Novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1927. The work is one of her most successful and accessible experiments in the stream-of-consciousness style. The three sections of the book take place between 1910 and 1920 and revolve around various members of the Ramsay family during visits to their summer residence on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. A central motif of the novel is the conflict between the feminine and masculine principles at work in the universe. With her emotional, poetical frame of mind, Mrs. Ramsay represents the female principle, while Mr. Ramsay, a self-centered philosopher, expresses the male principle in his rational point of view. Both are flawed by their limited perspectives. A painter and friend of the family, Lily Briscoe, is Woolf's vision of the androgynous artist who personifies the ideal blending of male and female qualities. Her successful completion of a painting that she has been working on since the beginning of the novel is symbolic of this unification.
To: ALL Date: 05/13
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 1:57 AM
Re: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE - Allen, I don't think I'll spoil
anyone's pleasure if I simply remark that, were they not
contemporaries, I would suspect Woolf had learned her syntax
from William Faulkner. The book is capable of holding my
interest, but I find myself untangling the sentences like
knitting and growling mentally when I find an independent
clause without a verb. The only other problem so far is
keeping up with whose head she's jumped into this time.
Cathy
=============== Reply 1 of Note 35 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/13
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 11:51 AM
Are you implying that Mr. Faulkner doesn't require
sentence-untangling from time to time?
Isn't it worth a little extra time and effort to locate
verbs and referents in the sprawlingy gorgeous sentences of
Faulkner, Woolf, Proust, or K.A. Porter?
Apropos of "Lighthouse," one of my cyber-correspondents
pointed out a lovely collocation that I'd not noticed: the
closeness of the "alphabet" image to one involving piano
keys. Mr. Ramsay is portrayed, almost satirically, as
imagining his own thought as a logical progression from A to
B, from B to C, etc., and he is bitterly disappointed with
his inability to reach Z. He can, however, reach Q, which
though it's a splendid achievement, isn't far enough for
him. I have pointed out before that the next letter would
be R - his own last initial. I think this is Woolf's sly
way of suggesting that philosophical thought is fine in its
own context but it stops just before it gets to
self-knowledge. However, the faith in language - letters-
is huge, reminiscent of Woolf's own fatih in words as a
barrier against chaos.
Anyway, it was pointed out to me that, just before
this, Lily has a thought about piano keys - which might be
an alternative to the alphabet. -P.
=============== Reply 2 of Note 35 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/14
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 1:36 PM
Cathy:
Very true. Woolf, like Faulkner, writes in stream of
consciousness style. I'd never read much of her work before
and found this book fascinating. I love re-discovering
authors I haven't read for a while!
Lisa
=============== Note 42 =================
To: ALL Date: 05/14
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 1:30 PM
I finished TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and was wondering when it was
going to be discussed (and hoping that I was right that it
is the next book on the agenda!). Not to rush anyone
because I've been so fascinated with all the minds in here
speaking on other subjects (and I could stay fascinated with
that for an age), but I was just wondering.
Lisa
=============== Reply 1 of Note 42 =================
To: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Date: 05/14
From: ERFN90B ELLEN JOHNSON Time: 1:53 PM
Lisa,
I'm almost finished with TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. I started it
several weeks ago, and like your SHIPPING NEWS, I put it
down several times to dive into others. I find the book
fascinating but the type that requires my full attention to
detail and in the last few weeks I haven't had much of that
quality time.
I have several passages that I've underlined that are
amazing to me and I want to share them. Summer term starts
tomorrow and I will have to beg off for at least the
beginning of the week but can almost promise that I'll be
ready for a good chat by week's end. (I'm teaching early
British Lit. this mini-semester and I know I will find Woolf
a refuge and much easier to read after refocusing my mind on
Beowulf.)
Ellen
=============== Reply 2 of Note 42 =================
To: ERFN90B ELLEN JOHNSON Date: 05/14
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 9:35 PM
Lisa, Ellen, Cathy, et al: As nominator of Woolf's TO THE
LIGHTHOUSE, I'm delighted you've tackled the and look
forward to discussing it with you.
Unfortunately I'm in work-deadline purgatory for the next
several days, so it may be a while before I'm able to put
some thoughts in order. Feel free to forge ahead, though,
and I'll jump in as soon as I'm able.
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 3 of Note 42 =================
To: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Date: 05/14
From: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Time: 11:12 PM
Cathy, Ellen and Lisa: I'll be posting about TO THE
LIGHTHOUSE later this week. I doubt that the book is the
kind of thing you can go zipping through even if you're
used to this style of writing, which I decidedly am not.
You'll recall Dale warning us that it's wise to take the
first part "on faith," so that's the attitude I'm assuming.
Remember, you can post notes on any book at any time, so
if you want to start without me, go ahead. I'll just save
your notes to read when I'm done.
Be seeing you....
Allen
=============== Reply 4 of Note 42 =================
To: ERFN90B ELLEN JOHNSON Date: 05/17
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 3:42 PM
Ellen:
Beowulf.... Now that brings back the memories (and not good
ones, either!)
I'll check in later and see if the LIGHTHOUSE discussion has
started. I agree, it is very heavy reading and I can
identify with you on finding the time for it.
Lisa
=============== Note 55 =================
To: ALL Date: 05/19
From: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Time: 11:13 PM
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf:
Caution: If you haven't read this book yet but intend
to, be warned that there will most likely be "plot
spoilers" in the notes that follow that will diminish your
enjoyment when you do get round to it. Save these notes to
read later, and come back and put in your two cents!
Well, I took my own advice and after finishing TO THE
LIGHTHOUSE went back and read the notes about it that
appeared after Dale and Sara first suggested it for the
reading list. I'm glad to find out that I wasn't alone in
finding it to be very slow reading (it's been occupying my
evening for the last few days, hence my recent invisibility
in these parts). It was rather an uphill fight most of the
way, notably the first section, "The Window." Let concen-
tration wander a bit, and you find you've lost yourself in
following the intricate trains of thought going on inside
the heads of each character. If I'm not mistaken, the entire
first section of the novel is told from the internal point
of view of one person or another -- like nothing I've ever
encountered before. I found it *somewhat* easier going
after getting accustomed to the style of narrative, but I
think I took two or three times as long to get through this
as any other novel of comparable length.
The effort of will it took to keep going was pretty
considerable until the second section, "Time Passes," where
Woolf shows us what she's capable of when she feels like
it. The vignettes of the empty, decaying house, inter-
spersed with the brief parenthetical remarks on the fates
of certain characters (rather a jolt, wasn't it, to learn
of Mrs. Ramsay's death that way!) will stay with me, I sus-
pect, for a long time.
I must say that the novel is so *very* spare, so lacking
in plot, dialogue, and all but the lowest-key conflict,
at no point did I truly become emotionally involved. I was
certainly intellectually stimulated, often being aware that
I was experiencing a literary tour de force, but I can't
say that I really cared too much what happened to these
people. The masterfully imagined inner mental lives por-
trayed here are just not enough to get me involved. Perhaps
if you liken a more run-of-the-mill novel, the kind where
things happen and conversations take place, to a painting,
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE might be something akin to a magnifi-
cently rendered architectural drawing, or a brilliantly
conceived piece of chamber music rather than a symphony.
No doubt my reaction is due to my seriously undeveloped
literary acumen (my tastes in fiction have always been
pretty conventional -- I feel a bit like I've jumped up
about nine levels that I'd have been better off taking one
at a time), but if you asked me if I enjoyed the book, I'd
feel compelled to evade the question and say something
like, "Well, it was really quite interesting." Interesting,
but for me, not truly involving. I find that when I really
get wrapped up in a book, reading compulsively to the end,
after finishing I have to take a while to "come down" or
"cool off", if you know what I'm trying to get at --a
return to the mundane from the other world I've been
immersed in. With TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, that didn't occur.
I hope that some day my tastes will be refined enough
that I can come back to Woolf and see much that I now
must be having trouble appreciating, but for the present
I think I'll be letting her alone.
I imagine one or two of you have something to add here!
Allen
=============== Reply 1 of Note 55 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 05/20
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 2:33 AM
I haven't QUITE finished, but, honestly, I don't think
anything we could say here could spoil it for anybody else.
I was well aware of Woolf's intent in the first segment and
became somewhat more emotionally engaged than Allen was for
the simple reason that much of it deals with the female
dilemma. I found myself disliking Mrs. Ramsey for her
persistent and compelling matchmaking when she herself is
not too sure of the delights of marriage. Of course, these
are things that need not happen to everyone, she reasons.
There was a passage, wasn't there, on creating in the medium
of people? That's certainly what she was doing, and people
tend to resent it. I could quite identify with Lily Briscoe
and was pleased to find she had managed a quite satisfying
relationship of her own sort with William Bankes.
I was rather bothered by the apparent intensity of all
these characters conflicting and mutually contradictory
emotions. It doesn't feel right for people to feel so
strongly about apparently casual relationships. My
overriding feeling during the first segment was a statement
Mrs. Otis Skinner made to her famous husband while he was
rather ineffectively playing ball with H.G. Wells - Otis,
dear love, can't you just DO something? I felt like shaking
most of the principals. Of course, I definitely got the
picture of people unable to relate to each other and being
like ships in the night, passing and unable or unwilling to
share. There are many points of SIGNIFICANCE, certainly,
like Mrs. Ramsey's inability to tell her husband she loves
him, and those red hot pokers in the garden certainly mean
something, but I'm not sure exactly what.
Cathy
=============== Reply 2 of Note 55 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 05/20
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 9:43 AM
Bought a copy of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE about a month ago and
will be reading it in late June. Feel sort of bad that I
can't participate right now because I was very happy to see
this book on the list. However, this is my
Armageddon time of the year at work...and I'm sure that my
brain won't have enough cells left to give Woolf her due.
Hope someone will want to discuss it with me later too.
Will save your notes and definitely put in my "two cents"
at that time, Allen. Barbara
=============== Reply 3 of Note 55 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 05/20
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 10:14 AM
You people are hardly giving this book a chance!
My allies here know that "To the Lighthouse" is very close
to my heart, one of three or four books I consider genuine
masterpieces. There are incredible things going on that
aren't on the plot-dialogue-character level, and to enjoy
the novel it helps to be responsive to them. The play with
scale and perception as the children are playing on the
beach illuminates how we make worlds when we imagine things;
the dinner party is the creation of an ordered world within
the dining room while disorder, chaos and vagueness swin
menacingly outside the windows; and when Mr. Ramsay feigns
that his ordered thought reaches Q on the alphabet but never
R, Woolf is slyly saying that methodical thought is not
necessarily the way to know oneself: Mister "R." cannot
reach "R" - self-knowledge - by going from A to B, from B to
C, from C to D etcetera. Lily, earlier in that section,
likens thought to piano keys in a rising scale. Music,
referring only to itself and not needing to satisfy external
rubrics like Mr. Ramsay's thought, can acheive a different
kind of light, a crystalline vision of That Which Matters.
