Blogging Woolf

Elizabeth Taylor died March 23, which means the online world was filled with stories connecting Taylor and Virginia Woolf — all because one of Taylor’s most famous films, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, mentions Woolf in the title.

Nevertheless, plenty of Woolf sightings still mentioned the modernist author in her own rite. Here are 26 of them. And in tribute to Taylor, you’ll find a clip from Who’s Afraid at the end of this post.

1. Greatest role and privilege of women, New Straits Times
   Virginia Woolf wisely remarked “I would venture to guess that ‘Anon’, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman”. Today, we live in more enlightened times. Women are now accepted in most walks of life even if it took Germaine …
2. Star Trek: With the Next Generation, CurrentMom
   I was not a science fiction/AV nerd-type – I was more the angst-ridden poet, the Virginia Woolf groupie, the English major in search of her Heathcliff. Not to mention my Annie Hall look-alike contest, which went on for the better part of my junior year …
3. Dave Lavender To Lead “Street Haunting” Tour,HNN Huntingtonnews.net
   Written by Matthew Earnest, a New York-based playwright, “Street Haunting,” is adapted from a Virginia Woolf essay and is being presented by Marshall Theatre Alliance. As you listen to the iPlay on your cell phone, you will be prompted to walk to seven … Read “Woolf’s `Street Haunting’ inspires iPlay.”
4. 10 Favorite Classic European Films, TheCelebrityCafe.com
   With a story that could easily beat any novel by Leo Tolstoy or Virginia Woolf in regards to its complexity, Jean Renoir’s ‘comedy of manners’ is probably one of the finest films ever made. Renoir made technical leaps far beyond any other French …
5. Does literature still matter?, Salt Lake Tribune
   If you don’t believe her, here’s Virginia Woolf on why reading poetry can be a transformative experience: “Our being for a moment is centred and constricted, as in any violent shock of personal emotion.” And here is Eliot himself, to explain why poetry …
6. Ty’s weekend movie picks for Friday, 3/25/11 Boston Globe (blog)
   I mean, it’s nice to see the movie that introduced Tilda Swinton (in photo above) to most of us in a freshly struck print, but what, exactly, does the gender-shifting proto-feminist adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel have to do with the grand guignol …
7. Review: “Riding with Rilke” by Ted Bishop, allvoices
   Thus, Ulysses becomes a book about sexual performance (119) and Virginia Woolf turns into a wannabe motorcycle buff (39). Bishop rejects the apparent contradiction within the idea of “the silence and stillness of the archive after the roar of the …
8. West County This Week, San Jose Mercury News
   “To the Lighthouse,” by Virginia Woolf, will be discussed. The group alternates classic and contemporary literature on a monthly basis. Meeting starts with a poem selected and read by a member; short discussion follows. Group invites new adult members. …
9. Nederlands and St. Petersburg Descend on Downtown, blogdowntown (blog)
   Referring back to that feature film, Lightfoot aptly quotes Virginia Woolf in his program note: “One never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. …
10. TIME FOR A REVOLUTION: FIRST GRADUATE STUDENT LITERATURE CONFERENCE APRIL 2, Media Newswire (press release)
    … Sexuality and Race in Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’ and Jeanette Winterson’s ‘The PowerBook'” and be a presenter for the Queer Reading seminar; Julie Anna Vonderharr, presenter for the Literary Problems and Media Shifts seminar; and Christel Woods, …
11. ESU’s “Dinner Party” Honors Inspiring Women in History, Stroud Courier (subscription)
    The woman I chose to honor was Virginia Woolf. In her well-known essay composition, A Room of One’s Own, one of her striving arguments was that, for a woman to be able to publish her work, she must have a room of her own (secrecy) and money (influence) …
12. Seeking Decorative Inspiration at Sterling Place, Patch.com
    For writers, Virginia Woolf prescribes a room of one’s own. As I’ve had that covered for a while, I thought it more pressing to track down a desk. Sterling Place (in two locations, at 352 Seventh Avenue at 10th Street and 363 Atlantic Avenue between …
13. Sarah Ruhl(s): Playwright’s work dominates spring theater, WBEZ (blog)
