You’re washing dishes one evening after work, when you look out the window to see a man allow his two Great Danes to squat on your lawn. While the dogs hover over the grass, the man looks up and sees you. Without changing his expression, he glances away to study the coniferous something or other by your driveway. You watch as the dogs poop and he gathers up their leashes, continuing down the sidewalk. You think, “What the hell?”

But then, it’s time to sit at your computer for your allotted two hours to work on your novel. Yes, look at you, balancing writing with your job, or rather, making this relatively tiny concession after an eight-hour day at the office. Except that you’re too numb from sitting at a desk all day to write. After your two hours are up, you think, foggily, “What the hell?” and go to bed.

The most frequent advice I hear about writing might be summed up as follows: “Evaluate what you’re willing to do and don’t compromise unless absolutely necessary.”  Basically, to have any kind of success as a writer, one must make it a major, if not her main, priority. The fact that this is difficult to do with an ordinary person’s schedule means that many choose to leave writing behind for the stronger allure of regular pay and health benefits.

The tortured poet of our collective imagination leans back from his typewriter, takes a pull from one of the bottles weighing down stacks of papers, and begins to read aloud from the page he just typed. As he speaks, his lips reveal jagged, grey teeth, and we feel certain that the hard alcohol must burn on his gingivitis. No matter how romantic writing may seem, at the end of the day, dental and vision coverage will always be sexier. Maybe you’re not willing to give those things up, and there’s no reason you should have to.

You can be a healthier, happier writer with a few lifestyle changes.

I’ve had the opportunity to speak with a diverse group of writers over the past three months, including Billings journalist Anna Paige, and Danell Jones, author of The Virginia Woolf Writers’ Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing.  In the process of restructuring my life for writing, I found their experiences inspiring and helpful. Though their work has taken them in different directions, most of the people I spoke with discussed a few main points:

1. Look at your job. If it’s getting in the way of your writing, consider reducing your hours or trying a completely different workplace. For instance, if your desk job is killing your back and your writing work ethic, switch things up with a new position that requires you to be physically active so that you can come home ready to put in those long hours at your own desk.

2. Revise your lifestyle. Stress, too little exercise, watching an excessive amount of TV– these are all things that can drain you of creative energy and deaden you to the sense of awareness that you probably need if you want to write well, if at all. By taking care of yourself, you should enjoy a boost to both your writing and your overall quality of life.

3. Recharge your batteries by returning to school. Many graduate schools in the West offer a small environment where your work is more likely to stand out, and great funding packages that enable you to devote your entire energy to writing rather than agonizing over how you’re going to pay for it. Also, an MFA program will give you a chance to focus on your writing for two to three years at at time.

4. Support writers whose work you respect. Watch them on Facebook. Attend their readings. Help spread the word by recommending them to friends. Developing a strong, personal connection with your writing community is a great way to make contacts, stay motivated, and advance your own professional writing career while helping others succeed.

Whatever you do, find a way to make that time at your word processor count. Because one morning you’ll be late for work, cutting across the lawn to your car, when your foot sinks into a massive, glistening turd, and your automatic response will be that weary blend of confusion and despair, the “What the hell?” that might as well be “I give up”–and even a first-class set of teeth can’t make up for that vague sense of having come so close to something better, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the crap on your shoe.

“To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heart-breaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm’s way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin. And so, if one reads Mr. Lucas, Mr. Lynd, or Mr. Squire in the bulk, one feels that a common greyness silvers everything. They are as far removed from the extravagant beauty of Walter Pater as they are from the intemperate candour of Leslie Stephen. Beauty and courage are dangerous spirits to bottle in a column and a half; and thought, like a brown paper parcel in a waistcoat pocket, has a way of spoiling the symmetry of an article. It is a kind, tired, apathetic world for which they write, and the marvel is that they never cease to attempt, at least, to write well.”—Virginia Woolf, “The Modern Essay”

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

-Abbie Hoffman

Hello, world! We are the Urchins. Welcome to our website. We’re just your average, run-of-the-mill starving artist revolutionaries taking our movement to the internet in hopes of reaching millions. We’re young, poor, and in love with the world. And we know we can’t be alone. Urchins are everywhere. See that skinny kid in the corner reading a well-loved copy of Ulysses? Probably an Urchin. Remember that graffiti of an excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own you pass on your way home? Probably the work of an Urchin. And that person at your local bookstore who keeps moving his favourite books to the front of the displays? Definitely an Urchin.

Urchins of the world, our time has come! Let us rise up and with one slightly superior voice cry out, ‘Revolution!’

“For there she was.”

Maybe because of the helter-skelter pace of this book and the way it ricochets from character to character, this ending had so much power.  Literally, I felt a jolt of energy as I read that line.  The book, the story, just clicks shut.  As though suddenly the lights went out or the door slammed shut.

It was a complicated book, overall. I haven’t had to devote such energy to every single word of a novel in a long time.  This wasn’t because it was complicated and tricky, like Nabokov, but because it was just confusing as hell.  Stream of consciousness (which, apparently, this novel is technically NOT, because it uses a third person voice? leave the literary hoo-ha to the professors, if that’s the case.  this was a bloody stream of consciousness if I’ve ever seen one) has always frightened me a little – I’ve never read Ulysses, either – and this was my first real time getting into it.  Dalloway has, effectively, sat on my shelf because of this until now (when I had to read it for class!  hooray!).

I can’t really say whether or not I liked the book.  The stuff with Septimus and his eventual suicide (did I mention I’m giving up on my spoiler policy?  at least for older books – I say there’s a two year statute of limitations on a novel’s twists.  Unless it is a MAJOR NOVEL like the Harry Potter books or a new Stephen King.  Then, its a month.) just didn’t really seem necessary to me.  I mean, that subplot was interesting in its own way but it never felt really important.  PTSD (or “shell shock”) is a major issue, even in today’s society, and the fact that doctors didn’t really know how to address it back then… well, that’s important.  But if it is THAT important, give him more depth.  More page time.  More anything – he just seemed like a peripheral somebody who became vaguely important because his death makes Clarissa realize that life is, in fact, important.