And all that matters for Lily is to remain faithful to the
creative act of painting, even if the painting is never
looked at again. It is important for her to have done it.
Further, consider that Mrs. Ramsay is herself a beacon
and a monument in the first part of the book, while in the
accelerated, depersonalized second part she dies rather
offhandedly in a subordinate clause. It is only at the end
that they can reach the actual lighthouse, because the
magnetic pull of Mrs. Ramsay kept them near her in the first
part.
Anyway, all, please give the book a chance however
"difficult" it is for you. I assure you it will have been
worth it. Let yourself be caressed by its constant
wavelike, lighthouse-like rhythms, its carefully repeated
imagery, and its sheer beauty.
-Patrick
=============== Reply 4 of Note 55 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 05/20
From: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Time: 2:22 PM
Allen,
I'm only about 75 pages into this, and have a question
(I'm again trying this dangerous bit of reading your posts
just up to the plot spoiler, which I think is not as big a
risk in this non-plot-dominated book!). I don't understand
the repetition of the phrases (are they parts of a poem?)
"Someone had blundered" and "stormed at with shot and
shell." Can someone more in tune with Virginia's thoughts
help me out here?
I especially liked Lily's struggle with how to decide
whether to like someone: "How then did it work out, all
this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did
one add up this and that and conclude that is was liking
one felt, or disliking? And to those words, what meaning
attached, after all?"
I am struggling through this, and take heart from Allen's
note about the first part being the roughest. I'll be back
when I have read more.
Sarah 5/20/95 11:06AM MT
=============== Reply 5 of Note 55 =================
To: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Date: 05/20
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 2:43 PM
The lines are from Tennyson, "The Charge of the Light
Brigade." Their purpose here is perhaps to poke fun at the
aged, distinguished philosopher occupying his private
thoughts not with Plato and Aristotle but with boyish
fantasies of battlefield adventure, possibly attractive to
one who has spent his life in sedentary and vicarious
pursuits.
-P.
=============== Reply 6 of Note 55 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 05/20
From: BUYS59A BARBARA HILL Time: 6:32 PM
Allen I liked your chamber music analogy. There are some
books I don't like to disect too much, this was one of
them.I read the book two months before you put out your list
and just finished reading it again. I appreciated Woolf's
talent even more after a second reading. To me it was like
getting a microscopic view of the lives in a brief moment of
time-one day. Then time passes and we see it pass and all
the subtle ways it leaves its mark. And then in part 3
after the changes-external changes at least-you see that
nothing really changes. We are what we are. Life goes on
with or without us. Nature seems to dominate. That was my
impression after the second reading.
=============== Reply 7 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/21
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 1:16 AM
The distinguished philosopher is reciting poetry out loud to
himself and is so embarrassed to be caught at it he must go
to his wife to be comforted. My first, down to earth
thought, was that I wished it had been simply poetry when my
ex talked out loud to himself. He also fought the air. Mr.
Ramsey was at least still relatively sane, if insecure. He
also seems to have had a genuine if not very perceptive
interest in his wife and children.
I realize that many of there are many images beyond plot,
character, and dialogue that SAY THINGS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE.
This ploy, like great use of symbolism, has always irritated
me extremely. If you're going to tell a story, get on with
it; if that's not really what you're about, don't make like
you're telling a story. I've never been much interested in
abstract philosophies or profound views of the universe.
What interests me greatly is what happens to persons A,B, or
C when that philosophy or view of the universe is LIVED.
Cathy
=============== Reply 8 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/21
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 7:21 AM
Cathy,
We may rightfully take Mrs. Woolf to task for
non-storytelling, I suppose. However, I think that you are
drawing a distinction which she would call false: that on
one hand there are events, and on the other hand there are
ideas. For her, the things happening inside your head have
just as much right to be called "things" as those outside
your head. If you are happier with novels that have
swordfights or divorces or heroin addiction, fine, but I
think that Mrs. W. was partly responsible for the trend away
from novels about people galloping around countrysides, and
toward novels about people brooding in armchairs. Whether
that's a good trend or not is up for discussion, I suppose,
but the only thing a writer should ultimately listen to is
her own voice. Woolf wrote what she saw; it would have been
dishonest for her to do otherwise. She had most of English
literature in her bloodstream night and day; the way she
wrote was in response to where she felt fiction was going.
Again, it would have been dishonest of her to do otherwise!
-Patrick
As usual, passionately
defending my favorite
Dead White Female
=============== Reply 9 of Note 55 =================
To: BUYS59A BARBARA HILL Date: 05/21
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 8:31 AM
Barbara: Your impressions of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE coincide with
mine exactly. In much of her writing, Woolf seems obsessed
(as are we all, I guess, especially as we get older) with
the passage of time. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE is the most brilliant
exploration of the subject I've ever seen in fiction.
After Woolf sets the reader down into the almost painfully
detailed minutiae of an "ordinary" family's life--their
hopes, fears, preoccupations, small crises, etc.--the second
section, told from the point of view of the empty house as
time passes, hit me like an almost physical blow.
What does daily life "amount to," or "mean," in the big
picture? Is it possibly to live sanely (which Woolf did not)
or even to live at all, with the "big picture" of our own
fleeting consequence kept in mind at all times? It's almost
as if what society regards as sanity, and all the rituals
and tediums of daily existence, are a sort of communal game
of "let's pretend" for grownups.
On the other hand, maybe what it all "means" is beside the
point. There's a word in some language (Japanese, maybe?)
that translates literally as "un-ask the question." Woolf
seems to be saying that our daily lives are all we have, the
most bittersweet of blessings. Should we live them in the
"trenches" of domesticity, like the wife? In the rarefied
air of thought, like the husband? Or somewhere between?
Finding that happy medium, I believe, is a thinking
person's greatest struggle.
There's a short essay of Woolf's in which she comments on
passing time in a beautiful way; I'll try to locate it and
post that section here.
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 10 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/21
From: XDPW41A B HUDSON Time: 10:01 AM
I don't think the business of literature is story telling.
I think it's an issue of perspective, perspectives that
aren't achievable by any other means-- what gets
illuminated in painting isn't what gets illuminated in film
isn't what gets illuminated in music isn't what gets
illuminated in literature. Books that take us out of the
story telling conventions are rsaying, 'listen, you're
missing the point; therefore I'm not going to give you all
that other stuff ,that story telling stuff, so you won't
get wrapped up, won't so intoxicate yourself with it that
you miss the "literary things"-- essentially that business
of a close reading-- that the work is really about:' hence
Faulkner's Sound and Fury, Joyce's Molly monologue with
which Ulysses ends. Sometimes I think there's a bias
evidenced here against moving into the modern era with
literature which means abandoning the very English,
somewhat Victorian conventions of an assumed correct form.
I think Wolf represents an absolute high point-- along
with a good double handful of her peers-- of the most
evolved form of literary esthetic we've reached to date
(I'm speaking here only in terms of the recent say 200
years, literature that has in a sense a contemporary
component which would exclude Dante, Milton the classics
and Shakespeare-- maybe that means literature that embraces
a world effected by merchant cites and industrialization--
Cathy I know those lines are vague but certainly Dickens
and a favorite here, Waugh, are good examples). In fact to
me the recent tendency toward politicized, confessional
works with which we can "identify and relate" represents a
decided reversal in the evolution of literary esthetics.
bruce
esthetics.eally
=============== Reply 11 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/21
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 10:42 AM
These notes have been irresistable. With the knowledge
that I probably won't be able to finish it right now, took
some time last night and delved into TO THE LIGHTHOUSE a
wee bit. I hadn't read Woolf for about 20 years and
wondered if the pull for me would still be as strong. Of
course, it is. I assume that I will need to read many of
her sentences twice, but that's somehow just part of
reading her. She describes interactions, feelings as no
one else can.
Dale, I love your description of all the rituals and
tediums of daily existence as sort of a communal game of
"let's pretend" for grownups. That's one of those mental
secrets that I confronted when I was younger and it pops up
again at intervals, always with the feeling that no one
else feels the same...this could get pretty existential,
couldn't it?
Patrick, your comments help enormously with the reading.
If I ever had the time, Woolf is an author that I would
like to explore in a literature class, but how
disappointing it would be if the class was a bust!
Barbara
=============== Reply 12 of Note 55 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 05/21
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 12:17 PM
Allen: I agree...TO THE LIGHTHOUSE is one of the most
difficult books I've ever read (or at least, finished), and
took me several times as long as a "regular" novel of the
same size.
I don't get the feeling this is because Woolf is
deliberately trying to be obscure, as some writers seem to,
or that she's asking readers to do more than their share of
the work. Rather, I think she's attempting to squeeze so
many subtle impressions into a small space--somewhat like
the "layering" of sound that an audio engineer does, with 32
separate tracks on the same tape--that if our attention
wanders for even a second, we're lost. (Your comparison of
the book to a detailed architectural drawing is right on the
money, I think.)
Case in point...one of my favorite times of day is the
hour after dinner when I pour a glass of Chardonnay, find a
quiet place, and stretch out to read a few chapters of a
good book. With TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, though, I found that
after just one glass of wine (OK, a tall glass) I lost
enough of the edge of my concentration that I couldn't
follow Woolf's train of thought at all.
Trust me; any book that can come between me and my
Chardonnay is a powerful book indeed.
You're right, though, about it not being the kind of book
a reader can get "lost" in, sheerly on the level of story,
so that the author seems almost to disappear. Woolf's
amazing, teeming mind is always very much at the forefront,
here.
I would disagree with Bruce that a pure "story" book is
necessarily less literary, but they're certainly different
animals. On the other hand, I can think of a few
novels--Jill Paton Walsh's KNOWLEDGE OF ANGELS, for
one--that seem to do both tasks equally well.
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 13 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/21
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 2:41 PM
Dale - There's a point in the argument between Vladimir
Nabokov and Edmund Wilson where Nabokov says, "Mr. Wilson
chastises me for using 'difficult and obscure words.' It
does not seem to occur to him that I had something difficult
and obscure to say."
It is nice of you to acknowledge that Mrs. Woolf is not
trying to be obscure, but trying to be accurate, and that
the difficulty of reading her corresponds to the difficulty
of saying what she has to say.
