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Archive for the ‘contemporary fiction’ Category

The Years and The Years

Posted in contemporary fiction, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Wednesday 17 October 2018| 2 Comments »

The Years is, of course, Virginia Woolf’s 1937 novel. The Years (Les Années) (2008) is also a memoir by French novelist Annie Ernaux. Intrigued—coincidence or connection?—and enticed by reviews, I read Ernaux’s memoir and was captivated.

She tells her story without using the pronoun “I,” yet her voice is clear and consistent throughout. And her recollections are my own too. Relating her life by means of “we” and “they,” the narrative stands as a collective memoir of a generation, hers and mine. I also found several links, both direct and implied, between Ernaux and Woolf.

I’m grateful to the editors of Bloom, who gave me an enthusiastic go-ahead on this project and provided it with a home. You can read my essay, “The Years by Annie Ernaux: Memoir of a Generation.”

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Woolf, Eliot, Bronte & Brecht walk into a bar…

Posted in contemporary fiction, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Tuesday 4 October 2016| Leave a Comment »

Well no, but they do hang out together in a novel, along with Sylvia Plath, Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, W.B. Yeats, and others. It’s Lexicon by Max Barry. “A cerebral thriller,” according to one blurb; “dark and twisted and sweet and humane all at once,” says another.

It starts with two guys grabbing a man named Wil in an airport bathroom and putting a needle in his eye to extract memories and lethal words. And they have to hurry or Wolf will get him first.

On page 46—at last!—one of the guys, Tom, explains that they’re called poets because they’re good with words. They’re quick and smart and persuasive, and when their raw potential is detected, they’re recruited from all over and sent to a special school to learn how to manipulate minds with secret words. Only the best will graduate and be given their names. Wolf is a poet, Wolf who turns out to be Woolf. “Virginia Woolf is trying to kill me?” asks Wil. “Among others. But Woolf is the one to worry about,” replies Tom, who turns out to be Eliot.

It takes a long time to separate the good guys from the bad, and then you got it wrong, or maybe not, and you’re still not sure. Did Woolf kill everyone in an Australian town? Which side is Tom on? Why is Charlotte driving a transport truck straight at them? Where does Wil fit in–he’s not Shakespeare, not a poet. And why am I reading this bizarre novel?

If I wondered to what lengths I’d go to chase down Woolf sightings in contemporary fiction, now I know. If I wondered to what lengths I’d go to make it up to Paula for not posting as often as I should on Blogging Woolf, now I know. The violence was off-putting, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep reading; then I was hooked. People being murdered at close range on one page, thought-provoking gems about the power of language on another. And Woolf.

That’s what I never figured out—why Woolf? All the rest are actual poets or at least, like Bronte and Atwood, have written poetry as well as prose. Max Barry has a Q&A feature on his website, and I asked him about this, but I haven’t gotten a response—I’ll let you know if I do.

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Virginia Woolf, Lidia Yuknavitch and gendered violence

Posted in 26th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, contemporary fiction, Virginia Woolf, Woolf in Contemporary Fiction, tagged , , , , , , on Thursday 8 September 2016| Leave a Comment »

At the 26th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, scholar Catherine Hollis Small Backs of Childrenmade the connection between Virginia Woolf and Lidia Yukavitch’s novel The Small Backs of Children in her paper, “Thinking Through Virginia Woolf: Woolf as Portal in Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children.”

Hollis was part of a fascinating panel titled “Woolf’s Legacy to Female Writers,” along with Eva Mendez, who spoke about Alice Munro, and Amy Muse, who spoke about Sarah Ruhl.

Hollis also wrote a review of Yuknavitch’s novel for Public Books in which she connects it to Woolf’s critique of gendered violence. “The Woolf Girl” appears in the December 15 issue of the online review site devoted to interdisciplinary discussion of books and the arts.

For more on the novel’s connections with Woolf, read Alice Lowe’s blog post, “Lidia Yuknavitch novel draws on Woolf.”

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Life in books while waiting for Life in Squares

Posted in 21st century Woolf, contemporary fiction, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Friday 31 July 2015| Leave a Comment »

Those of us on this side of the pond, without access to BBC programming, are wishing to the lighthouseand waiting—patiently or impatiently—for the as-yet unannounced release of “Life in Squares” to PBS.

While we wait, why not put the time to good use (and help it pass more quickly) by dipping into an enticing list from the outstanding Powell’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon: “25 women to read before you die.”

“Reading Virginia Woolf is like stepping out onto a veranda, where the entire world unfurls before you in dazzling detail.” So begins an inviting introduction to Woolf and specifically to a recommendation of To the Lighthouse.

Woolf joins an eclectic array of companions, authors of both fiction and nonfiction, ranging from Mary Shelley and George Eliot to contemporary greats Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood, thought-provoking essayists Joan Didion and Rebecca Solnit, cartoonist Alison Bechdel and others.

We would all make some swaps—I’d make room for Mary McCarthy, Alice Munro, Penelope Lively—but there’s something for everyone here, both tried and true favorites and some new discoveries. I’ve been wanting to read Clarice Lispector for years—perhaps this is the sign I’ve been waiting for.

I’d rather be watching Life in Squares, but what can you do?

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Woolf as touchstone for Brian Morton

Posted in contemporary fiction, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , on Tuesday 10 March 2015| Leave a Comment »

Florence GordonI just read Brian Morton’s latest novel, Florence Gordon, and loved his protagonist, a 75-year-old New York curmudgeon and intellectual, an activist and celebrated feminist author. A Woolf sighting was almost a foregone conclusion.

Florence’s granddaughter, Emily, visits from Seattle and takes a summer literature class at Barnard: “It’s gonna be great. Jane Austen. George Eliot. Virginia Woolf. What could be bad about that?”

Emily assists Florence with research for her memoir and becomes fascinated with her grandmother’s accomplishments. “A few weeks ago she’d read an article that Florence had written about Virginia Woolf. Woolf had said that the task of a woman writer was to kill off the ‘Angel in the House’: the part of oneself that was trained to put the needs of others, in every situation, before one’s own.” Emily later has occasion to reflect on this in a difficult situation of her own and in a personal challenge to her grandmother: “If a woman needs help but she doesn’t ask for it, isn’t she just playing the part of the Angel in the House?”

Morton has invoked Woolf in earlier novels. She appears to have a prominent place in his literary pantheon, as touchstones for his characters. In Starting Out in the Evening, grad student Heather Wolfe (!) wants to write her thesis on fictional author Leonard Schiller. Her advisor ranks Schiller as seventh-rate. “In Bonner’s scale of literary merit, Shakespeare and Tolstoy were first-rate; Dostoevsky and George Eliot and Proust were second-rate; Melville was third-rate; Henry James fourth-rate; Virginia Woolf fifth-rate. To be called seventh-rate was high praise.”

Heather is disappointed to find Schiller’s later work stale and is prepared to dismiss it to his age until she considers: “Certain writers managed to stay fresh, even in old age. Yeats and George Eliot she felt got better, stronger. “D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf may not have gotten better, but they continued to experiment restlessly as long as they lived.”

Virginia Woolf in old age? The implications are frightening, but I guess 59 is old to a 24-year-old grad student…..

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