Speaking of Clarissa, I wanted more time with her.  The scenes with her were the most (in my mind) energetic and the ones that felt the most like life.  The beginning of the novel felt so different from the end; I think mainly because we’d been away from Clarissa as the focal point of the narrative and then WHAM the party and suddenly we’re remembering her.  Its an “oh yeahhh” kind of moment.

So, okay, I read it.  Its one of those “important works” checked off of my list.  The ending is masterful and incredibly vivid in my mind, which is a plus.  There are some great quotes, too.  However, in the end, I just can’t get wildly excited about this book.  I’d like to read some more Woolf, to get a second impression, but this one – well, it was just okay.  I do want to re-read The Hours now, though.

Today I want to share with you a beautiful farewell letter. Farewell letters are usually very touching but not necessarily something one would consider beautiful literary excerpts. But take a look yourselves:

“I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I can’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.“

Source:  Woman of letters: a life of Virginia Woolf by Phyllis Rose.

My review of Girl With A Pearl Earring has recently been linked to a book list. While I appreciate the link, I must admit it has stirred up in me some unintended ripples.  It’s the title of the list:  ‘101 Books Every Woman Should Read’.

Now I’m always wary about books that are labeled and geared towards one gender.  Like recently I came across a book entitled 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go… makes you wonder what exactly they’re luring you into. Imagine a book called 100 Places Every Man Should Go…

Anyway, back to the list of books every woman should read.  The range is eclectic with the titles neatly categorized.

Just let me list a sample from each of the categories:

The Classics: Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Howards End by E. M. Forster, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf…

Children’s Literature:  Pippi Longstockings by Astrid Lindgren, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll…

Books into Movies:  The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen…

Books Featuring Familial Relationships:  The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Away by Jane Urquhart…

Books Celebrating the Strength of Women:  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn, Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen…

Current Literature:  Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen…

Books about Finding Oneself:  Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers…

Stories of Real Women: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou,  Amelia: A Life of the Aviation Legend by Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe by Laurie Lisle…

Banned or Challenged Books:  Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Of Mice and Men by John Steinback, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

Non-Fiction: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey, On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross,  A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf…

You get my point.  Sounds like any typical high school and college reading list, but why specify women?

Yes, they’re mostly written by women authors, and many with strong female protagonists.  They depict the journey of self-discovery, of overcoming odds, of seeking meaningful relationships and ideals in a hostile world.  In the non-fiction section there are influential books that have achieved significance in the area of writing, psychology, environmentalism, social justice.

But my query is:  If these books depict the inner journey of women, or portray the poignant reality of their struggles, if they have shed any light on the human race in terms of equality, justice, or existential meaning, are these not all the more reasons for men, or anyone, to read them?

Of course, for the sake of argument, one could point out that the statement “books every woman should read” doesn’t preclude that men should not.  But that’s just being contentious.

Books for women, books for men, why can’t books be just books?  Maybe it has to do with the writing of books, or, step back further, society’s view on male and female authors.

Posting on the Guardian blog, writer and editor Harriet Evans vehemently declares that:

“I’m fed up with seeing some of our best novelists written off as ‘chick lit’ — you don’t see the same belittling line taken with male writers…

It winds me up that books about young women are seen as frivolous and silly, while books about young men’s lives that cover the same topics, are reviewed and debated, seen as valid and interesting contributions to the current social and media scene.

And regarding the reading public, it has been noted that women read more than men, both in the U.S. and the U.K.  With that in mind, Evans goes on to state that:

The truth is, women happily read books (and watch films and TV) aimed primarily at men…. They read thrillers, travel books, biographies – and yet the majority of these books are marketed for men… But men rarely try women’s fiction, because they’ve been conditioned to think they can’t pick up a book with a pink cover.”

Indeed, worthy literature written by women authors are sometimes reduced to ‘romance’ or ‘chick lit’.  Jane Austen is a prime example.  Her incisive social satires, eloquent writing and sense of humor have often been swept aside while the romantic union of the protagonists at the end is given the main focus.  In this way, her work is conveniently labeled as ‘chick lit’, dreaded by male readers, until some brave souls dare to take up the challenge and are floored by her relevance and intelligence.

Virginia Woolf sharply observes in her Cambridge lecture series compiled in A Room Of One’s Own that historically, social norm has always been one that coops up women in the domestic while offering men the world.

Taking her view further, I can understand why the dichotomy, however arbitrary, in male and female writing, their difference in subject matters, subsequently, books for men and books for women.

I have a feeling that if the protagonist of The Catcher In The Rye is called Helen Caulfield, the book could well be dismissed as another trivial version of teen angst, schoolgirl blues, fussing over boys and growing up.  And likely we won’t see it on any reading list.

Clarice Lispector, 1961- foto Claudia Andujar

“What the legendary soccer player Pelé is to sport in Brazil, the author ´Clarice´ is to that country’s literary culture. Stunningly brilliant, beautiful and enigmatic, the daughter of Russian-Jewish émigrés achieved instant celebrity at the age of 23 with the publication of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart.” This is how Amazon book reviewer Lauren Nemroff introduced Clarice Lispector in “Amazon Best of the Month, August 2009“ referring to Benjamin Moser’s biography Why This World.

Benjamin Moser. Photo: Tessa Posthuma de Boer

Whilst Pelé may have been “stunningly brilliant”, it may be stretching the analogy too far with the descriptions of “beautiful and enigmatic”, which Clarice certainly was. She has even been described as, “that rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf.” (Salamon, J. (March 11, 2005). An Enigmatic Author Who Can Be Addictive. New York: New York Times).

Of Moser´s Biography Nemroff said, “Now, after years of research on three continents, drawing on previously unknown manuscripts and dozens of interviews, Benjamin Moser demonstrates how Lispector’s art was directly connected to her turbulent life.” and, “Benjamin Moser’s, Why This World makes up for this long drought by offering a detailed and dramatic biography of Lispector’s incredible life and times. Based on new interviews with family and friends, recovered manuscripts, and other fresh sources, Moser crafts a moving and tangible portrait of the famously inscrutable Clarice.”