-Patrick
=============== Reply 14 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/21
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 11:36 PM
I do not insist on simple storytelling. In fact, I've read
quite a number of Ruskin's essays which are anything but,
but they are easier reading than Woolf. These characters
are real enough that I become disgusted with them for
continually shillyshallying and analyzing and the like
before and about doing ANYTHING. Also, seeing them through
all the time-and-space imagery makes them seem rather
bloodless, and I am reminded that Woolf, like many of her
literary contemporaries was a thin, attenuated woman.
As for the dinnerparty, I rather think that's the most
uncomfortable festivity I've ever read instead of having to
attend. Yes, I noted Patrick's point that the group inside,
especially when the candles were lit, was contrasted to the
wild chaos outside. What struck me as sad was that these
individuals were also islands separated from each other,
almost all wanting or needing something they felt unable to
ask about or that the others would be unable to give. My
reaction was if this is life count me out.
I was rather interested in the fact that Woolf actually
fleshes out Lily more than most of the Ramsey children,
since I understand she is in fact presenting a fictionalized
version of her own family. I found myself wondering if she
did not write her own character as Lily, with the strong
ambivalent tug toward her own mother, not really wanting to
acknowledge that she was the child of such a creature. I
certainly noted Mrs. Ramsey's compulsive efforts to marry
Lily off. These, not the space and time dimensions, are the
types of things that interest me about a book. Lily felt so
threatened by yet attracted to Mrs. Ramsey that she felt
quite smug and happy that Minta and Paul's marriage turned
out to be less than a success.
There's a lot of ambiguity in Mrs. Ramsey herself that
really interests me. She seemed to enjoy being attractive
to literary men, having books of poetry she never read
dedicated to her (why didn't she read them?), yet she likes
Paul because he doesn't have a thesis or endless papers.
Several times you get the feeling that she is rather
contemptuous of literary exercises and literary men, and the
bond with her husband is certainly a strange one. And what
is Woolf saying by having Prue and Andrew, two children she
had delineated rather fully, die so young and tragically?
That's two of the eight dead, yet I see only three coming
back to go to the lighthouse with Mr. Ramsey - is there any
significance there?
Cathy
=============== Reply 15 of Note 55 =================
To: XDPW41A B HUDSON Date: 05/22
From: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Time: 2:22 AM
Bruce - do you really think there has to be such an absolute
divide between relevance and aesthetics? Relevance without
art may not be worth reading, but a too rarified, yet
aesthetically pleasing creation is just as much a waste of
time, in my book. When you talk about aesthetic
development, are you picturing a progression "towards" some
ultimate goal? What? (I'm not trying to be argumentative, I
really want to know. . .) I don't think that there needs to
be an absolute dichotomy between relevance and aesthetics.
I've seen "relevance" used as a whip, by people who haven't
bothered to think out what they really mean to say, or who
have an axe to grind and choose that weapon (now there's a
mixed metaphor), but I've also seen attempts at a broader
sense of what is aesthetically worthwhile dismissed out of
hand as attempts at relevance - a lot of the time by people
who are truly terrified of having their comfortable mind-set
shaken up a little. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what
you and others have to say about this.
Theresa
=============== Reply 16 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/22
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 8:39 AM
Another "thin, attenuated," famously oversensitive woman
of letters, Emily Dickinson, wrote:
The Brain, within its Groove
Runs evenly - and true -
But let a Splinter swerve -
'Twere easier for You -
To put a Current back -
When Floods have slit the Hills -
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves -
And trodden out the Mills - >>
I'm not sure whether Mrs. Woolf would have written better
books had she been, say, fat and vigorous. People who don't
like the play "Hamlet" often cite their impatience with the
excessively deliberating *character* Hamlet, not seeming to
accept the notion that inability to act is a real human
problem, which real humans have, and so it's as fit a
subject for a fiction as any other real human problem.
Cathy, what sort of action or conflict did you want
"Lighthouse" to have? Fistfights?
But seriously, I was intrigued by the character
interactions you discussed, and the autobiographical
implications thereof. I'll give it thought... -P.
=============== Reply 17 of Note 55 =================
To: BUYS59A BARBARA HILL Date: 05/22
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 8:51 AM
Virginia Woolf's essay, "Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in
a Motor-car"
***
Evening is kind to Sussex, for Sussex is no longer young.
She is grateful for the veil of evening as an elderly woman
is glad when a shade is drawn over a lamp, and only the
outline of her face remains. The outline of Sussex is still
very fine. The cliffs stand out to sea, one behind another.
All Eastbourne, all Bexhill, all St. Leonards, their parades
and their lodging houses, their bead shops and their sweet
shops and their placards and their invalids and
char-a-bancs, are all obliterated. What remains is what
there was when William came over from France ten centuries
ago: a line of cliffs running out to sea. Also the fields
are redeemed. The freckle of red villas on the coast is
washed over by a thin lucid lake of brown air, in which they
and their redness are drowned. It was still too early for
lamps; and too early for stars.
But, I thought, there is always some sediment of
irritation when the moment is as beautiful as it is now.
The psychologists must explain; one looks up, one is
overcome by beauty extravagantly greater than one could
expect--there are now pink clouds over Battle; the fields
are mottled, marbled--one's perceptions blow out rapidly
like air balls expanded by some rush of air, and then, when
all seems blown to its fullest and tautest, with beauty and
beauty and beauty, a pin pricks; it collapses.
But what is the pin? So far as I could tell, the pin had
something to do with one's own impotency. I cannot hold
this--I cannot express this--I am overcome by it--I am
mastered. Somewhere in that region one's discontent lay;
and it was allied with the idea that one's nature demands
mastery over all that it receives; and mastery here meant
the power to convey what one saw now over Sussex so that
another person could share it. And further, there was
another prick of the pin: one was wasting one's chance; for
beauty spread at one's right hand, at one's left; at one's
back too; it was escaping all the time; one could only offer
a thimble to a torrent that could fill baths, lakes.
But relinquish, I said (it is well known how in
circumstances like these the self splits up and one self is
eager and dissatisfied and the other stern and
philosophical), relinquish these impossible aspirations; be
content with the view in front of us, and believe me when I
tell you that it is best to sit and soak; to be passive; to
accept; and do not bother because nature has given you six
little pocket knives with which to cut up the body of a
whale.
(Continued in next reply)
=============== Reply 18 of Note 55 =================
To: BUYS59A BARBARA HILL Date: 05/22
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 8:53 AM
Virginia Woolf essay, Part II: (Continued from previous
reply)
***
While these two selves then held a colloquy about the
wise course to adopt in the presence of beauty, I (a third
party now declared itself) said to myself, how happy they
were to enjoy so simple an occupation. There they sat as
the car sped along, noticing everything: a haystack; a rust
red roof; a pond; an old man coming home with his sack on
his back; there they sat, matching every colour in the sky
and earth from their colour box, rigging up little models of
Sussex barns and farmhouses in the red light that would
serve in the January gloom.
But I, being somewhat different, sat aloof and
melancholy. While they are thus busied, I said to myself:
Gone, gone; over, over; past and done with, past and done
with. I feel life left behind even as the road is left
behind. We have been over that stretch, and are already
forgotten. There, windows were lit by our lamps for a
second; the light is out now. Others come behind us.
Then suddenly a fourth self (a self which lies in ambush,
apparently dormant, and jumps upon one unawares. Its
remarks are often entirely disconnected with what has been
happening, but must be attended to because of their very
abruptness) said: 'Look at that.' It was a light; brilliant,
freakish; inexplicable. For a second I was unable to name
it. 'A star'; and for that second it held its odd flicker
of unexpectedness and danced and beamed. 'I take your
meaning,' I said. 'You, erratic and impulsive self that you
are, feel that the light over the downs there emerging,
dangles from the future. Let us try to understand this.
Let us reason it out. I feel suddenly attached not to the
past but to the future. I think of Sussex in five hundred
years to come. I think much grossness will have evaporated.
Things will have been scorched up, eliminated. There will
be magic gates. Draughts fan-blown by electric power will
cleanse houses. Lights intense and firmly directed will go
over the earth, doing the work. Look at the moving light on
that hill; it is the headlight of a car. By day and by
night Sussex in five centuries will be full of charming
thoughts, quick, effective beams.'
The sun was now low beneath the horizon. Darkness spread
rapidly. None of my selves could see anything beyond the
tapering light of our headlamps on the hedge. I summoned
them together. 'Now,' I said, 'comes the season of making
up our accounts. Now we have got to collect ourselves; we
have got to be one self. Nothing is to be seen any more,
except one wedge of road and bank which our lights repeat
incessantly. We are perfectly provided for. We are warmly
wrapped in a rug; we are protected from wind and rain. We
are alone. Now is the time of reckoning. Now I, who
preside over the company, am going to arrange in order the
trophies which we have all brought in. Let me see; there was
a great deal of beauty brought in today: farmhouses; cliffs
standing out to sea; marbled fields; mottled fields; red
feathered skies; all that. Also there was disappearance and
the death of the individual. The vanishing road and the
window lit for a second and then dark. And then there was
the sudden dancing light, that was hung in the future.
'What we have made then today,' I said, 'is this: that
beauty; death, of the individual; and the future. Look, I
will make a little figure for your satisfaction; here he
comes. Does this little figure advancing through beauty,
through death, to the economical, powerful, and efficient
future when houses will be cleansed by a puff of hot wind
satisfy you? Look at him; there on my knee.'
(Concluded in next reply...)
=============== Reply 19 of Note 55 =================
To: BUYS59A BARBARA HILL Date: 05/22
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 8:58 AM
Virginia Woolf essay, Part III: (Continued from previous
reply)
***
We sat and looked at the figure we had made that day.
Great sheer slabs of rock, tree tufted, surrounded him. He
was for a second very, very solemn. Indeed, it seemed as if
the reality of things were displayed there on the rug. A
violent thrill ran through us; as if a charge of electricity
had entered into us. We cried out together: 'Yes, yes,' as
if affirming something, in a moment of recognition.
And then the body who had been silent up to now began its
song, almost at first as low as the rush of the wheels:
'Eggs and bacon; toast and tea; fire and a bath; fire and a
bath; jugged hare,' it went on, 'and red-currant jelly; a
glass of wine; with coffee to follow, with coffee to
follow--and then to bed; and then to bed.'
'Off with you,' I said to my assembled selves. 'Your
work is done. I dismiss you. Good-night.'
And the rest of the journey was performed in the
delicious society of my own body.
###
=============== Reply 20 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/22
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 1:24 PM
Patrick: I love the Nabokov quote.
