Of all the personal essays I’ve written, the one that’s nearest and dearest to my heart has just been published. It’s about the origin of my going-on-25-years history with Virginia Woolf. More than just a fascination with an author or adoption of a muse or mentor, it was the start of what has become the most fulfilling time of my life, and it led to my own writing.
“Pilgrimage” is just released at Bloom, a literary site devoted to authors whose first major work was published when they were age 40 or older. Woolf isn’t one of those authors, but I am. The particular call that I responded to was for essays about a book or author that served as inspiration, so it’s fitting all the way around
Two other essays about other aspects of my Woolfian explorations were previously published:
“Elvis Standing By,”the story of our Rodmell connection–other than Virginia Woolf–was published in Eclectica Magazine in the April/May 2011 issue.
“Cornish Pasty,” the St. Ives chapter, appeared in in Phoebe Journal, Fall 2012.
My friend and neighbor, San Diego and Santa Fe artist Kirby Kendrick, created her blog to inform and educate her readers about art and artists–the big picture. She posts about art history, art’s role in society, and the interplay of all the creative arts, including music and literature.
While you’re there, you may want to look over Kirby’s site–check out KA-POW!, her graffiti-inspired installation–and subscribe to her bi-weekly blog posts. You never know what you might find–she’s written about ballet and basketball, the art of the telephone, understanding cubism, and more.
Two years ago I wrote here about Meg Wolitzer’s Woolf-citing in The Uncoupling. To my surprise and delight, Meg commented on the post, saying that Woolf would appear in her next novel too.
That next novel is now out to fantastic reviews, and no wonder. The Interestings is interesting; it’s also riveting and thought-provoking. Meg had me on the first page when she said of her wonderfully-flawed protagonist, Jules: “Irony was new to her and tasted oddly good, like a previously unavailable summer fruit.”
I’ve always enjoyed Meg’s novels for a lighter touch, lots of wit and whimsy. This one’s bigger and deeper. She introduces six teenagers who meet at an artsy summer camp in New England and follows them into their 50s, through ups and downs, sickness and health, fame and fortune, failure and envy. There’s wit and whimsy and a whole lot more—irony isn’t new to Meg Wolitzer; she’s a master at it.
Through it all—the mainstay of the book—is the deep friendship between Jules and Ash, and Woolf shows up in a scene between them:
Once, looking through a women’s magazine together, they saw an article about a legendary sex toy emporium in New York for women called Eve’s Garden. It wasn’t that their marriages weren’t sexually satisfying to them—both of them had confided that they were—but they got into a discussion about how maybe it was a good idea to have “a vibrator of one’s own, to paraphrase the late, great Virginia Woolf,” Jules said. Then, to amuse Ash, she went off on a Woolf sex riff, saying, suggestively, “Are those rocks in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
The success of The Interestings is well-deserved. Meg, if you’re reading this, thanks for a terrific reading experience.
First, I found this clever three-panel book review of A Room of One’s Own. It’s on the “Classics” tab of the Three Panel Book Review blog whose mission is to “review books in comic strip format.”
Second, Alice Lowe sent along a note about the June 30 NY Times Book Review, which included a review by Hannah Tennant-Moore of Orkney by Amy Sackville:
As in Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes, and The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, the prose in Orkney is so compelling one does not read to find out what happens, but to find out how it will be described.
Third, you can have a “Chat With Virginia Woolf’s Ghost,” a story in Boston’s Metro that publicizes a June fundraising event at Brookline Booksmith featuring local comedians who assume the identities of departed legends of the printed word.”
In the piece, comedienne Jenny Zigrino summons Woolf’s ghost to talk about the event, as well as her feelings about television (she is frantic to watch the final episode of The Office), technology (she bemoans the fact that heaven only has DSL) and who should play her (Scarlett Johansson) and her husband (Vin Disel) in a biographical film.
Fourth, take a look at “Cheese Reads: 10 Amazing Cheeses and Their Literary Counterparts.” In it, Woolf is paired with a Bayley Hazen Blue. The Stitlon-like blue is described as “a mix of narratives – the Mrs. Dalloway of cheeses, if you will…a cheese that will permeate your memory for years.”
Jesse Blair is an editorial assistant for Killing the Angel, the new Woolf-inspired literary journal, so it’s no surprise that she inserts a dialogue about Woolf to introduce the characters in her novella, Lawrence and the Machine.
Lawrence responds to an ad for a room in a house near the New England university where he studies accounting and is taken into the living room to meet its eccentric inhabitants, self-professed intellectuals, in the midst of a discussion about Virginia Woolf:
“I don’t care what you say. The Voyage Out was Woolf’s most groundbreaking work.”
“Are you high?”
“Not anymore.”
“Every Virginia Woolf scholar worth her salt knows that Mrs. Dalloway is her epic success.”
“To the Lighthouse.”
“Oh, please. How clichéd. Your literary opinions embarrass you and your sweet little library degree.”
“The scholars agree! To the Lighthouse revolutionized the modern novel. The Voyage Out was by far Woolf’s least brilliant novel.”
“According to you. Have you ever had an original thought, or do you just read the criticism of others to develop your theories?”
And so it goes, until they notice Lawrence and someone asks his opinion of Woolf’s greatest masterpiece. Lawrence: “Woolf, Woolf … I strained to recall syllabi from my one or two undergraduate literature classes, to no avail. ‘Well…’ I finally improvised. ‘They were all pretty good, weren’t they?’
The story veers off from there into some pretty bizarre territory, well beyond talk, and while Woolf doesn’t make any more appearances, I think she would have approved of the proceedings.
Summer’s coming–here’s one to take to the beach and read in a single outing (but don’t forget the sunscreen).