The New Biography

Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), is recognized as one of Latin America´s greatest writers and is only now being discovered by English readers, surprising given that “Clarice’s beauty, genius, and eccentricity intrigued Brazil virtually from her adolescence.”

Born into a Jewish family amidst the horrors of post-World War I Ukraine, Chaka Lispector was to escape to Brazil in 1922 and be re-named Clarice. She was to spend many if her early years living a humble existence in Northeast Brazil. First in Macaeio, Alagoas, then three years later in the Jewish neighborhood of Boa Vista in Recife, Pernambuco, where a monument to her exists today.

Whilst in Recife, her mother died (1930) at the age of forty-two, when Clarice was nine years old. Her father continued to struggle economically, but Clarice was still able to attend the Colégio Hebreo-Idisch-Brasileiro, which taught Hebrew and Yiddish in addition to the usual subjects. In 1932, she gained admission to the Ginásio Pernambucano, the most prestigious secondary school in the state at the time. A year later, she “consciously claimed the desire to write.”

In 1935, Pedro Lispector decided to move his family to the then-capital, Rio de Janeiro, where he hoped to find greater prosperity for them. There Clarice became a law student seeking justice for prisoners and then a journalist.

Around 1943, around the time of her marriage to a diplomat she published her first book, the critically acclaimed Near to the Wild Heart. Success in her career was not reflected in her challenging family and personal life. She had a longtime love for the homosexual poet Lúcio Cardoso among others, and one of her sons was diagnosed as schizophrenic fostering a growing sense of isolation in her.

Several of Lispectors works relate to her time in Northeast Brazil. Perhaps most famous of them was her last novel,  The Hour of the Star, whose main character Macabéa, a poor typist from Alagoas who is lost and isolated in Rio de Janeiro. This character, one of the most famous in Brazilian literature, has a name that refers to the Maccabees, and represents one of the very few explicit Jewish references in her work. The book focuses on Brazilian poverty and being marginalized.

Soon after The Hour of the Star was published, Lispector was diagnosed as having inoperable ovarian cancer. She died on the eve of her 57th birthday and was buried on December 11, 1977, at the Jewish Cemetery of Cajú in Rio de Janeiro.

Benjamin Moser will be signing copies of his biography at Livraria Cultura bookshop in Recife on Saturday 28th November from 7.30pm

The author gratefully acknowledges the many sources that were consulted in the writing of this article.  While they provide the foundation, the interpretation and opinion are entirely those of the author.

Paul Barnett is Founder of Recife Guide.

Sitting in a corner at a Chicago Starbuck’s, waiting for the Art Institute of Chicago to open, Josephine Baker is on my mind, as is the bisexuality of many infamous seducers and female icons. Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Josephine Baker, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keefe, Virginia Woolf… many many writers. It’s as if artistic sensibility makes what has been dubbed sexual deviation acceptable… but much more so for women. The women I write of were powerful, the masses hungered for them, and from the way history wrote them, few were shocked or scandalized by their sexuality. And yet, if Lindsay Lohan is in what’s clearly a complex relationship with a woman, it stirs a media frenzy… not necessarily a negative one, but still, why all the excitement? This isn’t a complete thought, but it is something my Phoeber and I were discussing last night. The straight community sees bisexuality as an outlet of heterosexuality, conducive to threesomes. The gay community often treats it as a step out of the closet for one who wants to maintain heterosexual privilege. It’s an odd conundrum that the quote about Baker toes:

From Wikipedia (Josephine baker article):

There also is evidence to support that she was bisexual. In the book about her life, titled Josephine: The Hungry Heart written by her son and author Jean-Claude Baker, he states that she was involved in numerous lesbian affairs, both while she was single and married, and he mentions six of her female lovers by name. Clara Smith, Evelyn Sheppard, Bessie Allison, Ada “Bricktop” Smith, and Mildred Smallwood were all African-American women she met while touring on the black performing circuit early in her career. She was also involved with writer Colette, and possibly with Caroline Dudley Reagan, who ran the Paris extravaganza La Revue Nègre. Not mentioned, but confirmed since, was her affair with Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Baker wrote that affairs with women were not uncommon with Josephine throughout her lifetime.

Despite the fact that he was her son, Jean-Claude Baker interviewed over 2,000 people while writing his book. He was quoted in one interview as saying, “She was what today you would call bisexual, and I will tell you why. Forget that I am her son, I am also a historian. You have to put her back into the context of the time in which she lived. In those days, Chorus Girls were abused by the white or black producers and by the leading men if he liked girls. But they could not sleep together because there were not enough hotels to accommodate black people. So they would all stay together, and the girls would develop lady lover friendships, do you understand my English? But wait wait…If one of the girls by preference was gay, she’d be called a bull dyke by the whole cast. So you see, descrimination is everywhere.”

Julian Humphries - with Nettie R. Harris

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.” From A Room Of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

I wrote a paper on this book for class comparing Mrs. Ramsay to Emma Woodhouse. It makes sense just to put the paper on the post. As a book, I really enjoyed it. It was a bit slow, and I didn’t know what was going on the entire time, but I left the book and I left class after we discussed the book feeling good. It has so much to offer the literary community, if for no other reason than simply the complexity of the characters.

Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen both can be considered feminist writers because of what they write and because of the audience they’re writing to. Austen’s main character is an unmarried woman who holds emotional and social power in her house. Woolf also writes a woman of power within a family. Both of these women hold together those close to them. Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf are very different writers. The control that Austen gives her women is more subtle and undercut within the home. They are still quite domestic. That being said, the fact that both the writers as well as both of the protagonists are women is the driving factor in their personalities. While their situations are very different, Mrs. Ramsay and Emma Woodhouse are similar both in the way they view others and in the way they view themselves.