Speaking of obscurity, can you tell me if this quote
attributed to James Joyce is real or apocryphal:
He supposedly said, of FINNEGAN'S WAKE, "It took me 17
years to write it, and I'll be da*ned if it takes anybody
less than that to read it."
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 21 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/22
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 4:34 PM
Dale, though I don't know about the quote you mention (it
does sound apocryphal), I've always been fond of Nora Joyce
having reportedly said to James: "Why don't you just write
sensible books that people can read?"
-Patrick
=============== Reply 22 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/22
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 7:54 PM
Patrick: There are some who would say Ms. Joyce had a
point.
Then, there's the (definitely non-apocryphal) advice
Flannery O'Connor once received from her aunt...
"Now that your work is achieving a measure of popular
success, don't you think it's time you started writing about
a better class of people?"
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 23 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/22
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 8:28 PM
And Kafka's employer suggested that he take up a more
"athletic" hobby than writing. One of T.S. Eliot's
superiors at Lloyds bank, on finding out that Eliot was a
poet, said, "Well, if it helps in his work I think we
should encourage it."
-Patrick
=============== Reply 24 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/22
From: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Time: 8:58 PM
Cathy,
I was struck by your putting into words something I've
been feeling while reading TTL--the distancing among
themselves that seems to characterize the people in the
book. They seem to just miss connections, unable or
unwilling to truly 'communicate' (isn't it horrible when
popular culture makes a very sensible word so ridiculous
through overusage?). This makes me frustrated, and I don't
believe it is indicative of 'real' life, if that is what VW
is trying to say.
Sarah 5/22/95 12:34PM MT
=============== Reply 25 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/22
From: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Time: 8:58 PM
Patrick,
While relegating the past notes from March and April to
disk, I noticed a prior note from you regarding VW and
Lodge's comments on her readability--"unbearably precious"
inner dialogue. You retorted that had VW wanted to be
clear and realistic, she would have been, and the fact that
she wasn't says something. Now that I'm further into 'The
Lighthouse' and have somewhat of the same reaction as
Lodge about her characters' thoughts and interactions,
could you elucidate? What is she saying with these
thoughts that I really don't see as common in people?
Sarah 5/22/95 5:25PM MT
=============== Reply 26 of Note 55 =================
To: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Date: 05/22
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 9:27 PM
Princess H: I agree that the verb "communicate" has been
horribly corrupted in this day and age. But I would maintain
that the failure of the characters in TTL to do so is not
only representative of the 1990s, but is downright
prophetic. (See at least 1,000 popular songs of our current
age, ranging from Pink Floyd to Springsteen's "57 Channels
and Nothing On.") This, coming from someone (myself) who
tries heartily to ignore same.
Not to mention fiction writers Don DeLillo, Russell Banks,
ad infinitum.
>>Dale, CDA (Certified Devil's Advocate) in Ala.
=============== Reply 27 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/22
From: BUYS59A BARBARA HILL Time: 10:27 PM
Dale thanks for sharing VW's essay. It was beautifully
expressed. Couldn't help noticing that what she was saying
about the different takes on the scene she was seeing are
like the CRs different takes on To The Lighthouse. And all
the impressions put together enriches our experience.
Allen I am leaving for the east coast-Long Island- Wed. Will
be gone two weeks-if you have an idea yet what #3 book will
be, please post. Otherwise I have Tim Obriens and Thom
Jones short stories to read between excursions on the Great
South Bay. B Hill
=============== Reply 28 of Note 55 =================
To: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Date: 05/23
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 0:25 AM
Sarah, I'm glad somebody else saw it. Patrick, what I would
really have liked to see happen reflects, alas, my own
background, but is probably valid anyway. It occurred to me
that it was sad there was no facilitator (a nice
psychological term; ask some of our professionals here) at
the dinner table to help the characters connect with each
other and feel more comfortable with themselves. As for
example, Lily, I think I really hear you saying you'd like
to share this new experience of Paul's - or You really feel
the need to get these people conversing together, don't you,
Mrs. Ramsey? Such "facilitation" can be almost as
uncomfortable as the missed connections, but not quite, and
after a few experiences people can actually begin to relate
a little better by themselves without prodding.
The character interelationship does quite interest me.
James and Cam appear to have quite normal needs and
expectations of their parents, if expressed in a rather
unusual and heightened fashion. The fact that James hates
the father he sees as very like himself rings
psychologically true. Cam's feeling comfortable with the
old men in the library also rings true.
There are a whole lot of emotional loose ends left hanging
around, which I suppose is like life. What was it between
the poet Carmichael and the dead Andrew, and is it important
that the most apparently successful man of the lot is the
man disliked by Mrs. Ramsey, who considered him a drug
addict? (To my modern mind, it's remarkable that if he was
an addict he lived to be old and continue to write stuff
that could be published.) What about Charles Tansley? I
shared the general dislike of him, but again it seemed that
people might have communicated with him better.
Many of Lily's reflections and observations in the last
section range emotionally true with me. One thing bugged
me, though - James's memory of somebody running over
somebody else's foot and his inability to place that memory.
Unless he had some thoroughgoing trauma and had blocked the
thing from his memory in self defense, I can't see anybody
forgetting the exact circumstances of something like that,
especially if they observed it so closely, almost
surgically. Somehow I can't imagine any of these characters
having a thoroughgoing trauma or mental block or even a
catatonic seizure, though some seem to be almost catatonic
at times. There's a wispy, vapory feel about them - though
I found Lily's memories of Mr. Ramsey's tantrums most
intolerable. That's the sort of thing that makes me glad
I'm divorced.
Cathy
=============== Reply 29 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/23
From: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Time: 12:52 PM
Cathy,
I must confess I have now, after 100 pages, found a
character that I can like. Yes, Patrick, I can hear you
now: Why is it necessary to like a character when you can
bathe in the author's words and enjoy the metaphors?
Whether it shows me as a lesser reader or not, I cannot
wholly enjoy a book unless I can understand/like/admire/be
interested in at least one of the people. Lily is that
person here; she seems to me the most real, the most
insightful, and the most understandable. I like her
thoughts at the dinner table..."Why does she pity him? For
that was the impression she gave, when she told him that
his letters were in the hall. Poor William Bankes, she
seemed to be saying, as if her own weariness had been
partly pitying people, and the life in her, her resolve to
live again, had been stirred by pity. And it was not true,
Lily thought; it was one of those misjudgments of hers that
seemed to be instinctive and to arise from some need of her
own rather than of other people's. He is not in the least
pitiable. He has his work, Lily said to herself...He was
really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of his eyes, but
then look at his nose, look at his hands, the most
uncharming human being she had ever met. Then why did she
mind what he said? Women can't write, women can't
paint--what did that matter coming from him, since clearly
it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him,
and that was why he said it? Why did her whole being bow,
like corn under a wind, and erect itself again from theis
abasement only with a great and rather painful effort?
She must make it once more." These sound (to me) much more
like what normal human beings are thinking than that
disjointed and disruptive stuff coming from the Ramsays.
There, Patrick, I know I've pricked at least you...
Sarah 5/23/95 9:53AM MT
=============== Reply 30 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/23
From: NPVX84A MARIA BUSTILLOS Time: 8:47 PM
Dear Encyclopedia Hill and Mr. Wilcox, what an excellent and
pleasantly testy dialogue. Enjoyed it hugely and
appreciated also the many referees incl. Shaman Short.
It seems to me that this VW was a woman who felt things too
deeply herself. She had a really thin skin. I imagine
though that most people at times experience the curious
intensity in unspoken things that she describes; sudden
connections, longing made fiercer with repression, strange
compulsions in the life of the mind. I really love this
stuff, but love a good fistfight too; in a novel of course.
I wouldn't make much of a pugilist.
=============== Reply 31 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/23
From: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Time: 10:32 PM
Patrick, I admit that Woolf may be playing in a register
pitched too high for me to hear. To continue this meta-
phorical vein, I guess that to me TO THE LIGHTHOUSE is the
literary equivalent of twelve-tone music: I imagine that
with enough effort I might be able understand what's going
on, but there's nothing in either one that evokes enough
interest for me to make that effort. To my way of thinking,
when there are a thousand paths open to you, there's little
point in expending energy in trying to batter your way
through the occasional brick wall that you find in your
way. Some day my aesthetic sensibilities may evolve to the
point where I can appreciate Woolf's work, but at present
it simply leaves me cold, and I'll be turning my attention
in other directions.
Allen
=============== Reply 32 of Note 55 =================
To: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Date: 05/24
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 4:19 PM
Dear, dear Sarah,
I think a hint of an answer to your question (what's
the point of a novel if it doesn't strive to resemble life)
can be found in a book like "The Waves" or "Tristram Shandy"
or, perhaps, "The English Patient." The=============== No
unpopular one, I know, but it is not incoherent: the author
strives to set up in the novel not a simulacrum of this
planet but an alternative to it, even an antidote to it.
In this view, before the first word of every novel is the
implicit question, "What if this were the case:..."
Somewhere in "Waves" is a dinner party (!) in which a
flower at the center of the table is transformed by the many
perspectives of the guests into a seven-sided flower,
crystalline and sparkling with all the aspirations, loves
and fears of the people sitting there. The effect is of a
sudden, ephemeral order, opposing for a moment the usual
disorder of things. All through "The Waves," characters are
saying that if the world formed by their conversation - the
novel - were to falter or get interrupted, then they would
cease to exist (which is true).
These characters fear interruption, disorder, and
discontinuity because they are involved in a novel: a
creative act which counters and limits chaos; which strives
to create a new world rather than mimic this one. -P.
=============== Reply 33 of Note 55 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 05/24
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 4:22 PM
Allen:
Plot isn't the point of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, actually. Woolf
is getting into the heads of her characters and spilling out
to us what truly motivates them. Her character studies are
fascinating, particularly (to me), the relationships between
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay and James.
As to the relationship between the Ramsays, Woolf does an
excellent job of exploring the vast world of non-verbal
communication that goes on between a husband and wife,
particularly when they have been married for a very long
time. We might think of their marriage as being a little on
the dysfunctional side, because of the many times that they
hurt each other and seemingly snub each other, but I think
that it's really more realistic than dysfunctional. I find
it refreshing to see a marriage discussed on this level
rather than on the hearts and flowers, less than realistic
level. The Ramsays clearly love each other dearly, as we
find out from their thoughts, but that love is mixed up with
other, conflicting emotions of the sort that we are likely
to find in real life.
The relationship between Mr. Ramsay and James is what I find
to be a classic struggle between father and son for the
mother/wife's attention. Mr. Ramsay knows that his wife
dotes on James, so he takes great pleasure in taking away
his son's joy whenever he gets the chance. Actually, Mr.