    Court Theatre currently is presenting Ruhl’s stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s quirky transgender tale “Orlando,” through April 10. I guess one really doesn’t need to say “quirky” as a modifier for Woolf or her work. Then the small, Off-Loop … Read “Orlando’s on-stage brilliance more than a lovely coincidence.”
14. Paula McLain: A room, a cranny, a borrowed (public) chair of one’s own, National Post
    In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf laments how many women haven’t written themselves into history “for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed.” But some of us write more fiercely because of that other role and other pressure …
15. Bruno Gaudichon: ‘Hockney never answers my letters’, The Guardian
    The Bloomsbury group: Roger Fry, Virginia Woolf and her artist sister Vanessa Bell. Also Walter Sickert. More recently, I would say David Hockney. I would love to arrange an exhibition of Hockney’s swimming pool pictures in La Piscine – but he never …
16. U. of C. opens doors for top high schoolers, Chicago Tribune
    … the surface of the text … and argue and defend their cases,” said professor Herman Sinaiko, who teaches about 15 to 18 students on various topics including the Mayflower Compact, the essays of George Orwell and Virginia Woolf, and philosophy. …
17. IGNOU strives for women empowerment, Daily Pioneer
    Prof Sachidanandan, Director, SOTST at IGNOU elucidated his thoughts on ‘Women’s writing in Malyalam’ by remembering renowned English author Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and quoting her he said, “If Shakespeare would have been a women he …
18. South Central – Society Of The Spectacle, FemaleFirst.co.uk
    … Century’ was inspired by ‘a shitty Jules Verne book’ (props to Skream and all that, but we can’t see him slipping in a literary reference among the half-speed bass-bothering) while ‘The Moth’ is about the life and tragic death of Virginia Woolf. …
19. Court Theatre’s ‘Orlando’ brings proper mix of satire and passion, Chicago Sun-Times
    Amy J. Carle moves through genres and 500 years as the title character in Virginia Woolf’s tale “Orlando” at Court Theatre. Transformation is the key to theater, with actors priding …
20. Nilanjana S Roy: The wide world of women writers, Business Standard
    That was Virginia Woolf, writing in 1932, decades before the Orange Prize for writing by women was instituted, on the insidious voice of what she called the Angel in the House — the figure of the always-sacrificing, always-charming woman who lived to …
21. Every Mom Needs A Space Of Her Own; Find It, Now, Hartford Courant
    This emotion makes me think of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” Now, I know this groundbreaking author was talking about more than a physical space: She was alluding to feminism, creative license and even lesbianism. But let’s just be moms for a …
22. Once in the Public’s Hands, Now Back in Picasso’s, New York Times
    The new case asks whether Congress acted constitutionally in 1994 by restoring copyrights in foreign works that had belonged to the public, including films by Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini, books by CS Lewis and Virginia Woolf, symphonies . . .
23. Five Bells, Financial Times
    Jones’s X-ray focus on her characters’ inner lives yields some powerful moments. But the nods to James Joyce and Virginia Woolf feel laboured, while a tendency to strain for significance in the tiniest details inevitably produces diminishing returns.
24. An elusive feeling called pain, GreaterKashmir.com (press release)
    In her actual life, Virginia Woolf, unable to bear such pain as Flaubert has created in Emma Bovary, took refuge in suicide. In Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev describes the pain of his protagonist in the novel, Bazarao ,who being a nihilist has to bear …
25. The New Misandry: Man-Hating in 1972, Village Voice (blog)
    As Virginia Woolf says, neither flattery, affection, ease in her company, nor love will prevent a woman from being put in her place. (Bad things happen not only when the subordinate gets uppity but when the superior gets irritable and wants somebody to …
26. BWW EXCLUSIVE: Michael Urie Talks GayFest SPRING AT LAST!, ANGELS IN AMERICA …, Broadway World
    MU: TINY ALICE, ZOO STORY, of course Virginia Woolf? someday. MU: You know, the last things I put on my iPod were actually the songs I am going to be singing on Monday. I’ve really been loving that Cee-Lo Green song “F*ck You”, though. …