Time to Go to the Lighthouse!

I’m overly excited to talk about Lighthouse. It’s such an important novel to me. And yet since my second, about-to-go-on-submission, novel deals quite a bit with this book, I have to be careful. No spoilers!

Although here’s one tidbit: I turned the lighthouse into a forest fire lookout tower in my novel. One I know from my childhood.

This is not the actual tower of my childhood. But it’s a good representation.

Lighthouse and I had a rocky start: Here I was in Senior freakin’ Seminar as a non traditional student with all of these bright English majors and I’m panicking because it’s a beautiful book but I’m lost. I know I can’t just enjoy it. I have to understand it, and I don’t. Or didn’t. It feels like Woolf gives with one hand and snatches that “truth” back with the next. I was hella confused and frustrated, because her essays were so straightforward by comparison.

Enjoying and embracing ambiguity has come slowly to me.

I was reading Lighthouse in bed that first time (my favorite place to read) on a rare morning at home and just not understanding it at all. Then, out of nowhere, we had an earthquake! In Indiana! The bed rocked as if I were in our vacation rental boat. The quake must have jarred something in me or the universe loose because slowly after that, I finally understood it. (Well, it took six times all told of reading it to really feel I had grasped it, but that day opened me to it.) If I were more metaphysically inclined, I would say Woolf “zapped” me during that earthquake. Maybe I should say it anyway.

Not before I felt like a wretched, ignorant loser in class, a fake, a fraud, behind the rest did I get it, though. They were a great bunch, but come to find out, some of them found their “insight” online, something I could never imagine doing because I’m so stubborn.

So I read it again. And again. Then there was class discussion, and I was relieved to discover I was getting it. I had always been a fan of stream of consciousness, so that wasn’t throwing me. I really can’t say what was except for sure that cursed, hopeless, existential-crisis making middle section. I needed some plot back or at least hope and fast before I got stuck there. But then, ah, then, life returned. Lily Briscoe with her art returned. And I knew everything would be all right, even if it did feel icky to have such mixed feelings about the characters.

Nowadays I don’t so much try to understand it as reference it, even though I’m pretty confident that I do understand it. For me it’s like flipping through a book of poems by Neruda. Though my Spanish isn’t great, I just get something from his poetry, first in Spanish, then the translation.

With Lighthouse I get that gilded, heady glimpse first, you know, the surface shine that makes you happy. And then I take the words in, focus on the meaning. Damn, is there meaning. It’s Morse code about life. Do yourself a favor and open it up pretty much anywhere and sample it.

When it came time to choose a book to write my senior thesis on, did I play it safe? Did I choose Alice in Wonderland or even Cuckoo’s Nest? I had other choices, too, but I’m Kit in A League of Their Own: “I like the high ones.” (Wait, does that movie title have echoes of Woolf? A Room of One’s Own? I say yes!)

Not only did I write my thesis on it but I was told I was the only English senior that year to receive a high pass. Boom.

Then I was asked to read it at the Indiana College Education Association Conference. I did. Oh, and I won first place, even though I planned to leave before the awards were announced because I’d had such a good time talking about the book I didn’t even consider I might win. It barely registered to me that there was an awards ceremony. I laughed and laughed when I so unexpectedly won, and if memory serves I bought something pretty with the prize money. Boom again.

Naturally when it came time to do my grad school thesis I continued the trend and wrote on Lighthouse. It was such a luxury to write even more about the book. I wish there were some way to write observations page for page about a book, and a place to share it. I know that would take years and I’m not sure anyone would want to read it, but that’s just how much I still want to know about the novel, how much it affects and guides me. I’m sure there’s so much more to discover about it. (Ooh, maybe there’s a new podcast to start?!)

No wonder, then, that I turned to my love of this book when I began my second novel. It’s been a challenge but so meaningful to wade into that great pool of words and sift them between my fingers. To mull on phrases and mysteries. To ask what’s behind the behind.

How can a novel be simultaneously lovely, dark, and deep? That bird flight of a POV, the cadence, the intertextuality, the clever use of an artist observing a couple to speak of marriage. All of this while Woolf also memorializes her own mother and the family’s summer trips.

I have multiple copies of this book. Ironically, of all of my class texts for Senior Seminar I borrowed my copy from the library because money was tight. I could hardly bear to give the book back. I only did so when I was able to find an identical copy online. And dear librarian, if you see pencil markings in your copy, I’m sure it was some other patron who did that. (I don’t condone abusing library books but I may have forgotten a time or two it was a library book I was holding since it didn’t have a crinkly (cellophane?) cover.)

Maybe this book won’t do for you what it did for me, won’t cause you to scrutinize anything and everything you’ve ever believed, but then again, maybe it will. I’m excited to run through it yet again.

Have you read Lighthouse? What did you think of it?