Mrs. Ramsay and Emma are both “fixers.” That is, they both find personal comfort in solving the problems of those around them. Emma, in particular, attempts to “fix” Harriet by matching her up with Mr. Elton. She completely ignores Harriet’s increasing feelings for Mr. Martin because Emma does not see Mr. Martin at a suitable level of society. It appears that she doesn’t see Harriet at a suitable level of society, either; she intends Harriet to marry above her position in order to climb the social ladder. In this way, Emma seeks to “fix” Harriet doubly with one match-up: marrying her to the right man would not only see that Harriet is cared for but also raise her in the social circle.

Emma’s motives for Harriet’s marrying Mr. Elton are not just for Harriet’s benefit. E. Margaret Moore, author of “Emma and Miss Bates: Early Experiences of Separation and the Theme of Dependency in Jane Austen’s Novels,” suggests that although Emma does not see herself as emotionally dependent on other people, her surrounding herself with people that are dependent suggests otherwise. Moore states that Emma illustrates “emotional dependency to the extent that they are capable of love” (578).

Emma tries hard to match Harriet with a suitable man for two reasons. The first is that she does not want Harriet to end up a poor unmarried woman. Aside from the fact that in that day both unmarried women and poverty were both looked down upon, Austen creates Miss Bates to offer an image of what would happen to Harriet if she did not marry up: Miss Bates is both unmarried and poor. The second reason is that by helping Harriet, Emma deflects anxiety about the fact that she is unmarried herself.

It is not only romantically but also socially that Emma asserts herself by helping others. Her father relies on her for company, especially after Miss Taylor, Emma’s governess, marries Mr. Weston and moves out of the house. Also, Emma feels that she is benefiting Miss Bates simply by spending time with her and offering her charity.

Mrs. Ramsay’s situation is very different from Emma Woodhouse’s. She is married, she has a family, and she spends her entire life attending to the needs of her friends and family. Every conscious thought she has is for her husband or children.

On the surface, the obvious similarity between Emma and Mrs. Ramsay is their desire to match up those around them. And, for both of them, their desire to see their loved ones paired off is greater than their ability to pair their loved ones off. Emma tries unsuccessfully with Harriet and Mr. Elton, and Mrs. Ramsay tries with Paul and Minta. She also dreams of Lily Briscoe and William Bankes pairing up. It seems at first that her idea of Paul and Minta together would be unsuccessful. In fact, Mrs Ramsay only knows them as a successful match. However, in “The Lighthouse,” the reader learns that Paul was keeping a mistress.

However, their match-making hobby is not the only similarity between Emma and Mrs. Ramsay. If Emma surrounds herself with people that need her, then Mrs. Ramsay does ten-fold. But, like Emma, Mrs. Ramsay’s reasons for emotionally providing for her family and friends is more psychological than simply humanitarian values. Her identity is completely wrapped up in her family and friends. She is nothing without them around.

Woolf demonstrates Mrs. Ramsay’s desire to help with people and creates an obsession out of it. At the end of “The Window,” during the dinner party, William Bankes mentions to Mrs. Ramsay how well the Mannings were doing. Mrs. Ramsay, who also knows the Mannings, is a little taken aback that they’re succeeding in life even without Mrs. Ramsay involved. For the first time, Mrs Ramsay is faced with the reality that she isn’t necessarily needed in a person’s life.

Emma Woodhouse and Mrs. Ramsay both highlight behaviors that everyone–specifically ever woman–deals with to some extent. But while we all seek to create harmony, both Woolf and Austen would argue that we seek to benefit the lives of those around us just as much for our own selves as for others. Through Emma and Mrs. Ramsay we get an intimate picture of our own unconscious, largely because we’re made so aware of it when we see it in them.

Moore, E. Margaret. “Emma and Miss Bates: Early Experiences of Separation and Theme of Dependency in Jane Austen’s Novels.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 9.4. Housten: Rice University. 1969.

To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf. Harvest Books (1927). ISBN: 0156907399

(Taking a break from narcissismy vacation-related posts…)

Back in August I posted about my first experience with Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and it sparked off a burst of creative thought among my new-found blogging friends, Claire, Emily, and Frances, among others. We agreed that a read-a-long of several other books by Woolf was called for, and picked January as the month to do business. The idea has been in the back of my mind since then, and has shaped my vague reading plans for the new year. Claire, who planted the initial idea in our heads, got on the ball this week and what began as a reminder has blossomed into a full fledged group-read, spanning two months, four books, and three glamorous hosts + myself (the somewhat terrified newbie).

Frances and Emily have already posted beautiful invitations and explanations at their respective blogs, and the response has been huge – and hugely exciting.

The reading schedule looks like this, with each book being hosted by one of the four of us:

Sarah – Mrs. Dalloway (January 15th)

Emily – To the Lighthouse (January 29)

Frances – Orlando (February 12)

Claire – The Waves (February 26)

We’re encouraging participants to join us for one, two, or all of the books, or just chime in on the discussions if you’ve already read the books. Frances and Emily are self-termed Woolf ‘geeks’ and ‘dorks’, so the experience lies with them, while I’ve only read one book by the author and Claire is about to venture into the world of Woolf for the first time. There’s plenty of room here for any kind of reader. Please join us!

As I’ll be the first host up to bat, it would be super helpful if those who are planning to join for Mrs. Dalloway, specifically, would raise their hands! I’ll be starting a list.

Can’t wait to read with ya’ll!

………….

Here’s the tentative list of people who have shown interest in Mrs. Dalloway specifically, or have signed up for all four books. If I’ve left anyone out, please shout! And of course no one is held to anything by being listed here. It’s really just to help me keep track.