Ramsay seems to realize that all of his children come first
in his wife's heart, and that is why, I believe, he is such
a tyrant with them. However, since James is the apparent
favorite in his wife's heart, he is merciless in his
treatment of him.
This only scratches the surface of Woolf's masterful
characterization, but it's what came to mind off the top
of my head. I'll be interested to see what everyone else
thought, and maybe I'll have more to contribute later.
Lisa
=============== Reply 34 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/24
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 4:27 PM
Cathy:
But don't we all feel conflicting and contradictory emotions
from time to time? I know that I certainly do. Most of
life isn't so black and white that we don't ride the middle
gray line, dipping onto each side occasionally as the mood
hits us. From personal experience I could name many times
in which I have completely contradicted myself over and over
again within the same relationship.
I find Woolf's commentary on the things that really motivate
us to be highly accurate. It might not be so pretty in the
light of day, but it is realistic.
Lisa
=============== Reply 35 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/24
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 4:29 PM
Ah, Cathy,
Yes, I see now much more of what you meant - please
forgive that I get defensive where Mrs. Woolf is concerned:
anyone who's ever been obsessed by an author may empathize.
Your keen explorations of these people vis-a-vis one
another are on quite another plane from my talk of
metaphoric wefts and networks of imagery - a plane which is
much more relevant to life on the planet. But, as should be
clear by now, I go to literature and to the planet for
different reasons.
Respectfully,
Patrick
=============== Reply 36 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/24
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 4:32 PM
Patrick:
I didn't find the book especially difficult, and I'm not
saying that so everyone will think me an intellectual! It's
more because I've become used to the stream-of-consciousness
style through reading and adoring Faulkner. I can recognize
so much of my own disorganized congnitive function in this
style of writing that I tend to sail right on through it.
I LOVED this book, and I'm not afraid to say it! I found it
fascinating, and I am most interested to hear what everyone
thinks about the significance of the Lighthouse. I haven't
had time to think that through yet, and I was planning to
cheat by seeing what everyone else said first.
Lisa
=============== Reply 37 of Note 55 =================
To: BUYS59A BARBARA HILL Date: 05/24
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 4:37 PM
I hadn't thought much about it before, but you made a very
relevant point about the second part of LIGHTHOUSE. It is
very much a flow of life statement, and I think the decay of
the house fits in very well on the heels of Mrs. Ramsay's
death. Mrs. Ramsay was, in a very real way, the glue that
held all of the other characters together, and her passing
made it very difficult for them to come together again.
Even once they did return to their house in the Hebrides
they seemed a little awkward without Mrs. Ramsay there to
smooth things out. I could reach a little here and compare
the renovating of the house to the resurrection of Mrs.
Ramsay's spirit, but I hesitate to do that.
=============== Reply 38 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/24
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 4:43 PM
I think you can view Woolf on a couple of different levels,
but if you're looking for a plot to sink your teeth into you
are definitely in the wrong place! You can see her as a
psychologist/psychiatrist who is poring over the things that
make her characters tick, and you can see her as an abstract
philosopher. Either way, I think she's a genius.
Question, though, you called her "Mrs." Woolf, but I had
always thought she was a lesbian who never married. Am I
wrong? I thought there was some rumor about her having a
lifelong affair with another famous woman (the name escapes
me), but I could be confused!
=============== Reply 39 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/24
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 4:49 PM
Dale:
I agree. There are simply more ways than one in which to
get a point across. You can do it by telling a story with a
firm plot, and you can do it by throwing the plot aside and
writing a character study. Books that tell a story can
contain incredible character studies, also, so these
categories are not mutually exclusive. Choosing to write
from one angle or another does not make an author any more
or less competent; it's just a matter of preference.
Lisa
=============== Reply 40 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/24
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 4:56 PM
I think Mrs. Ramsay didn't read all of those books of poetry
because she was a typical "beauty without brains." So,
actually, all of her attention to matchmaking and dinner
parties seems most appropriate to her character. Just about
everyone in the book was attracted to her, and perhaps it
was just as much for her apparent superficiality as for
anything else. After all, everyone else in the book was
such a deep thinker that she probably provided them with a
needed relief from themselves.
But her dinner parties seemed to be anything but festive,
I'll agree to that!
=============== Reply 41 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/24
From: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Time: 9:48 PM
Okay, Patrick, I can grant you that "alternative" view of a
fiction piece; it strikes a chord in me and opens up a
whole new set of possibilities in writing novels. Now that
you've so eloquently used "The Waves" as an example of the
form, can you help me through "To the Lighthouse" in the
same way? As Allen so aptly put it, I am afraid I am not
possessed of the mindset that would allow me to
independently uncover the "what if" message in TTL.
Sarah 5/24/95 6:39PM MT
=============== Reply 42 of Note 55 =================
To: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Date: 05/24
From: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Time: 9:48 PM
Lisa,
Virginia married Leonard Woolf and they started Hogarth
Press together in 1917. I can't say whether or not she was
a lesbian, but she wasn't an unmarried one.
Sarah 5/24/95 6:44PM MT
=============== Reply 43 of Note 55 =================
To: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Date: 05/24
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 9:48 PM
Woolf was married to a cat named Leonard who had to, I
understand, bring her back from a couple of undesirable
situations. You're probably thinking of Radcliffe Hall (THE
WELL OF LONLINESS) and Una Trowbridge, one-time wife of the
Admiral of that name and translator of the DON CAMILLO
series. Hall was roughly contemporary with Woolf, I
believe.
Patrick, you have hit on the most unreadable book I've
ever come across - Tristram Shandy. I gave up on it when I
was trying to get through a period novel for a college
course - this you can't do in ten weeks, especially when you
find you can't stand more than ten pages a day. I did,
however, first hear of the remarkable LILIBULERO on Stern's
pages (he even gives the music in a rather antique form).
In many ways, it is a terribly irritating book. For
instance, about page 90 one Obediah is dispatched to bring
Dr. Slopp, the man-midwife, to deliver the hero.
Unfortunately, he rides him down in a mudpuddle,
necessitating a complete change of clothes for the doctor.
While the fellow is drying him out, the narrator's father
entertains him by arguing that all swearing (except "royal"
curses like God's Fish) comes from the Catholic
excommunication document, which is thereupon reproduced in
Latin and English. Then, about page 145, the doctor goes up
to deliver the baby and breaks his nose with the forceps.
Thereupon he goes down into the kitchen to build a bridge
for the baby's nose, which pursuit is mistaken by Uncle Toby
for the building of a bridge for his toy fortifications - it
might be interesting if you have enough time for it, but my
chief feeling was that Mrs. Shandy should have taken a
battle axe to the lot of them. (I feel the same way about
Wagner's real life response to the birth of his son Siegfred
by having a chamber group play his specially written
SIEGFRED IDYLL in the birthing chamber. Men are so D****D
insensitive and impractical!!!)
About Mrs. Ramsey's poetry reading, the last scene in
which we see her she actually does read poetry - she wants
something, though it's not at all clear that she figures out
what it is. I was both impressed and puzzled by her
reaction to reading - obviously she was enjoying herself and
not willing to be interrupted by her husband, but all this
bit about climbing through flowers - well, if that's the way
she responded she must have had a devil of a time reading
poetry or anything else. What's all this symbolism here?
Cathy
=============== Reply 44 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/25
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 7:58 AM
Lisa, Cathy, and Sarah:
Many, many neat comments all round. First, Lisa,
Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf in 1912, because she
liked him, because marriage was somewhat expected of one,
and because she couldn't think of any reason why she should
not marry. On their honeymoon, though, they found that
Virginia was sexually frigid, though she did have a few
mostly un-physical affairs with women. Most notable is the
writer and socialite Vita Sackville-West, for whom she wrote
"Orlando."
Since my focus is stylistic - I like to think about
what a writer's technique "means," - all these delicate
interpersonal analyses are somewhat befuddling for me. I
think I'll have to get out a copy of TTL and refresh my
memory as to who is who etc., and get back to you splendid
people on what's going on betwixt and between Paul, Minta,
Charles, Lily, William, et al.
As for Mrs. Ramsay and the flowers, there is a passage
somewhere in which she's giving herself a moment in her very
other-directed life. She says that her wish is to become a
dark wedge-shape and to float disembodied. I think her
difficulty with poetry may be because she lives beauty, is
suffused with it, and works it into everything. When she's
alone it seems she just wants peace and quiet. I don't
think it's fair to say, Lisa, that she's brainless - it's
just that she concentrates her energies toward service to
other people, and the "work" of reading poetry (like the
"work" of reading Woolf) is not what she would choose to
fill her spare time with.
I've always found it interesting that part one covers
less than a day and is (in the HBJ edition) 124 pages long.
part three covers less than a day and is 74 pages long.
Part two is 18 pages long - and covers more than ten years.
Thoughts?
-Patrick
=============== Reply 45 of Note 55 =================
To: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Date: 05/25
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 9:59 AM
Lisa: To me, the lighthouse in Woolf's novel represents the
idea of the future as an idealized abstraction, some vague
time when we'll be happier than we are now.
Sure, our life today might be muddled and a mess, but
we're pressing forward toward some glorious day in the
future when we'll be wealthy, or loved, or thin; free of
temptations and compulsions and addictions and private
nightmares--"satisfied" in some undefinable way we couldn't
fully specify, even if we were allowed to design it
ourselves, from scratch.
But whenever one of these partial goals is nominally
reached, it never quite equals its abstraction (as in the
song, "Is That All There Is?") and so our human nature fixes
on another "lighthouse." Not long off, we hope.
John Lennon said it best: "Life is what happens while
you're making other plans."
Again, I think (as with the question of whether we should
live as Mrs. Ramsay did, for people, or Mr. Ramsay's life of
the mind) Woolf is asking where the "happy medium" is. It
might be a waste to live in the future, but it's also a
waste (and foolish) to live so totally in the present that
we give up any power to shape the trends of our own lives.
Some wise person once said, "The unexamined life may not
be worth living, but the OVER-examined life is incapable of
BEING lived." Where do you draw the line?
The lighthouse remains so exotic and mysterious throughout
the book because it's unattainable for one reason or
another. Once they see it up close, it's "just" a
lighthouse.
Sad, but ever true.
As for Woolf's sexuality...before I ever read her work, I
had a bad habit of confusing her in my mind with her
almost-exact contemporary Gertrude Stein (whose female
companion was Alice B. Toklas), another female heavyweight
(figuratively, of course ) in the writing arena.
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 46 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/25
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 6:56 PM
Dale, Sarah et al.,
I've argued elsewhere that in the first section Mrs.