Saying Farewell to Mrs. Dalloway

Privileging the inner person, the interior self, Mrs. Dalloway reminds us that what is within is more important and richer than the outer manifestation. What we see is mere set dressing in comparison to our inner life, even from those who, upon first glance, seem the most surface of people. A woman might be mending a dress wishing she could mend a heart.

Thoughts stream into more thoughts. Images bring to mind events from the past, or people long absent.

We see the interconnectedness of everyone, and how our casual observations can be woefully incorrect: a man and woman arguing could be not a harmless disagreement, but a woman trying to pull her husband back from the brink of crippling PTSD.

Those are the overarching themes, swiftly shifting POV’s which lends even more to the sense of one person being all people, all of a piece. And yet also not.

As much as it pains me to say this, I think having read Lighthouse first has forever spoiled me. I enjoyed and greatly admired Mrs. Dalloway, but it’s not Lighthouse. That’s up next. Soon, in the next few days. Read it with me?

In the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote for a creative writing class years ago. It was published by Woolf Zine, which I now believe to be sadly defunct. If you see references to both Mrs. Dalloway and Lighthouse in it, you’re correct, so it ends up being a bit of a bridge between the two novels.

                                                                     “Looking for Virginia”

                “What are you looking for?”

I tip the bookshelf, leaking words onto the puddle of papers, papers, papers that are all that hold me in this house.  Answers, answers he will never understand tinge my tongue.  “Virginia.”

                Now he will dig and delve into the hallowed dalloways of my mind and. He cannot. He crabs my hands with his frigid old man no sympathy hands, hairs on their sides like my stepbrother’s. Stepbrothers. Men with minds to hurt and hands to halt the galloping growth of might haves.

                “Leonard, don’t touch me.” The icicle of me uvulas in the word winds. Doctors voodoo a nothing for me.

They loose the mother inside me, the sanity scrap bag; knitting a shawl of should haves I cover the mirror of beauty which is reality but not truth, opened the door that ate my muse. 

Mrs. Ramsey will not take it — she dies for beauty. Scarcely is she adjusted…Leonard…did I write that?  No? 

                Words, my waifish children, load empty hobo sacks onto heavy burdened backs and don’t wave. I sing them a lullaby of the crawdad, cavefish, cravefish.  Gravefish.

                I wanted something once, didn’t I, Leonard? Leonard?

                I suck the soul from my sister and knit it to my own, but it always goes home, unknotted by her own lazy susan heart that twirls in the direction of the man with the predilection… 

I children my pockets with stones, write my memories goodbye and

Leonard?  Leonard?

No.

                Just swim. Go.

Thanks again for joining me on this journey into Mrs. Dalloway! Happy Reading Lighthouse.

The Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

Our “Dallodays” are almost over, alas, How’d the month go so fast? I simply cannot let it go by without pointing you to yet another book of my heart whose structure borrows bits beautifully (while also remaining entirely original) from Mrs. Dalloway.

This book is engrossingly and beautifully written!

The Fountain of St. James Court or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman deserves all of the love and affection I am about to heap on it. However, I feel the need to be transparent and also tell you that I know and adore its author, Sena Jeter Naslund. It was in her novel writing workshop that I first dared present an early draft of my first novel.

Her double novel, the story of writer Kathryn Callaghan who has recently completed a draft of a novel about artist Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, is not only doubled in the sense that it tells the stories of both women, but it also “doubles” in showing how two incredibly gifted women overcome major life change and challenges. That doesn’t really have anything to do with Woolf, but I think it’s cleverly done.

While I have read the book numerous times, I don’t trust that I will be able to count all of the ways Mrs. D. permeates the book, so forgive me in advance. This is only a sampling.

I don’t use it to be pretentious, but here’s a literary term that fits perfectly: intertextuality. In short, that’s when one book “speaks” to another.

Don’t be shocked – all of literature is in conversation with the rest of it, whether writers have read others’ works or not, because any work that has been read and digested by any author makes its way into the literary stream and when we drink of one, we drink of the one before.

Purposeful echoes or discussions or unconscious connections happen all the time.

Okay, that out of the way, let’s get into it.

Fountain certainly is in dialogue with Woolf in terms of style and structure. Not only does the author in the novel, Callaghan, acknowledge that Woolf and Joyce are influences (a subtle, welcome nod from the author of the actual novel), but others (and I agree) have compared Naslund’s writing to Woolf’s with its emphasis on inner character, on elevating daily life, not to mention its lyrical quality.

Here’s her marvelous opening line. I don’t need to tell you what it echoes: “No matter it was almost midnight, she would deliver her manuscript herself. (A lopsided moon hunched high overhead.)”