Amy – The House of the Seven Tails
Amy – New Century Reading
Andi – Tripping Toward Lucidity
Anthony – Times Flow Stemmed
Bellezza – Dolce Bellezza
Care – Care’s Online Book Club
Claire – Kiss a cloud
Ds – third-storey window
Emily – Evening All Afternoon
EL Fay – This Book and I Could Be Friends
Eva – A Striped Armchair
Frances – Nonsuch Book
Jackie – Farmlanebooks Book Blog
JoAnn – Lakeside Musing
J. S. Payton – BiblioAddict
Karen – BookBath
Lena – Save Ophelia
Lu – Regular Rumination
Mark David – Absorbed in Words
Rebecca – Rebecca Reads
Richard – Caravana de recuerdos
Sandy – You’ve GOTTA read this!
Simon – Savidge Reads
uncertainprinciples – another cookie crumbles
Vasilly – 1330v
Victoria – Views from the Page and the Oven
Violet – Manila Folder

Hello!  I apologize in advance for the lengthiness of this post!  I just have a lot to say because last weekend I sadly missed the Sunday Salon, but for a good reason.  I was celebrating my birthday and all the wonderful birthday comments just made my day!  Thank you everyone who left me a message   There are just a couple of outstanding reviews that I’m having trouble finding inspiration for, so I am just going to do a few mini reviews to catch up.

Push (Precious) by Sapphire: I saw the trailer for the movie “Precious” a couple weeks ago and really want to see the movie.  I picked this up at the store and read it in one sitting (yes, I confess, I’m one of those people that sits in bookstores and reads!  I can’t help it).  It’s part poetry, part narrative about the life of Precious, a teenager who is pregnant for the second time by her father.  Her mother, also physically and sexually abusive, claims the children for her own to get more money from the government, but does nothing to help raise them.  Precious, overweight and 16 years old in the 8th grade, is kicked out of school for being pregnant.  But the guidance counselor, feeling guilty for robbing Precious of her education, leads her to a special school for people who need help learning to read to get their GED.  There she is inspired to not only learn to read, but write about her life.  Push is what she writes.  It’s a really moving and upsetting novel, but one that everyone should read.  Highly recommended.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

Ash by Malinda Lo is another book that I read a while back, but never got around to reviewing.  I really enjoyed it.  Ash is a retelling of Cinderella in which Ash, as she is called, does not fall for the handsome prince, but his beautiful, strong-willed Huntress.  The fairytale is extended even further than that to create a world that is unique and well-formed.  Ash’s desire to be with a woman and the reciprocation of that desire is not perceived as abnormal in this world, it is accepted and approved of.  It is a hopeful look at what our own world could look like one day, maybe without the fairies and huntresses and kings and princes.  Though I wouldn’t mind some fairies.  Lo had me convinced from page one, and I think this is a great read.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

I read and loved Life as We Knew It, the first book in the Moon Trilogy by Susan Beth Pfeffer a few months ago, so I was really looking forward to reading The Dead and the Gone.  Well, I would start it, and then I would put it down.  Then I would pick it up again and give it another shot, but I never did get into it.  Finally one day I sat down and made myself finish it.  It was… okay.  The things that were re-hashed from Life as We Knew It felt just like that, instead of feeling new in a different setting.  Everything was the same, but not as good.  I think that the diary format worked really well, and I would have liked to see that again.  Though perhaps it would have seemed even more repetitive.  The characters were particularly unmemorable and I didn’t understand them.  I did appreciate a broader look at the situation and a different religious reaction to the event.  There were things that I seemed to remember happening to New York in the first book that didn’t happen in the second one.  I might be making that up, but I had that sense the whole time.  Overall, I was disappointed, but I’m still going to read the third one in the series.  It was not an awful read and it was a decent continuation of the series.  I find that the second book is usually my least favorite (exception: Chamber of Secrets), so I’m still looking forward to number three!

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

There are just a few words to describe this graphic novel: weird, mind trip, bizarre, strange, maybe-awesome.  I say maybe, because I honestly have ZERO idea what happened here, but I think I liked it.  Plus, I really can’t wait to read more Gilbert Hernandez.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

The only reason that I’m not doing a full review of this book is that I read it during read-a-thon and I just don’t think I could do it justice!  It was awesome, amazing and an excellent follow-up to The Knife of Never Letting Go.  I really really really really really (5 reallys, at least) can’t wait to read the next one.  Thank you Patrick Ness, for creating this world.  It’s wonderful and I love every minute of it.  But MAN, everyone in this book made me want to climb in the pages and give them a good face slap for being STUPID.  It was realistic and I can totally see how they would have made the mistakes they did but I must have screamed, out loud, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” several times.  Making She jump and stare at me.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

WHEW.  Glad I got those off my chest!  Hope you found something good there to read!

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In other news, Frances of nonsuch book and Emily of Evening All Afternoon have announced Woolf in Winter, a read along where we will be reading four Virginia Woolf books in January and February.  Hello!  Isn’t that the most beautiful button you’ve ever seen?  I can’t wait.  I’ve already put all of the books on request at the library, one on audio, and I might add in a reading of A Room of One’s Own because I happen to have it and want to add it to the list.  Here is the schedule:

• Sarah – Mrs. Dalloway (January 15)
  

  “Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.”

• Emily – To the Lighthouse (January 29)
  

  “So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay’s work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in the air. Naturally, if one’s days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds so to do), naturally one could not be judged like an ordinary person.”

• Frances – Orlando (February 12)
  

  “But, above all, he had, he told Orlando, sensations in his spine which defied description. There was one knob about the third from the top which burnt like fire; another about the second from the bottom which was cold as ice. Sometimes he woke with a brain like lead; at others it was as if a thousand wax tapers were alight and people were throwing fireworks inside him. He could feel a rose leaf through his mattress, he said; and knew his way almost about London by the feel of the cobbles. Altogether he was a piece of machinery so finely made and so curiously put together (here he raised his hand as if unconsciously and indeed, it was of the finest shape imaginable) that it confounded him to think that he had only sold five hundred copies of his poem, but that of course was largely due to the conspiracy against him. All he could say, he concluded, banging his fist upon the table, was that the art of poetry was dead in England.”

• Claire – The Waves (February 26)
  

  “I shall walk on the moor. The great horses of the phantom riders will thunder behind me and stop suddenly. I shall see the swallow skim the grass. I shall throw myself on a bank by the river and watch the fish slip in and out among the reeds. The palms of my hands will be printed with pine-needles. I shall there unfold and take out whatever it is I have made here; something hard. For something has grown in me here, through the winters and summers, on staircases, in bedrooms. I do not want, as Jinny wants, to be admired. I do not want people, when I come in, to look up with admiration. I want to give, and to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.”