Ramsay herself is the lighthouse: a monumental beacon to
which everyone looks for guidance and reassurance. They do
not realize this, and so James keeps pining for the "actual"
distant austere hoary lighthouse, not realizing that it is
in front of him all the time. This, Mr. Short, fits in well
with your reading of the lighthouse - "Life is what happens
to you while you are making other plans." (I liked your
interpretation immeasurably, by the whale.) Anyway Mrs.
Ramsay compares herself to the lighthouse, as a stroking
beam, and other characters are definitely using her as a
reference point: Lily's painting is finished only when Mrs.
Ramsay's shape has been added. They can visit the
lighthouse only when Mrs. Ramsay is dead, and even then the
dominant feeling is that of her absence.
Consider this: Mrs. Ramsay is tall, and our first
glimpse of her (in the first sentences of the book) is in
front of a window. A lighthouse is a tall thing with a
window in it. Is that too tendentious and cute a connection?
Ah, well...
Woolfishly,
Patrick
=============== Reply 47 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/25
From: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Time: 8:32 PM
Hi Dale. I read To the Lighthouse awhile back, and my
memory is a bit muddled (it usually is anyway...) But I had
a different take on the lighthouse - lighthouse's are for
guidance, to avoid foundering, they are not usually a
destination. I'm terrible at symbolism, but it seems to me
they are making a mistake to have a goal of reaching what is
only there to guide them to what "should" be their real
destination, whatever that may be. And the disconnectedness
(I know that's not a word), the fact that most people in the
house miss or misread each other's signals - they aren't
paying attention to whatever guidance is provided for them
in any aspect of their lives. Especially the relationship
between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. It made me shudder - I can't
imagine why anyone would want to have to live with someone
they understood so little.
Theresa
=============== Reply 48 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/25
From: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Time: 8:34 PM
Wow Patrick. I hadn't thought of that. I think you are
right. Thanks for the illumination, so to speak.
Theresa
=============== Reply 49 of Note 55 =================
To: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Date: 05/25
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 9:03 PM
Theresa (though where are you, Dale?):
Actually, I think your reading yields some neat
connections. The way you describe the characters is quite
accurate: they are usually disconnected from one another,
they are usually trying to get to the thing that's there to
guide them: they have no destination, so they mistake the
beacon for the destination. They should be seeking
themselves (remember Mr. Ramsay not reaching R?), but are
afraid to do so in the face of the storm and so they look to
Mrs. Ramsay instead.
Add to this the fact that lighthouses are usually on
islands, and these people are unconnected islands. -P.
=============== Reply 50 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/25
From: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Time: 9:33 PM
Patrick and Theresa,
I like both of your comments, and they shed some light on
my reading. I will finish this weekend (just finished the
first part) and perhaps will feel differently after that.
Sarah
=============== Reply 51 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/25
From: XDPW41A B HUDSON Time: 10:27 PM
Patrick, I have a problem with your notion of "an
alternative" to it, but I've now read you're post long
enough to feel confident you really didn't mean it the way
I'm taking it. If we can dip back into Stevens for a
moment, The Man with the Blue Guitar, I think we have one
of the most succinct statements of a philosophy of art,
literature in particular, I know of in a limited number of
words. Not an alternative world, the essence of the world
from the perspective of the particular take of the
particular piece of literature in question.
bruce
=============== Reply 52 of Note 55 =================
To: XDPW41A B HUDSON Date: 05/26
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 0:12 AM
About that blasted lighthouse - I've been thinking about it
all day and come up with some interesting notions. Mr.
Ramsey took particular pleasure in denying his son the
chance to visit it while small; later, he seemed to feel the
compulsion to take him and Cam - perhaps some small spark of
guilt, some acknowledgement of his wife's silent disapproval
of his treatment of their child. Reading in between the
lines, you realize Mr. Ramsey must have been h**l on wheels
to live with. Is loving his children a chore he leaves to
his wife? He wants Andrew to get a scholarship, but he also
wants Mrs. Ramsey to be proud of him whether he does or not.
The only mode he seems to have with his children, aside
from his teasing of James and occasional, much appreciated
kindness to Cam, is COMMAND. They hate going to the
lighthouse just because they are compelled to. Lily made an
accurate perception of Nancy regarding this final trip - she
realized her petulant question What do you take to a light
house didn't require or even want an actual, practical
answer. Nancy was merely expressing her irritation at being
roped in, compelled, by her father to gather supplies for
his expedition. She apparently took care to wrap the
parcels badly, and I'm not quite sure how she got out of
going herself. - Does Woolf treat people in this oblique,
disconnected fashion because she is not willing to think
about the remembered conflicts behind their behavior or put
it down in writing? Thinking back on the whole, I wonder if
she was avoiding a core of pain within herself.
Cathy
=============== Reply 53 of Note 55 =================
To: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Date: 05/26
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 2:31 PM
Theresa: Intriguing idea, re: the irony that in TO THE
LIGHTHOUSE the beacon was the thing sought, rather than
something to seek by. You're onto something big there, I
think.
As for the parallel discussion here on how great a debt
(if any) fiction owes to literal reality, I ran across a
quote in an old issue of NYTBR that seems pertinent...Brian
Moore, in an article about Robert Louis Stevenson, says:
***
...Stevenson was, perhaps, too unsure of his talents. Over
the years he failed to resist the fumbling, arrogant
editorial advice of Fanny Osbourne, his American wife. But
at the same time he was an author with a clear and
intelligent view of the novels he wished to write.
In a famous exchange with Henry James, he decided that the
novel "is not a transcript of life, to be judged by its
exactitude; but a simplification of some side or point of
life, to stand or fall by its significant simplicity." It is
this "significant simplicity" that has caught and held
generations of readers in his adventure novels, KIDNAPPED
and TREASURE ISLAND, and that made him tell the story of THE
STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, his most unlikely
and original work, through the voices of prosaic narrators
in an effort to conceal its utter improbability.
As a result, it lingers in our minds when greater novels
are forgotten. For, true to his intention, his characters
are not transcripts of life in its exactitude but literary
vampires who spring to life on the page each time the book
is opened.
***
Comments?
(Patrick, to me this seems to jibe greatly with what
you're saying on the subject. Agree?)
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 54 of Note 55 =================
To: CUFZ01B SARAH HART Date: 05/26
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 3:17 PM
Sarah:
Thanks for the info! I must have been thinking of another
author, then.
Lisa
=============== Reply 55 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/26
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 3:20 PM
Cathy:
I got the impression that Mrs. Ramsay was just going through
the motions of reading the poetry when she was sitting with
her husband. She seemed to just enjoy sharing the quiet
with her spouse, and trying to participate in an activity
that he loved. She read for such a short period of time, so
I guess that's what gave me that impression.
Lisa
=============== Reply 56 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/26
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 3:23 PM
Patrick:
That's it! It was ORLANDO that I was thinking of. I knew
that novel was considered to be partly autobiographical, and
that it made reference to homosexuality.
I skimmed back through LIGHTHOUSE yesterday, after posting
the notes that I wrote, and I agree that I was a little hard
on Mrs. Ramsay's intellect. I gathered the same impression
that you mentioned, that she lived her life in service of
others.
Lisa
=============== Reply 57 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/26
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 3:29 PM
Dale:
Excellent ideas on the meaning of the lighthouse. Could
there be some meaning behind the fact that Mr. Ramsay seemed
so against the possibility of going there in the beginning,
and that James was so set on going? It's kind of ironic
that in the end it 's the father dragging the children there
rather than the other way around.
I was partly confusing Woolf with Stein and Toklas, now that
you mention it.
Lisa
=============== Reply 58 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/26
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 3:31 PM
Patrick:
Your connection between Mrs. Ramsay and the lighthouse
sounds pretty plausible to me. Considering that she is the
major force keeping the other characters together, that
isn't a bad analogy.
Lisa
=============== Reply 59 of Note 55 =================
To: NDKB53A THERESA SIMPSON Date: 05/26
From: SACQ68B LISA GUIDARINI Time: 3:34 PM
Theresa:
I actually got the impression that the Ramsays understood
each other all too well. They had so much non-verbal
communication going on all the time, after all.
And your theory about the lighthouse gives a different twist
to the story. It is true that a lighthouse isn't usually a
destination; I didn't even think about that before.
Lisa
=============== Reply 60 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/26
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 5:28 PM
Mr. Short (and Mr. Hudson?): Joyce Carol Oates writes that
"the prose piece...is not a mere concatenation of events, as
in a news account or an anecdote, but an intensification of
meaning by way of events....it represents a concentration of
imagination, and not an expansion." Elsewhere, she says
that a story is "a dramatic episode which reveals, in a
flash of insight, the mystery of character." This seems
very much in line with what you gentlemen are saying.
Exactly what is the problem with literature as an
alternative or antidote to the world, Bruce? I'm not
saying there is no problem, but I'm curious as to what you
think the problem is. -P.
=============== Reply 61 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/27
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 11:19 PM
Patrick, the "alternative" you mentioned - that of a story
about people conceiving of themselves as facets of or in
light of an artificial flower on the table and fearing if
their conversation is interrupted they will no longer exist
- maybe it's terribly lowbrow of me, but I couldn't help
thinking from that and some of your other posts on this
topic HOW VERY LIKE ALL THIS SYMBOLIC STUFF IS TO SCIENCE
FICTION. There was a whole episode of TWILIGHT ZONE based
on the idea that everybody, including series host Rod
Sterling, had been written by one man and that if he burned
his tapes they no longer existed. It seems to me we have
one of those strange human circles here. Highest flown
literary symbolism shades into sci-fi, and ordinary people
based fiction sits somewhere in between.
Cathy
=============== Reply 62 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/28
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 10:10 AM
Am reading TO THE LIGHTHOUSE very slowly because this is a
tough time at work for me, but continue to be drawn to it.
Checked the Prodigy encyclopedia to see what they said
about Woolf this A.M. and there is a decent little article.
Remembered some of your comments much earlier, Patrick,
regarding the similarities of the Ramseys to Woolf's
parents. *P says that Woolf was the daughter of wealthy
scholar-editor Sir Leslie Stephen and that "their London
home was frequented by such leading late-Victorian writers
as Thomas Hardy, R.L. Stevenson, John Ruskin and George
Meredith" which does sound a bit like the home portrayed in
TTL. However, it also says that "her father's death in
1904 caused the first of several nervous breakdowns". I'm
only on about page 85 in TTL, but I don't perceive her
portrayal of Mr. Ramsey as being loving at all, though not
as totally critical as some here have thought. The *P
article doesn't say anything about the death of Woolf's
mother and I remember you saying something about that
earlier, Patrick, and how much it affected her. It was
much earlier than the father's, wasn't it?
