virginia woolf

i came across an excellent book sale last week and grabbed jacob’s room by virginia woolf for five bucks. i sort of have an obsession with her, the oppression she dealt with supposedly being homosexual, having some sort of mental illness (dementia, hearing voices), but still seeing the political oppression of being a woman in the victorian age. she was brilliant in her own strange, almost avant garde, way. i’ve read mrs. dalloway three times in college, the first two times for a paper and the third time for another class. by then, i really didn’t need to read the book again, but i did as i saw it as an opportunity to indulge myself. it’s weird to think that i used to read so much.

i actually didn’t care for mrs. dalloway the first time i read it. it’s just about this woman, clarissa dalloway, whose only concern was a party she was throwing. the story takes place in only one day. but in this one day, she comes to an epiphany. another character had been a soldier who suffers from post trauma stress disorder. even though they don’t know each other in the story, they are basically two sides of the same coin. only after reading it again did i begin to grasp the beauty of the book, and even at that time, i could barely articulate why i loved it so much. what i’ve come to conclude is that even though clarissa dalloway seemed so shallow with her only concern about a party, she was a lovely person, worrying about how people would get along. also, it was the style of writing, stream of conciousness, that i fell in love with.

so we’ll see how i feel about jacob’s room. here’s the first excerpt that jumped out at me:

“who...” said the lady, meeting her son; but as there was a great crowd on the platform and jacob had already gone, she did not finish her sentence. as this was cambridge, as she was staying there for the week-end, as she saw nothing but young men all day long, in streets and round tables, this sight of her fellow-traveler was completely lost in her mind, as the crooked pin dropped by a child into the wishing-well twirls in the water and disappears for ever.

a model world

i've been reading michael chabon's a model world and other short stories. i was first drawn to it because i loved the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay, and the collection begins with a quote from elizabeth bishop, my favorite poet: "more delicate than the historians' are the map makers' colors." it's one of the few new books that i've ever bought, being generally a used-books gal.

it's divided into two halves: the first being a small collection of stories, "the model world," pretty much unrelated to each other; and the second being a collection that almost works as a novella, "the lost world." i liked "the model world" okay, didn't love it, didn't hate it. "the lost world," however, i loved. it's about a little boy, nathan, and his view of the world as his parents are going through a divorce and beginning to date others. he ages a few years or so between each short. what i loved about this series was that even though it was about a child and told in large parts through his eyes, it was sophisticated and treated the child as a human being with feelings and thoughts of his own. it wasn't condescending just because he was young.

children's stories written for adults is actually the genre where i found my voice when i wrote in college. i guess what struck me about reading this is that it has, in a small way, inspired me to write again. after reading some of it last night, i'm sitting here blogging, not just this entry but another on my other blog. yes, it's informal writing, but it's writing nonetheless. it's more writing that i normally do nowadays. and actually, since i've embarked on a relationship with someone love deeply, i haven't really been reading as much as i used to. i was able to find time to read last night because i slept alone, neither of us able to make it to the other's because of my cold and his exhaustion from a long day at work. before dating, i always read in bed before falling asleep. i have to work harder on finding time to read, something i miss dearly even though the reason i miss it has made me happier.