I might not finish them all, but I can’t wait to dive right in.  Thank you for organizing this!  I love you all!  (I might just have huge, secret blog-crushes on ya.)  That I guess aren’t so secret anymore?

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I’m sad I didn’t get the information about the Book Blogger Holiday Swap out sooner, but I wanted to send a thank you to all the organizers and participants for all the hard work you’re doing!  Thanks so much guys, I’m super excited!

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Well, thanks for reading all that, kids.  I know it was a long one!  Today I’ll be reading Under the Skin, The Pluto Files and some stuff for school.  What will you be reading?

We linked earlier this week to Ariel Levy’s New Yorker review of Leslie Sanchez’s and Gail Collins’ new books (respectively, You’ve Come A Long Way, Maybe and When Everything Changed).  In the article, Levy discussed why feminism is so divisive today, and compared the two books, Collins’ (which I am currently reading) looks back fondly to second-wave feminism, while the other (which Amelia reviewed for Equal Writes a week ago) openly describes feminists as “obnoxious.”

In the New Yorker’s book bench section, they asked Levy for some background reading on the subject – a feminist reading list, if you will.  A few of Levy’s responses: Susan Brownmiller’s In Our Time: A Memoir of the Revolution, and Andrea Dworkin’s memoir Heartbreak.

It’s a good question for all feminists – so what’s on your feminist reading list?  Here are some of our bloggers’ answers:

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux: “I always tell people to read Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s wonderful gender-bending novel, and I just read Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider and can’t get over how awesome it is.”

Anne Frances Durfee: “The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts – it seriously changed my life.”

Chloe Angyal: The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf, and Michael Kimmel’s Guyland.

Jordan Kisner: “To Be Real, a DEFINITE feminist must-read. an anthology of essays edited by Rebecca Walker (Alice Walker’s daughter).”

What are your favorite feminist books?

“Cuando estuve en Berlín hace cuatro años – decía el escritor polaco Witold Gombrowicz en su última entrevista grabada para la emisión“La Bibliothéque de Poche” en 1969 – me invitaron a una escuela para escritores; y me pidieron que pronunciase un discurso. Dije:”Lo primero que tenéis que hacer, si es que queréis ser escritores, es salir de aquí por las puertas o por las ventanas, da igual, pero huid en seguida, porque no se puede aprender a ser escritor y no se os puede dar ningún consejo, como tampoco se pueda dar instrucción a un escritor… El escritor no existe, todo el mundo es escritor, todo el mundo sabe escribir. Si se escribe una carta a la novia, se hace literatura; incluso diré más: cuando se habla o se cuenta una anécdota, se hace literatura, siempre es lo mismo. Por lo tanto, pensar que la literatura es una especialidad, una profesión, es una inexactitud. Todos somos escritores. Hay personas que no han escrito en toda su vida y, de golpe, hacen su obra maestra. Los otros son profesionales, que escriben cuatro libros al año y publican cosas horribles. Un poeta polaco decía: “A veces me sucede que soy poeta”. Creo que la frase es acertada y que debiera decir: “A veces me sucede que soy artista”. Pero no entiendo qué quiere decir artista o escritor de profesión. El hombre se expresa y lo hace por todos los medios, baila o canta, o pinta o hace literatura. Lo que importa es ser alguien, para expresar lo que uno es, ¿no creen? Pero la profesión de escritor, no, no existe…Hoy las cosas se han complicado falsamente, es un intelectualismo para mí de poca calidad, que busca las cosas, las paradojas, las novedades y todo lo que se quiera, pero que olvida las cosas esenciales. Creo que la literatura debiera volver a su forma de vida de hace, tal vez, cuarenta o cincuenta años, porque todo lo que se ha hecho desde entonces es muy sospechoso y ha dado muy malos resultados”. (“Autobiografía sucinta, textos y entrevistas”) ( Cuadernos Anagrama).

Estas palabras quizá sorprendentes, quizá sensatas y sabias, equilibran los platillos de la balanza sobre la asignatura del “aprender a escribir”. Como he recordado en un artículo reciente, esta asignatura se imparte hoy en muy diversos lugares.” En la Universidad de Columbia, por ejemplo – decía allí -, hay todo un curso para creadores que abarca desde Homero y Sófocles hasta Virginia Woolf y cualquier lectura reposada de un aspirante a escritor le mostrará hasta dónde llegó la sensibilidad y qué formas exteriores se aplicaron para narrar la esencia de la vida”. Tabucchi, entre muchos otros, ha confesado que “escribir no es una profesión, pero es seguramente un oficio, en su acepción más artesanal del término. Hay escritores que mitifican el talento, la inspiración y, seguramente, todo esto, junto al deseo y la imaginación, son cosas muy importantes. Pero la verdad  también es que es necesario estar sentado mucho tiempo, es necesario escribir, trabajar, hacerlo como el relojero que instala la pieza minúscula en el mecanismo del reloj que fabrica. Y cuando jóvenes escritores me piden consejo, me niego a dárselo. O más bien, les doy uno solo: si hay algún artesano en vuestro barrio, pasad por la tarde antes de que cierre y miradle cómo trabaja…”

En las clases de creación que he impartido durante años siempre me gustó hablar desde el principio de libertad creadora. Y leía estas palabras escritas por Goya y colocadas en el monumento que le dedicara Vaquero Turcios, situado en el Parque del Oeste de Madrid, cerca del río.

“En la enseñanza de la pintura/

hay que dejar en plena libertad

correr el genio del alumno/

sin oprimirlo/

ni torcer su inclinación/

a éste o aquel estilo/

No hay regla en la pintura: /

lo mismo que la poesía/

Escoge en el universo/

aquello que encuentra/

más apropiado a sus fines“.

Creo que ésta es la primera lección.