I also had forgotten that Woolf committed suicide. Again
from *P, "...Virginia continually fought nervous exhaustion
and abnormal sensitivity; only Leonard's (Woolf) selfless
attention prevented her psychological collapse. When
England declared war against Germany, even the Woolfs'
retreat in Sussex was touched by anxiety. On March 28,
1941, sensing the beginning of another nervous breakdown
and fearing the incursion of madness, Virginia Woolf
drowned herself."
Should probably just concern myself with the work at
hand, but can't help getting very interested in the author
him/herself, particularly someone who has been has
influenced literature as much as Woolf. Barbara
=============== Reply 63 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/28
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 10:26 AM
Cathy,
Yes, science fiction tends to depend upon a speculative
framework very much like the one I suggested earlier: in
front of all fictions is an implied "what if it were the
case that...."
Symbolism, however, is not just a fancy frill thrown on
top of a story to make it seem "highbrow." For many writers
and critics and theorists, symbols are THERE - and a writer
sensitive to that fact is just being an "antenna" for them,
calling attention to a network of connections, associations
and resemblances which secretly underlies the perceptual
landscape!
The "literary establishment" may be as guilty of
shamming and flimflammery as people say it is, but symbolism
when perceptively and genuinely explored is not a mere
gimmick. To set it apart from fiction for ordinary people
is to put walls up where none need be.
I have not usually liked science fiction becuase its
speculations frequently have the air of a gimmick - that the
work is supposed to ride on the novelty or cleverness of its
setting or plot, and that it can therefore "get away with"
being poorly written. Dozens of sci-fi fans have bombarded
me with attempts to change my mind ("Oh, if only you read
such-and-such or thus-and-so...") but the sense I have is a
generalization, not a rule (note the hedge words "usually"
and "frequently") and I definitely agree that there are
exceptions.
Many postmodernists have tried to bristle at the "walls
of genre" and write science fiction works that are "really"
about the speculative act of writing a fiction. There are
also "serious" detective novels that are supposed to
"really" be about epistemological and ontological questions:
the sleuth is exploring the nature of knowledge and
perception when he's on the trail of a whodunit. Such
tricks tend to bore and infuriate me.
-Patrick
=============== Reply 64 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/28
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 1:29 PM
Cathy: I say anybody who automatically dismisses SF as
"lowbrow" is showing their ignorance up front. Throughout
its history, writers of SF and fantasy have consistently
been among the most visionary and important that a
society--especially a totalitarian one--has.
As Patrick rightly points out, there's a great deal of
poorly-written dreck out there. I have no doubt it far
outweighs the "good" stuff in quantity, and that, sadly,
most readers don't seem to see the difference. But to hold
this fact against the genre would be like saying of 20th
Century fiction, "Sure, you've got Woolf and Faulkner, but
how about Danielle Steel and Robert James Waller?"
Speaking of visionary, are you acquainted with a Czech SF
writer named Stanislaw Lem? His collection of computer
fables THE CYBERIAD, written long before the first Apple
escaped from Steve Jobs' garage, is a masterpiece.
(For new CRs here who may not be aware of it, Ms. Hill is
not only a seasoned reader of SF, but a practitioner as
well. Her gentle satires on the genre's conventions--I'm
talking about the literary, not the auditorium,
kind--make for wonderful reading.)
>>Dale in Ala.
=============== Reply 65 of Note 55 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 05/28
From: ETJY35A A KENDRICK Time: 2:10 PM
Hi Barbara,
It seems to me that Quentin Bell wrote a biography about Va.
Woolf in which he shined a bright light on Woolf's childhood
sexual abuse by a brother. Her relationship with Leonard was
oppressive, as was Woolf's with her father. No wonder Woolf
was so obsessed with the subjugation of women!
While I am no romanticizer (a word?) of suicide, I believe
that suicide can be a consciously self-liberatating act.
It's interesting that the men in Woolf's life can be seen as
the weary and overburdened caretakers of an hysterical
woman. Very Freudian. BTW, James Hillman's Suicide and the
Soul presents some off-the-beaten-path views of suicide.
I know that many book groups do not allow biographical
discussion about the author, choosing to focus instead on
the book, the thing itself. If we are going to look at an
artist's work, however, isn't the direction the arrow takes
(Edmund Wilson, The Wound and the Bow) a central element? If
so, mustn't one take into consideration the possible reasons
for that direction?
If this is sounding a bit argumentative, I confess, it is.
I'm having an argument with myself here. I detest the view
that lumps people into victims and victimizers, us and them,
etc. On the other hand, life experiences do help to form
the human beings we become -- part of the reason rather than
the excuse.
I once was acquainted with someone who referred to Van Gogh
as someone who couldn't get "with the program." Any
comments? That *P encyclopedia article, by the way, sounded
very patronizingly biased.
Ann >>>>>>>
Does Mrs. Ramsay represent Woolf's mother?
=============== Reply 66 of Note 55 =================
To: ETJY35A A KENDRICK Date: 05/28
From: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Time: 4:24 PM
Ann: Amen, to your contention that we do truth a great
disservice when we lump people into victims and victimizers.
I think the same occurs when we reduce to black-and-white
such gray issues in relationships as power, abuse, and
equality. Real life is far more complex than that.
For instance, I'm gratified that the Simpson matter has at
least brought the subject of spousal abuse into the
spotlight--but I'm very saddened that abuse has become a
code word for a male hitting a female.
May I say, and underscore, that I believe there can be NO
legitimate reason for physical violence in a relationship.
That said, over the years I've known countless men (and
have been one of them) who bear the scars of emotional
"beatings" and manipulations in relationships, which they
would gladly have traded for a black eye.
>>Dale in Ala.
(PS: Thank goodness for the people such as van Gogh who
"can't get with the program" and as a result create timeless
art, at great emotional cost, for those who couldn't
otherwise see beyond their own "programming. End of
soapbox.)
=============== Reply 67 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/28
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 11:36 PM
Dale, thank you for those kind words!
Virginia, I, too, feel that suicide can be a freeing action
under some circumstances. When someone has borne as much
emotional pain and abuse as Woolf, it would be cruel to ask
them to hang around any longer. There are also cases like
the tormented genius Robert Schumann, who walked into the
Rhine apparently to get away from the voices in his head.
The phenomenon of hearing voices is a part of the
schizophrenic phenomenon, and at that time there was no
medication to ease it.
I suppose my aversion to heavily symbolic works, Patrick,
comes from my early psychological training - a symbol can
serve very often as a defense, a cover, or an excuse for
facing up to a problem and trying to deal with it. Woolf
may well have been doing this kind of groping in TO THE
LIGHTHOUSE. It makes provocative literature, but one could
wish for a happier result for the poor lady.
Sci-fi is far too often over gimmicked; if the gimmick is
amusing or literate enough, I've been willing to go on and
suspend my disbelief just for the romp. Thus I rather
enjoyed Heinlein's LORD OF LIGHT simply because it's based
on Hindu mythology.
Cathy
=============== Reply 68 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/29
From: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Time: 3:51 PM
Dear Catherine,
I hope I'm not stepping on your toes here, but I couldn't
help but interject my comments on a subject that is close to
my heart. I just wanted to point out that LORD OF LIGHT was
written by Roger Zelazney, not Robert Heinlein. Frankly, I
can't picture the archetypically curmudgeonish Heinlein even
imagining a book like LORD OF LIGHT, which I also enjoyed
for much the same reason you did. I think both authors are
fair
representatives of the expansive science fiction genre, and
there are dozens of others whose works are, in the words of
John Cleese et al, something completely different. As has
been pointed out, there are tons of dreck available on
bookshelves everywhere; one should not use that to excuse a
blanket disparagement of a genre that within the past thirty
years has exponentially expanded and transcended the bounds
set for it by early twentieth century magazine editors.
Writers like Ursula K LeGuin, Arthur C Clarke, James
Tiptree, Jr.,Philip K Dick,Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, John
Varley, J G Ballard, Theodore Sturgeon, Brian Aldiss, Bruce
Sterling, Lewis Shriner and Orson Scott Card I would name
among those whose work is published as science fiction as
some I would recommend to serious novices. They encompass
in their diverse works not only such classical "literary"
themes as alienation and relationships, but include
conjecture concerning
the possibilities inherent in the human condition and
humanity's rapid ascent into the technological world,
extrapolating from the wellspring of history and literature
to examine ideas that are worthy of scrutiny and
consideration. Joe B
=============== Reply 69 of Note 55 =================
To: ETJY35A A KENDRICK Date: 05/29
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 3:58 PM
Read most of the dinner party scene in Lighthouse this
morning and it's been bouncing around in my head all day
(while I try to get tedious things done for work). I don't
think I've ever heard the different perspectives, ongoing
thoughts, insecurities, contrasts of a group of people
described so well. I have a number of places bracketed in
light pencil (don't want to write in books, but can't
resist sometimes), but the shortest one I can pick as an
example of what I'm saying is..."All of them bending
themselves to listen thought, 'Pray heaven that the inside
of my mind may not be exposed' for each thought, 'The
others are feeling this. They are outraged and indignant
with the government about the fishermen. Whereas, I feel
nothing at all.' ". And then, the spot, in which Mrs.
Ramsey becomes entranced with the centerpiece seeing
wonderfully poetic images and Augustus "feasted his eyes on
the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom
there, a tassel here and returned, after feasting to his
hive. That was his way of looking, different from hers."
These are inadequate quotes, so I should stop, but Woolf
does such a perfect job of it.
Though the *P article does seem a bit patronizing, the
reference to her struggles with her extreme sensitivity hit
home. How could you go through life being as aware as
Woolf obviously was of every nuance, every motivation,
every little repressed thought? It's sometimes painful to
read and must have been even more painful to live.
Again, I'm only on pg. 109 of my edition, but the Ramseys
marriage does not seem so unusual to me (I can hear some of
you thinking "horrors!"). I certainly hope that mine is
better, but this experience of two people living together
while they actually remain in two different little bubbles,
with their main topic of conversation being their children
and the other folks moving about them looks like a lot of
marriages I've been around.
By the way, my edition of TTL is put out by Compact Books
and is a wonderful little affordable hardback at 4.99.
They publish a number of other classics that I'm going to
look into. Barbara
=============== Reply 70 of Note 55 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 05/29
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 5:00 PM
Dear Barbara,
A French critic, Sainte-Beuve, says that the author IS
the work ("Tel homme, tel oeuvre."), and that to find one is
to find the other. It's nice to hear of your interest in
VW. For you info, her mother died in 1895, when she was 13;
Leslie hung around until 1904. Virginia's first breakdown,
as you rightly say, was the summer of her mother's death. I
was amused to hear that Leonard's attentions were
"selfless," because some have suspected that it was anything
but and that he enjoyed the martyr status of being married
to a famously high-strung manic-depressive lesbian.
