Blogging Woolf

Talk about confluence. During the past nine days, the New York Public Library has announced a centennial exhibit that includes Virginia Woolf’s walking stick, the one she carried on the day she walked into the River Ouse. Leonard found it floating in the river after her death.

Virginia Woolf's walking stick at the NYPL

News of the exhibit has been widely publicized. At the same time, a new book about the River Ouse has been garnering lots of publicity. Reviews of To the River,  by Olivia Laing, are all over the Internet.

Here are the latest Woolf sightings:

1. Kerouac’s Harmonica, Malcolm X’s Briefcase, Shelley’s Locks on View at the New …, WNYC
   In honor of the centennial of the library’s famous lion-studded Schwarzman Building, a free exhibit called “Celebrating 100 years” lets visitors view bizarre and rare artifacts — from a 4300-year-old Sumerian tablet to Virginia Woolf’s cane.
2. What’s on View at the NYPL’s Centennial Exhibit (Slide Show), New Yorker (blog)
   … a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, “Cosmic Mystery” by Johannes Kepler, a manuscript of TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land” emended by Ezra Pound, and journals and diaries from Malcolm X, Vladimir Nijinsky, Annie Proulx, Virginia Woolf, and others. …
3. The Short List, Wall Street Journal
   … including a 1911 letter from Houdini to the first library director, JS Billings, as the magician bestowed some books about handcuffs and his collection of “Conjurer’s Monthly”; a pair of Jack Kerouac’s glasses; Virginia Woolf’s last diary entry; …
4. George Washington’s beer recipe will help NY library party on 100th birthday, The Canadian Press
   A centennial exhibition opening on May 14 will feature more than 250 historical items, including Washington’s Farewell Address, Virginia Woolf’s walking stick, Malcolm X’s briefcase and Jack Kerouac’s harmonica.
5. To The River by Olivia Laing: review, Telegraph.co.uk
   But a more famous suicide looms over Laing’s book: that of Virginia Woolf, who ended her life in 1941, wearing a fur coat and Wellington boots as she waded into the river at Rodmell. Laing notes that it was an end apparently foreshadowed in Woolf’s …
6. To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface by Olivia Laing – review, The Guardian
   History hasn’t crossed paths with the Ouse very often, and if we only know one thing about this river, it’s likely to be that it was where Virginia Woolf drowned herself – wearing Wellington boots, fastening on her hat and filling her jacket pockets …
7. To The River is going with the flow, Evening Standard
   But the story of the Ouse will forever be bound up with the writing and the death of the novelist Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in its murky waters one cold March day 60 years ago. Laing’s passages about the beauty and precision of Woolf’s prose …
8. An Ego of One’s Own, Tapped (blog)
   Last week at a panel, art critic Ben Davis spoke about rereading Virginia Woolf’s seminal essay and thinking about how we no longer need “a room of one’s own,” so much as “room in the head of one’s own.” In a culture of 24/7 news, . . .
9. ‘Women and Work’ in music, words at cafe, Canada.com
   The poem ”Virginia Woolf Arrives on the E&N” displays Carol’s sense of humour with both content and form. Tracy Myers, muscian and spoken word artist, known from not only her work with ‘Tongue and Groove’ but also for her jazz drumming will bring a …
10. Is feminism relevant to 21st-century fiction?, The Independent
    The viewpoint is not dissimilar to Virginia Woolf’s ideal of literary androgyny outlined in her 1929 essay, A Room of One’s Own. “It is fatal,” she wrote, “for anyone who writes to think of their sex.” The essay suggested that women write as women, …
11. Stage calendar: May 13, 2011, Ventura County Star
    “Goat”: The Elite Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Arthur Kraft’s drama about what might have happened if a psychologist had prevented writer Virginia Woolf from committing suicide in 1941. 8 pm Fridays and Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays, …
12. Book review: ‘Between a Rock and a Hot Place’ by Tracey Jackson, Los Angeles Times
    Jackson took her cues from her mother and from a Virginia Woolf quote “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” She began working on a documentary about privileged teens in the US and how we raise children, called “Lucky Ducks. …
13. IN PRODUCTION, The Daily Advertiser
    In “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf imagines a fictional sister of Shakespeare — Judith — who was equally talented and equally ambitious, but is lost to history because she is a woman. “William and Judith” uses Woolf’s creation as a jumping-off …