(Imágenes:- 2.- 295  Diary: Aug 12 th.-1984.-Tetsuya Noda.-Andrew Bae Gallery.-Chicago.-artnet/ 3.-” Ritratto d´uomo in atto di scrivere” .-Giovanni Carnovali.-1840.-Galleria Nazionale d´arte moderna)

La scrittrice ci fa capire come passa il tempo nella quotidianità di tutti i giorni e la semplicità che ci circonda. Il volume è diviso in tre, proprio per suddividere il tempo: passato, presente e futuro. Questi tre tempi riesce a contrapporli in modo da non lasciarne qualcuno in sospeso.

Ci si presenta la famiglia Ramsay.  La moglie è il punto forte della famiglia. Quando il padre ha delle debolezze sa di poter contare sull’appoggio della moglie. Nello stesso tempo c’è un odio che percorre la vita quotidiana di questa famiglia: uno dei figli piu piccoli non riesce proprio ad amare il padre e infatti cerca di ucciderlo.

Con degli amici decidono di andare a fare una gita fino al faro. Per il figlio più piccolo è un luogo di sogni.  La gita però non è possibile farla a causa del maltempo e viene rimandata. Peccato che dopo 10 anni la loro dimora vada in rovina e molte persone della famiglia muoiano.

È rimasta in sospeso la gita al farò che incuriosisce i sopravvissuti, i quali affrontano questa esperienza. Nel tragitto i figli si aspettano un comportamento diverso dal padre e invece ritrovano il padre che li riempie di complimenti…

Federica Finizio

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.

The conference, which will be held in the Thomas & King Leadership and Conference Center at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky, is set for June 3 to 6.

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.

. . . of Virginia Woolf? Certainly not I. In continuing with my theme of honoring my favorite writers during NaNoWriMo, today’s honoree is Virginia Woolf. I have to credit Woolf for teaching me how to write, for I did my best as a sophomore in high school to mimic her writing after reading A Room of One’s Own; I admired her so. Even as a teacher, I firmly believe that one can only be taught so much about writing; the rest comes from reading good writing and drawing one’s inspiration there. From Woolf, I learned the craft of constructing complex sentences, the ability to choose precise words, and the employment of oh-so-subtle irony into my writing. In addition to having killer construction, Woolf also tells a damn good tale within each of her novel’s pages. For heaven’s sake, she tells the story of Orlando, its title character a 17th Century nobleman who, quite literally overnight, wakes up as a woman. Though Orlando ages only 36 years, the novel spans four centuries and chronicles not only changing gender roles over the course of these centuries, but also the birth and slow death with ambiguous remnants of Victorianism in England. Woolf herself was ambivilant toward the society that both bound and freed her, and this theme runs throughout most of her novels. She was the first feminist writer I read that was not a blatant misandrist, but rather advocated for women’s equality through calm logic and subtle irony. This was the kind of femist for whom I was searching, for, though I claim to hate men when I have PMS or one of them pisses me off, in general, they’re very nice people. And Woolf herself has often said that it was her husband who “saved her;” he was the one to keep her stable enough to produce the works we have to enjoy.

Cheers to Virginia Woolf; be not afraid.

Virginia Woolf: 1882-1941

“It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.”

The idea of space is perhaps the most interesting feature found in Virginia Woolf’s essay The Death of the Moth. Writing from the comforts of the enclosed, inside world, Woolf looks out her window with casual delight, observing the activities of a “pleasant morning” in September (Woolf 343). A small moth steals her attention away from her work. As she slowly watches the grueling scene of its death, something changes. Her world is suddenly different. In a sense, the episode with the moth brings Woolf to a place where the boundaries of space shift away from the traditional binaries of the inside and outside, and of human and non-human. The essay begins to navigate itself away from these traditional divisions as if looking for something more, a definition of space that is more inclusive. This loss of stability forces Woolf to re-imagine her sense of place. By incorporating the moth from the outside world and the windowpane from the inside world, The Death of the Moth suggests a construction of a third space, a place where the boundaries of human and non-human space collide. Such an interpretation inherently challenges the traditional binary of the human/nature by dismantling its divisive structure.

In regards to the first space, the human space of the inside, The Death of the Moth represents a work by in which absence constructs setting. How big the room might be, where it might be, and what objects might be in the room, are all unknowns. With no descriptions of the first space, we are left with only inferences for evidence of its existence; there exists a world outside, therefore there must also exist a world inside. The absence of description, while serving to bring all of our attention to whatever is other, also serves to stabilize the inherent division between inside and outside spaces. If absence serves to characterize the first space, the emptiness contrasts against the vividness of the outside world, the second space. This idea of lack, in a Lacanian sense, constructs the first space as a place that can never be whole.

While emptiness can be seen as constituting the first space, Woolf dots the essay with vivid sketches the outside world. But this second is far from stable. The instability of the second space is best described as a shift from a state of “animation” to a state of “stillness and quiet” (345). In the beginning of the essay, the second space is described in delightful detail. Woolf first describes the second space seasonally, commenting that “It was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breathe than that of the summer months” (343). A marked difference from the hollowness of the first space, Woolf’s descriptions of life in the second are filled with a sense of exuberance and activity. A place where animals hold “annual festivities”, the second space is filled with descriptions of ploughs, rooks, horses, and other “vigorous” activities (343-444).

The traditional binary that exists between the first and second space are disrupted with the introduction of the third space. On its base level, the third space represents a place where the human and non-human worlds collide. Woolf’s third space is a fusion; part windowpane, and part moth, the third space exists apart from the first and second space, but inherently connected to each. Incorporated from the first space, the windowpane is both literally and figuratively the lens by which perception passes through. It is through the windowpane that reality presents itself to her as both “animated” and “still” (345). Acting as a medium between spaces, the windowpane facilitates the interaction between Woolf and the second space.