-Patrick
=============== Reply 71 of Note 55 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 05/29
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 5:18 PM
Barbara,
You do Virginia great kindness to link her madness to
the extraordinary sensitivity she shows in the novels...I
have sometimes believed that anxiety and pain are necessary
side effects of awareness. I'm not sure that VW thought so,
but she wrote in her diary about her intense fear of "the
danger of seeing to the bottom of the bowl." Elsewhere
there are mentions of how frightening and exhausting it can
be to see things clearly - how much nicer it is to be behind
a veil of assumptions. She always alternated a "visionary"
book with a "fun" one, to rest her mind after the labor.
TTL was followed by the "holiday book" Orlando, then after
writing "The Waves" she wrote "Flush," a biography of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog.
-Patrick
=============== Reply 72 of Note 55 =================
To: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Date: 05/29
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 5:46 PM
Just finished TO THE LIGHTHOUSE the other night while on a
trip. Was unable to read all your fine ongoing comments so
I saved them all and read them in one lump. I agree with
all that this book takes an enormous amount of concentration
to remain engaged. Some books can be read on automatic
pilot--not this one. I found myself reading it "out loud"
in my head--as if I could hear every word and pause. This
technique helped enormously although it made the going
pretty slow. Her way of interjecting thoughts within
thoughts seems to me a very realistic (however intense) way
of writing. I identify with her. Sometimes my thoughts
bombard me and if I were to do a running dialog of my inner
thoughts, there would be as many parenthetical phrases as in
her writing. Is this a female thing? or just a personality
thing? One of the themes that struck a chord with me was
the idea of perspective. I don't remember the particulars
or even if I have the character right, but someone (Lily?)
was looking at the ground, watching the ants. She was
playing god and moving some dirt, making the ants go around.
That patch was the whole of the ants' life and this big
human was just idly changing it. Then the idea of time in
perspective. One whole day dissected in terms of thoughts
and relationships, and then ten years goes by quickly as if
we're watching fast-action photography. Then the last bit
where another day is dissected in thoughts and deeds and the
perspective is constantly shifting from the boat to the
island. The boat getting smaller and smaller from the
vantage point of the house (and Lily sitting there thinking)
and the perspective of the people in the boat looking back
at the island getting smaller and smaller and the lighthouse
getting larger. Haven't you ever been up in an airplane and
had those exact same thoughts as you were landing? What I'm
not very clear on is what the changing perspectives might
mean. One idea I have is this: One can have the most
insightful and minute thoughts about the most deeply hidden
seed of a concept and if one pulls away--if witnessed from a
different perspective--those ideas vanish, are meaningless,
are insignificant or are they just hard to keep hold of
(could this be Mr. Ramsay's perpetual quest for Z?) Maybe
Woolf's personal problem was she COULD see from A to Z and
trying to keep both ends of the alphabet in focus was what
made her have her "nervous breakdowns."
Sherry
=============== Reply 73 of Note 55 =================
To: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Date: 05/30
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 0:10 AM
Thanks for the correction. I read the book years ago and
haven't been able to persuade my son it's worthwhile; he
gave away his copy. I just stuck on Heinlein's name because
I've heard of him as being a higher grade sci-fi writer.
Cathy
=============== Reply 74 of Note 55 =================
To: MXDD10A DALE SHORT Date: 05/30
From: NMTT86A JAMES HEATH Time: 9:43 AM
Dale: The Woolf essay is wonderful. Thanks for posting it.
She seems to have caught the essential problem of
trying to understand something beautiful. We either do
injustice to the subject or we end up sounding like a
pompous idiot. (Occasionally, I manage to do both
simultaneously.)
Where that leaves us I am not sure. Perhaps headed off
to bed.
--Jim in Oregon
=============== Reply 75 of Note 55 =================
To: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Date: 05/30
From: ZMSB02A VIRGINIA PARKER Time: 2:11 PM
Hey Joe,
I cut my pre-adolescent reader teeth on Sci Fi. Born in
1950, I read Heinlein's work pretty much as it was
published (blissfully unaware that I would have been among
the first he would have stuffed out an airlock, due to
genetic imperfections and liberal political bent).
I swallowed without chewing Bishop and Clarke, Dick and
Ellison. I remember being particularly impressed (and
disturbed) by Theodore Sturgeon.
MaCaffrey, I think, wrote something called -The Ship Who
Sang-, and Gaskel and LeGuin both absorbed me.
Looking back, the fact they invented women protagonists
who boldly went, so to speak, where no women had gone
before, may have offset some of the expectations of innate
passivity and dependence promulgated by 1950s southern
culture. Heck, even Heinlein's -Podkayne of Mars- was a
pretty active participant.
Virginia, former girl sci-fi reader 5/30/95 2:02PM ET
=============== Reply 76 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89idea is an
unpopular one, I kno
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 6:35 PM
Dear Cathy,
It's intriguing to read that you are a practicioner as
well as an aficionado of SF. Though this might be hard for
you to believe, despite my infamous prejudices I am quite
fond of a number of -ahem- fictions with a futuristic and/or
speculative framework. I would be interested to hear what
conventions you gently satirize, and how.
By the whale, I think it funny that a discussion of
science fiction should surface under a note beginning, "TO
THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf." That humming sound in
distant Sussex may be VW spinning in her grave.
-Patrick
=============== Reply 77 of Note 55 =================
To: ETJY35A A KENDRICK Date: 05/30
From: VRCH78A ALLEN CROCKER Time: 11:03 PM
Ann, how good of you to grace us with your presence
again! For those CRs who don't recognize her name, I
should note that Ann is a stray lamb only recently
returned to the fold. She was a regular poster in the sub-
ject's earliest days, but disappeared some time late in
1993 and has only surfaced a couple of times since. For
this time around, however, she's promised to be as Faithful
a Correspondent as she can manage, so I have generously
granted her Conductor's Absolution and let the past be
spoken of no more.
Ann is also another of our curiously large CR contingent
from the Birmingham, Alabama, the others being Dale, Rachel
Stein and Jim Cook. Why, given that we have but one CR in
New York and one from all of New England, there should be
this unmatched concentration of correspondents in this
single small Southern city is a thing that has always
escaped my understanding. You'll no doubt be interested to
know that Ann has told me that she'll be going to the get-
together that Dale is soon going to be holding to celebrate
the publication of his novel, so we should soon be getting
her report of her impressions of Shaman Short -- and, I
trust, vice-versa!
Please pardon the intrusion; you can now return to
the serious stuff....
Allen
=============== Reply 78 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 05/31
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 0:03 AM
Actually, Woolf might have thought to put sci-fi to serious
use. One of the earliest practitioners was Rudyard Kipling,
an older contemporary, and of course there was H.G. Wells.
My own idea of sci-fi carried to the highest literary power
is Lawrence Durrell's two volume series TUNC and NUMQUAM.
What I've been doing with some gusto got started because
of my sci-fi son who grew up on Star Trek. When he joined
the local club, he remembered how I had taken him to writing
class when he was small and proposed to gather Trek writers.
There aren't many locally, but I was surprised to learn
that, since the coming of computers, there are a number of
fans who have taken the bit into their own teeth and
written stories about their favorite serieses. I was
intrigued - Can I do this? How much of my universe can I
stuff into Gene Roddenberry's universe without anybody
protesting? As I thought more, I realized this presented an
educational and sharing opportunity. Believe it or not, I
actually took teacher training, though it should be obvious
from my posts here I'd never make a teacher. But I found
that if you coat a thing in Trek a group who doesn't read
much of anything else will follow you anywhere. I'm trying
to entice tv age folks to dip into the mysteries of history,
literature, and music and maybe to understand a little about
personality conflicts, etc.
I've just been rereading the story I sent to Dale to check
for the gentle satire; I'm sure you're surprised I can do
gentle anything. Yes, in that one I was having a good bit
of fun weaving in some of the stuff developed in the various
tv incarnations with some of my own fancies. - As an example
of how the educational part works, our club has often handed
out surveys asking which incarnation of the show each person
enjoys. You wouldn't believe how many people ask what an
incarnation is. The whole project is partly a fun thing
between me and my son (technical advice) and partly a desire
to communicate.
Cathy
=============== Reply 79 of Note 55 =================
To: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Date: 05/31
From: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Time: 7:09 PM
Gentle Cathy,
Thanks for the reply; your trekking sounds like quite a
splendid endeavor all round.
As for proto-SF'ers, Kipling and Wells are good to
mention. I'd not known Mr. Durrell did anything of the
sort. I liked about a third of C.S. Lewis's "Perelandra"
trilogy, and as a child I consumed Jules Verne books at a
sitting. All of those are relative oldsters, but I've also
come across the fairly interesting and recent "O-Zone," by
Paul Theroux, who wouldn't at first seem like SF.
-Patrick
=============== Reply 80 of Note 55 =================
To: SFKX01A PATRICK WILCOX Date: 06/01
From: YHJK89A CATHERINE HILL Time: 0:15 AM
Actually, I don't know if Durrell himself thought of it that
way, but a major element in those two books is what can only
be called the high-tech rape of a woman's soul. At the
behest of an evilly twisted CEO (though he doesn't call him
that), a brillant scientist creates a robotic equivalent of
a Greek woman who had been, among other things, his
mistress. Knowing her so well, he manages to recreate her
psyche. Then after some months she gets away from her
closely guarded environment and realizes the truth - that's
not the whole plot, by any means, but it is compellingly and
chillingly told. And his chilling "The Firm" seems all too
relevant sometimes. Cathy
=============== Reply 81 of Note 55 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 06/01
From: FBED59A EDWARD HOUGHTON Time: 4:48 AM
Barbara Moors
I'm overstepping my bounds I know, but: In any
"Symbolism 1A" class, lighthouses are phallic symbols.
Also if you have the twist of mind that sees erotica where
it may or may not exist, then your quote has very
different imagery. I repeat it below:
...Mrs. Ramsey becomes entranced with the centerpiece
seeingwonderfully poetic images and Augustus "feasted his
eyes onthe same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a
bloomthere, a tassel here and returned, after feasting to
hishive. That was his way of looking, different from
hers."
The thought came to me as I was dusting off my old copy of
Cabell's "Jurgen". If nothing else, it shows that there's
more than one way to look at the same words.
Edd Houghton
Lake Forest, CA
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Virginia Woolf
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