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Blogging Woolf double time

I must be crazy.

I already spend too much time on my laptop — way too much on some days. And now I’ve gone and opened a Tumblr blog.

I can only guess what this will do to my free time. Whatever that is.

What got into me? Good question. I took a look at the Tumblr blogs of Hearts Asunder, Megan Branch and Ann Fernald, clicked on the archive link of each, and I was hooked. It just looks so cool.

See what I mean?

My new Tumblr blog, Woolfwriter, will give me a place to post small bits about Woolf, as well as miscellaneous stuff I come across that I want to share.

Besides what I post on Facebook and Twitter, I mean.

The beauty of the world, which is soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. – Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Do pay a visit to Hearts Asunder before the month is out. It’s a 28-day blog that illustrates the Woolf quote above.

Another thing the Tumblr blog does is show how common readers are inspired by Woolf — and how they combine 21st-century pop culture and technology to share that inspiration.

These same common readers also connect Woolf to current events. For example, Hearts Asunder creator Brianna Goldberg posted a piece that links Woolf to this week’s devastating tsunami in Japan.  On a lighter note, a blogger describes Woolf’s reaction to the news of the late Pope John Paul II’s forthcoming Facebook page.

The RSS feed of the most recent Hearts Asunder posts are at the top of the sidebar at the right. And to make sure you don’t miss anything, take a look at the clever archives display of the online collaborative writing project too.

The site is definitely worth the trip. Read more about the project concept to find out why.

Hearts Asunder archives

 

But I cannot kill the angel in the house
Even in my wildest heart
I cannot kill the angel in the house
The angel in the house, the angel in the house
– “The Angel in the House” by The Story

Here’s another album with a title track inspired by Virginia Woolf. This one mixes ’60s-style folk with an undercurrent of jazz and Latin touches, according to Todayonline.

It’s called The Angel in the House and is performed by The Story. It was originally released in 1993. Liner notes explain the literary thoughts underlying the individual songs.

For Woolf, the “Angel in the House” was the ever-virtuous, long-suffering wife and mother who sacrificed her own needs and desires to meet those of her husband and family. In the process, she would also sacrifice her ability to create as a writer and artist.

Woolf borrowed the concept from the Coventry Patmore poem and criticized it in her 1931 paper, “Professions for Women,” which she read to the Women’s Service League.

You can read the lyrics to the title track and listen to it here.

There were 40-plus references to Virginia Woolf in the news during the past 10 days. I don’t know if that is because it is Women’s History Month or because this is the month in which she died, but the hits have been flooding in. Here’s the list:
  1. Lesbian relationship examined in writer’s literatureThe Ranger
    Rando uses novels from Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, John Dos Passos and Virginia Woolf to explore how their writings established experimental space to represent experiences with hope and faithfulness. He introduced his lecture by saying he approaches . . .
  2. Book Review: Five Bells by Gail JonesBlogcritics.org (blog)
    the most well-developed character, imagines the arc of Circular Quay, to the circular ending where she is falling asleep imagining the Quay and trying to remember to phone her old lover James, the book reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.
  3. Children to be seen and heard at lastThe Guardian
    To reconcile this awkward fact, Virginia Woolf came up with a neat analytical formula. The Alice books, she said, are not “books for children. They are the only books in which we become children.” Arguably, not until Dahl do we find a writer – at heart . . .
  4. Between The Covers: 13/03/2011Independent
    George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando climbed 10000 places last year having been discussed on My Life in Books. Will this, and the strong audiences for both programmes, convince the BBC that every year should be a year of books?
  5. Jude Dibia returns with ‘Blackbird’NEXT
    My literal influences include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and a handful of African writers like Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta and Cyprian Ekwensi. My first career high point . . . Continue Reading »

The Women’s Project is offering Blogging Woolf readers big savings on tickets to Room, the one-woman show based on the writings of Virginia Woolf and starring SITI Company’s Ellen Lauren.

The acclaimed production is on stage at the Julia Miles Theater in New York City March 12-27.

The $60 tickets are discounted to $30 for Women’s Project Friends — and Blogging Woolf readers are included in that group — by following the directions below. You can order tickets three different ways.

  1. Go to http://www.broadwayoffers.com/go.aspx?MD=2001&MC=RMWPF30 and enter code RMWPF30.
  2. Call 212-947-8844 and mention code RMWPF30
  3. Visit the Julia Miles Theater box office at 424 W. 55th St., just west of 9th Avenue, and mention code RMWPF30.

Thanks to theater manager Monet Hurst-Mendoza for offering this generous discount.

For more details about the production, read our previous post, Woolf’s Room on stage in NY March 12-27.