One thing this line, stacked with all of the other first (and alternative) first lines I have mentioned in previous posts convinces me of: Woolf wasn’t focused on the flowers. It was the agency of Clarissa, her ability and will, after her illness, to go fetch them herself. Clearly she had servants who were more than willing to get them, but she refused. Later, remember, Richard, her husband, brings her some. But no, she wants to be out and about in the world, if even for just a few minutes. (Reminds me of writers, too. Callaghan probably spends tons of time indoors and is likely pleased to be out in the night air. If the weather were nicer today, I’d be outdoors right now.)

In tone, in cadence, this book also reminds of Dalloway. Woolf’s pacing is both casual and unspooling at once. It’s intertwined with the book’s meaning. Same here.

We are given a walking tour of Callaghan’s neighborhood reminiscent of Clarissa’s walk. In fact, Dalloway is referenced directly, as is a day being a metaphor.

Hints of Woolf, heavy doses of Naslund’s artfully crafted historical fiction, exquisite insights into the human condition, and art! So much wonderful art! Even if I didn’t know Naslund (my novel is dedicated to her), I would have read it for the Woolf aspects and the art alone.

Do yourself a favor and read this book. It pairs perfectly with Mrs. Dalloway.

Next up: our very last (for now!) Mrs. Dalloway post.

To Be Continued…

You may or may not have noticed that I’m a wee bit behind on the posts. Important, unexpected extended family business needed tending to and while I meant to post a lovely photo of Woolf earlier today, I couldn’t even manage that without frustration.

I knew you’d forgive me.

But give me some time (a couple of days?) and I will be back on schedule. Yes, Lighthouse is coming soon! (But first to wrap Dalloway.)

Alas, I fear my “decaf” was not today and so although I kicked my caffeine habit beautifully last week, I am awake late but not alert enough to write cogently. (I think restaurants should have to certify that their decaf truly is.)

Let me try posting that Woolf photo again, albeit imperfectly edited.

Nope, still not working. Oh well.

Regardless of today not turning out as I had planned, there were moments of beauty.

—Brunch with my honey

—Helping a shy nephew with his homework and making over how becoming his longer hair is. We worked on social studies, science, and algebra!

—Spending time with one of my favorite doggies who insisted on incessant pettings. I think he believes he’s my brother!

—Seeing my eldest sister for the first time since Corona hit

Though I’m exhausted, it’s been a good day. I’m ending the night reading Glennon Doyle’s latest, Untamed. Very different from Woolf, to be sure, but if you’re a soulful, self-reflective person you’d enjoy it.

Good night, all. More soon.

The Woolf Diaries

While I’m self-isolating more than usual this weekend due to a possible COVID-19 exposure (waiting for the test results of the person who may have it that I was exposed to), I thought I’d write briefly about Woolf’s extensive diaries which I tend to call journals.

And don’t pity me too much for having to remain homebound. Other than not being able to go help my mother out this weekend or spend my CVS Extra Care Bucks that will be expiring, it’s a good thing I’m going to stay parked. (I could use the bucks online) because I decided to give up caffeine once again. Other than being very sleepy, I’ve done okay. Only a couple of times has a headache threatened. But when I say tired, I mean ridiculously so!

For instance, when I got home from teaching Wednesday I collapsed onto the sofa. Hubby offered to make supper and I hastily, gratefully agreed. Otherwise I would have “prepared” us a handful of mixed nuts and some cheese cubes and called it done.

And though I finished re-reading Mrs. Dalloway yesterday, I kept falling asleep while I read it. (It was not Woolf’s fault that I did so!) More on the rest of the book soon.

Starting in her thirties, Woolf kept regular journals. I own copies of them as well as volumes of her letters but have only read select portions. It’s a treat I dole out slowly to myself, and now that I’ve finished my novel that involves Woolf, I feel more ready to read them. Sometimes too much research can get you off track.

From what I have read of her diaries, they’re lyrical and funny, soulful and sad. Sometimes she talks about what she’s writing and tries out book ideas in them. They’re fascinating for sure.

By contrast, my own journaling has been sporadic, although I have been a semi regular journaler since I was 20. (That was when I met Barry, the hubby, and I just had this feeling that he was the one, and that I might want to remember these early moments. We’ve been married many years now so I’d say I was correct.)

Of course I wrote even then about many other things in my shiny blue journal. Nowadays my journals are unromantic, multipurpose workhorses. Below is my current one, complete with my banded pen case which has changed my life! Because a journal deserves its own pen attached. This case just slips right over a book. Thanks, Santa!

Notice that my journal is upside down. It’s nearly full now, and I only realized a few weeks ago that I’ve been using it that way. Oh well…

I started writing in this one just over a year ago. Some weeks I use a journal nearly every day. Some months I only use it a few times. I don’t believe in being a servant to anything. (Hence the getting off caffeine.)