Described as neither “gay like butterflies nor similar to their own species” (343), the moth in front of Woolf exists as a sort of anomaly. “Moths that fly by day,” writes Woolf, “are not properly to be called moths” (343). While Woolf seems satisfied with her categorization of the moth as “hybrid”, the inability to define the creature implies that the moth is indefinable. Having no structured existence inside space of the outside, Woolf’s construction of the moth as other purges it from a previously comfortable position in the second space.
Woolf proceeds to reduce the moth is reduced to energy, its most basic form. Compared to the workings of the plough, the rooks, and the horses (343-44), the moth’s presence is described as being a “fiber, very thin,” “pathetic” (344), “an insignificant little creature” (345). Woolf furthers this by writing that “It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life,” writes Woolf, “…to show us the true nature of life” (344). By stripping the moth of tangible definitions, Woolf reconstructs the moth as an abstract, a manifest entity of pure life. This re-imagining of the moth serves to shift the moth out of the second space and into the third. An incorporation of the moth into the third space with the windowpane leads Woolf to re-imagine what she had previously held as stable: the second space, Nature.

As stated earlier, the second space undergoes a transformation from “animated” to “still” (345). Through the formation of the third space, Woolf turns to the outside world with a pair of fresh eyes. Through this reexamination of the second space, Woolf reaches a new understanding. She writes:

I looked outdoors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and the work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation…Yet the power was still there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. (345)

The passage marks a perceptual shift in the way that Woolf understands the second space. The horses, the ploughs, the rooks, all become secondary to the experience of stillness, not as absence as in the first space, but as essence; life in its most elemental form.

What Woolf’s re-imagining of the second space truly suggests is that as humans, we must struggle against the superficial reaches of our perception in order to grasp the value and essence of space. The natural world does not change. For Woolf, the natural world opens up to new truths. She is finally able to understand the raw “power” and beauty of nature (345). This reconstruction of the second space challenges Woolf’s ideas of reality, perception, and meaning. The recognition that death “is stronger than I am” (345) signals to the reader that something dramatic has changed.

In this new construction of the second space, everything has changed. Gone are the flowery and clichéd descriptions of the Natural world. Gone is the idea of the moth as “insignificant little creature” (345). Between the human and non-human worlds that the third space provides, Woolf realizes the necessary truth: Nature and humanity as one and of the same. Through the guiding hand of the third space, Woolf’s episode with the moth suggests that humans have the potential to redefine traditional spatial boundaries through a shift in perception. The collision of the moth into the windowpane, both figurative and literal, provides for Woolf the necessary conditions of that precede change.

Sometime ago, I had a class assignment to read Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth”.

It was around the time I finally had enough of that one tattered People magazine in my bathroom. So I was pretty excited about having a new intellect material to update my look. I’m aiming for a sexy-bookish persona.

What’s more, I actually know Nicole Kidman Virginia Woolf! She was that writer who was depressed and who eventually killed herself, an event that may or may not be related to her nose.

One fine day, I took the book to work so I could read it during lunch at the Boston Public Garden just across the road from the office. (The perfect place for a sexy bookish woman to read a serious book.)

The essay is short; it’s only 2.1 pages long.

But here’s the thing.

It’s only about a dead moth and NOTHING else, not about a guy named Moth not even about a butterfly that looked like a moth. By the 2nd paragraph, I got bored and went on to read the interesting facts on my sandwich wrapper.

The class came and went but we never talked about Woolf’s work so the moth soon disappeared from my mind. A couple of weeks later, however, I had to re-read it again since someone confessed to the professor of having not understanding it at all. Bastard.

That night, I took a second try at Woolf’s essay, forcing myself to read every single line and using my index finger to trail the words. You know, just in case I got lost again.

No dice. Time for a drastic measure. I got up and brewed myself a big cup of Joe, my first since… Damn, I can’t remember. Was it 2 years ago?

Third try. The moth was still a moth. You have got to be KIDDING ME!

No way was I going to devote a fifth read for Woolf if I didn’t even do a fifth pass on the Snuggie parody. No, I refuse to succumb to a moth! The fourth read must be the last.

I walked around the room to calm myself, gulped down another swig and took out the big gun: my bright blue sharpie pen. Not a wimpy pencil or a pathetic black ballpoint but bright blue ink that clings to the very pores of the paper.

In the name of literature, I proclaim this book un-refundable!

The technique is simple, taught to me by my father decades ago; I am to read each paragraph and underline its main point. If it worked for “Computing Cryptography 404″, it most certainly will work for “A Study of a Dead Moth 101″.

Really? What would a day-flying-moth be called then? (Yes I googled it)

I like this because I can visualize it. I imagine a tiny little black moth in my head, named Mothy.

I shall call this profound #1. I’m not sure why, but something so poetic must be important.

What’s this?! A twist in the plot! Something big has happened…

Continuing the investigation of the mysterious reason.

Aha! Now this makes perfect sense! I shall call this profound #2.

“Una gita al faro”: un romanzo scritto nei dettagli. I sentimenti saltano fuori da ogni riga! Molto particolare in alcuni punti, nonostante ciò non mi è piaciuto molto.

Racconta di una famiglia di otto figli gestiti esclusivamente dalla madre, ai quali lascia molta libertà di espressione. Adora i bambini e la loro semplicità: vorrebbe non crescessero mai per non perdere la fantasia e la serenità. E’ una donna molto altruista: nonostante la famiglia non sia agiata, cerca di aiutare chiunque ne abbia bisogno, anche solo con parole di conforto. Il padre è uno scrittore, che vive in un mondo tutto suo, dal quale ogni tanto esce e torna alla realtà. Più che altro quando si sente perso, ha bisogno di un contatto con la moglie per acquistare sicurezza.

La storia si svolge nel periodo della prima guerra mondiale e descrive molto bene i sentimenti dei vari protagonisti: il desiderio da parte del figlio più piccolo, James, di visitare il faro a seguito di una promessa della madre. La qual cosa riuscirà a fare solo più avanti negli anni.

Un libro di non facile comprensione all’inizio, in quanto vengono descritte una persona dopo l’altra, sia nei pensieri che dal punto di vista fisico, senza capire molto bene i collegamenti fra loro.  Solo andando avanti nel racconto si riesce a dare un senso alla storia.

Alessia Bauducco