14. Harold Bloom — a glimpse of the sublime, New Statesman
    That particular imaginative displacement does not mark the critical work of Dryden and Coleridge, Hazlitt and Ruskin, yet enters again with Pater and his Aesthetic school: Wilde and Yeats, Virginia Woolf and Wallace Stevens. What can be the function of …
15. Biography / The founding father, Ha’aretz
    The same year, Keter published the translated biographies of Marguerite Duras,Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as Israeli historian Tom Segev’s “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends,” which was first published in English, …
16. A grizzled scribe chases his last story, Kansas City Star
    Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway” with the important personage in the back of a limousine driving through London while Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith walk the city’s streets on a collision course as the hour of Clarissa’s dinner party ...
17. The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam: review, Telegraph.co.uk
    This is the last line of a particularly exquisite paragraph, in which Anam writes like a mixture of George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. There is no purely “good” person here, least of all Maya, though there are innocent victims, including Piya, ..
18. Suffolk: Meet acclaimed new author Katie Ward, a girl who loves Ipswich, The …, East Anglian Daily Times
    By the time she came to write Girl Reading, she was clear about the types of books she liked – the work of writers such as Sarah Waters, Salley Vickers and Virginia Woolf, and books about psychology and art. “Basically, beautiful, strong and tight work …
19. CAREFUL, CAMILLA, HIS CROWN JEWELS ARE ON DISPLAY, Express.co.uk
    For over half a century Charleston House was the country getaway for the influential Bloomsbury Group – a band of artists, writers and philosophers made internationally famous by English author Virginia Woolf. The house is now open to the public as an …
20. The Tension Of A War To Come, As Seen From ‘Exile’, NPR
    She returns again and again to the activities and ruminations of Virginia Woolf. In 1940, Woolf writes in her diary: “Leonard says he has petrol in the garage for suicide should Hitler win.” Juers continues: “Virginia made some buns for tea. …
21. Walking with Ghosts, BOOK Southern Africa (blog)
    Most notable amongst the writer-walkers, apart from Virginia Woolf, were the three German-language writers: Robert Walser – Swiss, and contemporary of Franz Kafka; Walter Benjamin; and WG Sebald. Apart from their walking habits, and their melancholy, …
22. VIDEO: SNL Honors Tina Fey, Women Writers, in Unaired Skit, Bleeding Edge TV
    Jane Austin, Virginia Woolf and others are mentioned — and subsequently ridiculed by Bill Hader. Watch the skit, which wasn’t included in the live show, in the video above. Check out the Gear Live Touls that let you integrate Gear Live into your site. … Read Virginia Woolf on SNL? Not!
23. The End Or The Beginnings Of A Novelist, Swans
    Rather, the author of The End is a tardy modernist in the mold of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, or TS Eliot. He’s never playful and always deadly serious about his people and what they do. He constructs his story mosaic fashion and prefers collage to …
24. Much loved professor retires, PUC Chronicle
    Selig is currently working on a book about Virginia Woolf he has wanted to create for several years. This novel, Selig said, would fall within the realm of both fiction and nonfiction. This can be done by coming up with the details other individuals …
25. House of Exile: The Lives and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann …, The Star-Ledger – NJ.com
    The story of this unhappy exile — Nelly finally committed suicide in California in 1944, a few years before Heinrich died of a stroke there — is told in this tapestry of a book stylistically indebted to Virginia Woolf. The fates of such German …
26. Private Voices in a Public Place: Diaries at the Morgan Library, WNYC
    mused diarist extraordinaire Virginia Woolf. The answer, in all these cases, is “us.” Sophia Hawthorne on love and marriage: “My heart is full, it rises to so high a mark, it overflows so bountifully, that were there not another heart to receive my …
27. Story of artist’s descent into madness told in song for one-woman show, WalesOnline
    A ONE-WOMAN show inspired by the lives and works of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and American poet Anne Sexton will be staged in Wales next week. The Big Smoke is performed by Canadian actor Amy Nostbakken and directed by …
