Posted in quotes, Woolf sightings, tagged Insight Timer, Meditation, quote, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf online on Monday 12 December 2022| Leave a Comment »
I use the app Insight Timer on pretty much a daily basis. The app features a quote from a
famous person each day. What a nice surprise when I saw that today’s quote was from Virginia Woolf.
The quote, certainly a source of inspiration, comes from The Waves (1931). The full text reads:
I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.
Here is a screenshot of the quote as it appeared on the app.
Posted in commodification, pandemic, Woolf sightings, tagged puzzles, Virginia Woolf on Thursday 17 November 2022| 1 Comment »
Today I have two more Virginia Woolf puzzles for you — just in time for the holidays. This
news may be welcomed by members of the VWoolf Listserv, as one recent discussion thread focused on Woolf puzzles.
But first some background on my search.
In the spring of 2020, when many of us found our outings and activities limited due to the Coronavirus pandemic, I wrote about two jigsaw puzzles that included Virginia Woolf or her novels and another that featured her.
By September, I had discovered a 1,000-piece eeBoo puzzle titled “Jane Austen’s Book Club” that included Woolf. She, along with Austen, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, and Zora Neale Huston, are pictured sipping tea, alongside some of their famous titles. I wrote about that, too.
Today I share my two new puzzle discoveries.
The first, a take-off on the iconic 2008 Barack Obama “Hope” poster, depicts Woolf in the same way Obama was shown, but with her last name, “Woolf,” replacing the word “Hope.” It comes in two sizes.
11/19/22 Note: The above two puzzles are no longer available.
The second features Edward Gorey book covers, including From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf by It is 1,000 pieces, measures 20″ x 27″ and is priced at $22.95.
This puzzle features Edward Gorey book cover illustrations. The one related to Woolf is at the far right in the third row from the top.
Posted in The Hours, Virginia Woolf, Woolf in Contemporary Fiction, Woolf sightings, tagged contemporary fiction, Virginia Woolf, Woolf sightings on Thursday 4 November 2021| Leave a Comment »
Imagine my double-take when, scrolling through the LitHub Daily recently, I came
across an ad for a new book, Insignificance by James Clammer.
The caption read “A plumber’s Mrs. Dalloway.”
The book is described as an interior-monologue lyric novel, a single day in the life of Joe Forbes, reluctant plumber and anguished father. The TLS calls it “A descent into the suburban uncanny and the English soul.” The Spectator links it to Woolf: “Like Mrs. Dalloway, it immerses us in the rush of a different life, the strangeness of another body.”
I may not read it, but the reviewers are taking it seriously, and it sounds compelling. Who am I to snicker?
Palace of the Drowned
A New York Times review drew me to Christine Mangan’s Palace of the Drowned, which “heaves with allusions to other books and other authors — a little Patricia Highsmith here, a little Virginia Woolf there, glimpses of Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” someplace else.”
A novel about a novelist, when Frankie’s latest work is panned and she causes a scene, she goes to Italy, where she’s stalked by an admirer:
“You’re not the first author to receive a bad review,” Gilly tells her. “Dostoyevsky. Hemingway. Did you know Virginia Woolf was terribly affected by criticism? She didn’t even like to read what others wrote about her fellow authors. She said that no creative writer can swallow another contemporary.”
As the Highsmith and Jackson references imply, there’s suspense and intrigue here too, and Venice—all that’s missing are the Bellinis (the drink, not the painter or the composer).
The Plot
I can’t resist novels about writers writing; Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is another. A twisted tale of plagiarism and intrigue, the protagonist justifies his actions: “He would hardly be the first to take some tale from a play or a book—in this case, a book that had never been written!—and create something entirely new from it. Miss Saigon from Madam Butterfly. The Hours from Mrs. Dalloway. The Lion King from Hamlet, for goodness’ sake!”
Posted in Virginia Woolf, Woolf sightings, tagged Alice Lowe, Dorothy Parker, quotes, Virginia Woolf, women and aging on Sunday 23 May 2021| Leave a Comment »
An essay by Blogging Woolf contributor Alice Woolf published May 19 on (mac)ro(mic) discusses a dreaded topic — aging — and includes the views of Dorothy Parker and Virginia Woolf.
Alice Lowe
Woolf used to address her future self—old Virginia—in her diary; days before her death she reminded herself to “observe the oncome of age. — Lowe
Lowe has written about Woolf and aging before. In 2017 she connected Woolf with aging, writing, and her own decision to get a tattoo.
Besides writing for Blogging Woolf, Lowe blogs at aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com. Her flash prose has appeared this past year in Hobart, JMWW, Door Is a Jar, Sleet, Anti-Heroin Chic, and BurningWord. She’s had citations in Best American Essays and nominations for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net.
Posted in Virginia Woolf, Woolf online, Woolf quote, Woolf sightings, tagged fact-check, Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours, USA TODAY, Virginia Woolf, Woolf quotes on Sunday 16 May 2021| Leave a Comment »
At a time when inaccurate information spreads like wildfire via social media, it’s 
refreshing to learn that a major media outlet is interested in fact checking something as seemingly minor as a literary quote, particularly one attributed to Virginia Woolf.
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life” was the quote attributed to Woolf and shared more than 300 times by a Facebook group called “English literature and Linguistics.”
Then USA TODAY noticed. And reporter Rick Rouan, based in Columbus, Ohio, started checking into it. On his own, he was unable to find a record of Woolf saying or writing those words.
So he contacted a couple of folks in the Woolf community, including Blogging Woolf and Benjamin Hagen, assistant professor of English at the University of South Dakota who is heading up this year’s Woolf conference and serves as president of the International Virginia Woolf Society.
I searched my copy of Major Authors on CD-ROM: Virginia Woolf and found no such statement in Woolf’s work. But Hagen traced it to the 2002 film “The Hours,” which is based on Michael Cunningham’s novel of the same title, inspired by Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway.
The Facebook group that posted the quote Rouan investigated has apparently removed it from its page. Fact-checking information shared online is something USA TODAY does regularly, Rouan told me.
Read more about the hunt for the quote and its origins in “Fact check: Quote attributed to Virginia Woolf was in a movie, not her primary work.”
A collection of memes found in a Google search that include the quote falsely attributed to Woolf
Alice Lowe
Catherine
Kaylee Baucom
Paula Maggio
Stefano Rozzoni
seanmcphail
suzannebellamy1
veronikakra
Vara Neverow
William Patrick Wend
Zoe Wolstenholme
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