News blogs and Web sites are busy publishing ruminations about books and writing. Here are links to a few with connections to my favorite author. Virginia Woolf, of course.
In the Wall Street Journal, Rebecca Stott names Woolf’s Orlando as number two in a list of the top five works of historical fiction.
A Seattle Post-Intelligencer reader blog, written by a local librarian named Ann G., is “Looking back at reading by the decade.” In the post, Ann picks her favorite book by decade. For the 1930s, her choice is The Years. The novel, Woolf’s last published in her lifetime, was praised by the New York Times as her “richest novel” when it came out in 1937. It became a best seller in the United States that year. As a result, Woolf was featured on the April 12, 1937, cover of Time magazine. The cover story compared Woolf to Margaret Mitchell, whose Gone With the Wind was a 1936 best seller.
In an ode to diaries on The Guardian’s Web site, writer Gyles Brandreth pays homage to an edited volume of Woolf’s diary entries. Brandreth praises the volume, titled A Moment’s Liberty: The Shorter Diary of Virginia Woolf, for including “a gem on every page.” Anne Olivier Bell is the editor.
Margaret Drabble opines about the unique genre of the short story on The Guardian Web site. In her piece, she says Woolf tried to emulate her rival Katherine Mansfield’s short story style. But Drabble finds Woolf’s style “less accomplished, and sometimes embarrassingly whimsical.”
Family Album by Penelope Lively, whose City of the Mind is clearly influenced by Mrs. Dalloway, and
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit, plenary speaker at this year’s Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.
Virginia Woolf and race was the topic of a recent discussion on the Virginia Woolf Listserv. Here are some of the sources readers and scholars suggested:
Jane Marcus’s book Hearts of Darkness
Patricia McManus article “The “Offensiveness’ of Virginia Woolf: From a Moral to a Political Reading” in Woolf Studies Annual 14 (2008)
Laura Doyle’s chapter titled “Voyaging Beyond the Race Mother: Melymbrosia and To the Lighthouse” in her book Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Work by Urmila Seshagiri, including “Orienting Virginia Woolf: Race, Aesthetics, and Politics in To the Lighthouse”
Gretchen Gerzina’s work on Bloomsbury/Woolf and race
Here’s a bit of Virginia Woolf trivia. Did you know that pianist Ludovico Einaudi‘s first album “Le Onde” was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1931 novel The Waves?
The cycle of solo piano ballads came out in 1996.
Einaudi’s music is often compared to that of Philip Glass, who composed the music for Stephen Daldry’s film “The Hours” — thus, another Woolf connection for the Milan-trained Einaudi.
Listen to the title track, and feel the waves wash gently over you. The sound is quite beautiful and soothing with just a hint of dramatic tension.
A student-faculty team at Mars Hills College has won grant funding to explore the connection between Taoism and the writing of Virginia Woolf.
Ali Andrejewski, an English and psychology student, was awarded $500, and faculty mentor Joanna Pierce won $250 to support research for the grant proposal titled, “’But how describe a world seen without a self?’: Taoist Principles in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and The Waves.”
The college recently awarded grants to 12 students and faculty members for research projects ranging from mountain history to pop music.
A Web site for the 20th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf and the Natural World has launched, and organizers have announced the conference call for papers, which are due Jan. 15, 2010.
Georgetown is located 10 miles north of Lexington on I-75. Get a map of the area.
Keynote speakers will be:
Bonnie Kime Scott, University of California, San Diego
Diana Swanson, Northern Illinois University
Carrie Rohman, Lafayette College
Christina Alt, University of Ottawa
The conference will also include an Art and Rare Book Exhibit at the Anne Wright Wilson Art Gallery on the Georgetown campus and a Silent Auction, with proceeds going to Old Friends, a Kentucky facility for retired thoroughbreds.
“Sharp stripes of shadow lay on the grass, and the dew dancing on the tips of the flowers and leaves made the garden like a mosaic of single sparks not yet formed into one whole. The birds, whose breasts were specked canary and rose, now sang a strain or two together, wildly, like skaters rollicking arm-in-arm, and were suddenly silent, breaking asunder.” Virginia Woolf – The Waves
For more information, contact conference organizer Kristin Czarnecki, assistant professor of English, by mail at Georgetown College, 400 E. College St., Georgetown, KY 40324. Or send her an e-mail.