28. Powerful Canadian book offers insight into fathers, ourselves, Vancouver Sun (blog)
    Gerard has been diligent in tracking down some of the world’s best English-language poems, essays and short stories about fathers, including about the fathers of Franz Kafka, Winston Churchill, ee cummings, Dylan Thomas and Virginia Woolf. …
29. Outdoor structures are new backyard focal points, Sacramento Bee
    “I had been craving my own space for a few years after my son was born and when I turned 40, there was a loud, nonstop Virginia Woolf voice in my head, telling me I needed a room of my own!” said Spiegelman, who was constantly distracted while working …
30. For the love of books – some of our top shops, New Zealand Herald
    The final chapter on independent bookstores has probably been debated as long as the demise of the printed book, which Virginia Woolf talked about way back in 1927, long before ebooks were even invented. ..
31. Making ends meet…. or reaching the end of the road?, Stage (blog)
    As Lyn Gardner tweeted in reply to me when I mentioned this, “Must have got dispatch rider job pretty sharp cos only finished in Virginia Woolf at Northern Stage on Sat”. But while this may have been a case of an actor self-dramatising their plight to …
32. Beloved Atlantic Book Shop Forced Out Of Business, Can Markowitz Save It?, Gothamist
    The store has launched a “beginning of the end” sale, with everything on their already low-priced shelves (one Yelper reports snagging a rare collection of essays by Roland Barthes and Virginia Woolf for $2) going for 30% off. …
33. Rooms of their own: Woman caves, Newsday (subscription)
    Writers, according to Virginia Woolf, need a room of their own. She believed they require privacy and big chunks of uninterrupted time to unleash their creativity. Men have known this for years. Peek into the basement, den or garage of …
34. No Fear: Bring ’em on, Greensboro News & Record (blog)
    He looked up idly, noticed the mural of great authors that included Henry James,Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen and so on as well as the display of “Oprah’s Selection” near the entrance. He asked himself, how did this happen? The answer he came up with is …
35. Montaigne, a man for all seasons, Le Monde Diplomatique
    As a result, writers and thinkers, ranging from Flaubert to Stefan Zweig, Voltaire to Virginia Woolf, embraced Montaigne as their contemporary. The great merit of Bakewell’s book is to remind us, with the same confident and wry touch of her subject, …
36. Gender and Unity of the Self in Virgina Woolf’s, Student Pulse
    The confluence of biography and fiction in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando raises the question, of which the book is highly aware, of which genre facilitates the proper perception of the truth. As Woolf writes, “Life, it has been agreed …
37. The political brain, Tweed Shire Echo Community News
    It’s quite a challenge, considering a few years back Pell claimed condoms made AIDS worse because it encouraged promiscuity, and then went on to have a stab at Virginia Woolf as an instigator of sexual and moral waywardness. …
38. Can pub trivia be hazardous to your health?, Las Vegas Weekly
    The following week, when our team was renamed Virginia Woolf Is for Lovers, the people spoke, and never stopped. Mike’s constant apologies to the sports fans as he asked questions about “Thackeraaay” and the crowd’s booing and responses of “Who cares? …
39. Top physical theatre companies announce Liverpool performance dates, Click Liverpool
    Multi Award Winning Lecoq trained ensemble Theatre Ad Infinitum will present their piece called ‘The Big Smoke’, a poetic piece of physical theatre inspired by the lives and works of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plathand Anne Sexton. …
40. Sarah Ruhl’s ‘Stage Kiss’ explores the fine art (and craft) of smooching, Chicago Sun-Times
    After all, this is the Chicago-bred playwright and MacArthur “genius” fellowship winner who created the stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” (recently directed by Thebus in a winning Court Theatre production), as well as “The Clean House” and ..
41. Albania the Beautiful: Francine Prose’s My New American Life, The Millions
    In Reading Like a Writer, Prose extols the virtues of elegant sentences, citing Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and Phillip Roth as some of the masters of the craft. In My New American Life, Prose is on top of her game in this respect, the fluidity …