal essay that was about the love of reading and a mean Yankee grandmother written by a Yalie might find a home in the Yale Review. It was a longshot, but not utterly insane. The essay had, after all, come in second in a contest.

I called the Yale Review late in the spring of 2009 to check on the status of my essay. “Oh, my goodness!” was the flustered reaction. Profuse apologies for the lack of acknowledgment (not to mention reading or decision) ensued.

In the fall of 2009, eager to move on, I left a voicemail: I am submitting the essay elsewhere. It's still elsewhere. I still hope for news, dimly.

And now, awaiting me in my mail at work, is a note, dated July 28, 2010, from the Yale Review. It’s not a rejection. It’s an apology that, given the intense preparations for the 100^th anniversary issue, they won’t be able to get to my essay until June of 2011.

Shame on them.

Tobermory

My new obsession is Tobermory, Ontario, a small town on the Bruce Peninsula in Lake Huron, about 7 hours north of Clayton, NY.

Why, you ask, does a woman who spends her summers 7 hours north of New York City dream of spending a week 7 hours further north?

Because she can, dear reader, because she can.

It began with The Wind in the Willows, which accompanied us up to the River for the third year in a row. This year, however, we actually read a couple chapters aloud.

Then, one day, during 30 seconds of the 30 or 40 minutes of television the children watched all summer, there was an ad on t.v. for a new musical based on Kenneth Grahame’s book, set on the St. Lawrence River, and coming to the stage in Gananoque in August.

I was sold. I got tickets. The girls and I got our passports and went. The girls loved it—just adored the show. I thought it was about as good as you might guess good regional theater in Ontario would be: the first act was terrific, the second relied a little too heavily on very rusty jokes (from Grahame’s book, but that was 1933) about a Toad in an Irish woman’s pink dress. It might have been 1950.

I was disappointed, too, to be sitting seven rows back with my little girls, behind a busload of old age pensioners. Why did the 80-year-olds get all the good seats? And it does spoil my time a little to be a good 40 years younger than the average audience member.

Nonetheless, the opening moments were fantastic. The opening scene takes place on the dock—Gananoque’s Singer Theater is the old Canoe Club—and we were treated to a few songs from David Archibald, the play’s co-author and composer.

“Up the River” opens with the actors singing and dancing on the dock. Mole comes on stage, welcomes spring, notices the River in wonder, and then Ratty (who, in the true Canadian spirit, keeps insisting he’s a Beaver. The Canada jokes were pretty tired but this one was funny.) actually rows up to the dock. Mole climbs on board and they row out to a little grass-covered float anchored near the dock. As they picnic, a wet-suited and flippered otter swims up and joins them. That was great summer family theater: witty and funny and worth the price of the ticket. (You can read a review here.)

I also liked David Archibald’s singing: very old school folk with a British Isles/Canadian/Great Lakes tinge (sincere, story-telling, sentimental about a park-like vision of wilderness). His song, “The Rocks of Tobermory” was haunting, so I looked him up.

Then I looked up Tobermory. There is nothing like a map to inflame my dreams of travel. Just look at that peninsula! And then listen to this:

Fathom Five is Canada's first National Marine Park, with over 20 shipwrecks and 19 islands within it's boundaries. The deep clear water and the numerous shipwrecks attract over 8,000 divers each year. Glass bottom boat tours leave Tobermory several times each day to take visitors over the shipwrecks and to Flower Pot Island. The best known island in the Park features two 60 foot high 'flower pots', a lighthouse and walking trails.

When I lie awake worrying about the coming semester and all that I will have to do, I soothe myself back to sleep with promises of a trip to Tobermory next summer…

Call it macaroni

I flew through Elizabeth Bowen’s wonderful novel The House in Paris so fast that I had no time to note it here. Instead, I dove into another Bowen, her first novel, The Hotel. From there, I give you this gem of biting British comedy. Poor Miss Pym has had a fight with her friend and she enters the dining room of the hotel with a tear-stained face, too late for luncheon:

Miss Pym looked diffidently at the waiter. She had cut herself off from the omelette, so he shrugged his shoulders and brought her up a plate of macaroni from the servants’ lunch. This the bruised creature pitifully but with evidence of hunger bagan to eat; the traditional British struggle with macaroni brought her down sharply from tragedy to farce.

Woolf’s Reading Notebooks

I mean no disrespect to Brenda Silver in saying that her guide, Virginia Woolf’s Reading Notebooks makes for pretty dull reading. How could it be otherwise? A book that summarizes over forty volumes of Woolf’s notes can only offer the barest indications of the books and subjects noted. For the book to be produced at a reasonable length, it had to be what it is: a dated list of the contents of each of the notebooks.

Having looked at the notebooks from the early 20s, when Woolf was writing Mrs. Dalloway, I marvel anew at her perseverance in dating these very sketchy and various volumes.

I wonder, too, how it might be possible to convey what makes them such amazing documents.

Woolf kept a diary. She also kept draft notebooks for her novels and the essays she wrote alongside them. The reading notebooks are a third kind of notebook, more casual than either of these. Volume 19 is a notebook with cardboard covers, reinforced inside and out on the spine with cloth. Two pairs of metal grommets on the front and back permit it to be bound with laces (and there is a very heavy shoelace attached here, though no longer binding the pages). Inside, are over 100 loose pages, each with two holes. This permitted Woolf to unbind pages from old notebooks and pull old notes as she was revising and expanding essays—for her Common Readers, say. As Silver points out, this can make dating notebooks extraordinarily difficult, as a single notebook (like notebook 26) may contain pages from 1919, 1920 or 21, 1926, 1928, 1935, and 1938.

And in these notebooks, you find Woolf at her most personal, her most uncertain. In the midst of notetaking on a critical book on the novel, she pauses: “(one feels out of one’s depth)”. Of Oedipus Coloneus, read in French, she writes “I did not much enjoy it & found the complexity of the plot annoying.”

It is so rare to hear Woolf speaking in this voice—the voice of a reader in the process of making a judgment. Equally rare, if less vivid, is the chance to leaf through the pages and see how she took notes, what quotations stood out for her. Just seeing that she used the left margin to note page numbers is of interest to me, and, in reading through the notebooks back in June, I found that I had some answers to the kinds of questions readers always want to ask writers—how do you take notes? what kind of pen do you use? when you’re working on a review, how much research do you do? what books influenced you most when writing this one?

Having perused a few of these volumes for my edition of Mrs. Dalloway, I remain grateful to Silver and staunch in my admiration for what she achieved, but I wish her book offered readers more of the romance of reading that I found while working with the actual documents in the Berg Collection.