My journal contains bad song lyrics, half poems, book ideas, lists of household chores, my grievances against the world. It’s a paper friend and confidant, but it’s also my personal assistant keeping me on task. Unless I’m having a week when I won’t listen. Which happens frequently.

I tell it when I think I’ve been snubbed, or I magnify a tiny problem until it’s so large even I have to laugh at it. I record my weight (ugh) or plan my latest exercise goals (ha). What I’m saying is that these journals of mine are not remotely valuable to posterity. All they would show are my preoccupations and circular thinking. And, I’d like to think, my tempered optimism.

A Grammy-winning friend of mine told her children that her real wealth lies in her journals. I wish I could say the same about mine. Kids, don’t read Marmee’s journals. Trust me, there are some things you don’t wanna know about your mother. Do yourself a favor and burn them!

It’s hard to say how performative Woolf’s journals are. Mine are decidedly not. Maybe that’s a flaw. All I know is, Woolf’s diaries are gorgeous and why wouldn’t they be? I encourage you to read them, as I intend to some this afternoon.

If you’ve read her essays and book reviews, you know what a mind she had. There was no political or social issue she couldn’t tackle with her writing. Her original thinking delights!

By contrast, my journals are…well, pardon me while I go light the charcoal. I have a box of journals and a grill. Nah, maybe I’ll wait just a few more years.

First Second Impressions

Here are my murky first “second” impressions of Mrs. Dalloway. I was taught by a wise professor to read a novel for the story first, and then go back and really read for the nuances, the language, etc. That method changed my reading forever!

These thoughts are on my first re-reading. I’m doing this because maybe you have a similar process, or maybe it would be helpful for you to realize I, too, see through a glass darkly before the Windex of re-reading. 😊 Nevertheless, I think that first looks can be informative. Consider the first glance to be the drawing beneath the paint.

If I were reading this for the first time ever, I would say:

Here’s a society woman, Clarissa Dalloway, who has been sick but is now out and about, buying some flowers for her party, her return to society, if you will. Later, while she mends her dress for the party she will throw that evening, an old suitor returns from a stint in India, five years I think. Peter Walsh plays with his pocketknife, a habit he’s had since he was a youth. He bursts into tears at one point while talking to the preoccupied hostess-to-be, and one wonders if he has ever gotten over Clarissa, even though he confesses that he’s in love with a married woman who is about to get a divorce.

Out of sequence question: why do you suppose Woolf called the novel Mrs. Dalloway rather than Clarissa or Clarissa Dalloway? I have thoughts.

For one thing, Woolf was trying to show that any life circumstance, even that of a privileged woman with servants, was worthy of exploration. This is not a romance; this is a novel after marriage, delving into the everyday joys and challenges.

Also, the title underscores the name stripping of a woman. Not enough Clarissa “takes” her husband, Richard’s, name. By being called Mrs. Dalloway, she becomes a nondescript wife of him; her very “name” doesn’t belong to her but to him. She’s his property. (Argue if you like, but I see real tones of that here, even though I did opt to take my husband’s last name when we married. It makes a great author’s name I’ve been told more than once, so why wouldn’t I?)

Then again, in Lighthouse Mrs. Ramsay is given no first name and I think it’s brilliant because it makes her the universal spouse. Maybe there are shades of this here. I do think Woolf struggled with marriage and domesticity and its place in her own life, in the life of her peers from early on. (For god’s sake, she did write A Room of One’s Own, so there’s that.)

Anyway, why, Clarissa wonders, is her husband invited to Lady Bruton’s luncheon and she is not? I’d be pissed, so I get that. It’s rude and ungenerous, even if Clarissa had previously made some minor social blunder at Lady Bruton’s. (Actually, I have been excluded. A friend of mine invited my hubby out to dinner to “interview” him. But I had been through the same schooling as him, sooo??? I would have been pleased to sit alongside them and have a drink while they talked, just because I enjoyed my friend’s – and hubby’s—company, but I wasn’t asked along. Come to think of it, I’m not sure she ever did anything with that interview. Oh well. If memory serves, I dined with another friend a few restaurants down the street that evening, so there.)

Septimus, a veteran struggling with what we would now call PTSD and his wife, Lucrezia, are introduced in the novel, a contrast to the Dalloways. We pity the newly married pair.

Richard wants to buy his wife jewelry (suspiciously timed after he hears that her old beau is back in town) but suspects she doesn’t enjoy his taste as he had previously brought her a bracelet she doesn’t wear. Wanting to remind her of his love for her but not being one to say so, he brings her flowers. Flowers, flowers, everywhere! (And that not being able to confess love to someone, that is Mrs. Ramsay’s role in Lighthouse. Another of Woolf’s themes.)

And veils and gloves. Birds and flowers. But more on that another time.

So these are my quick, impressionistic thoughts. I really want to talk about the language itself, but that’s not the purpose of this post, so let’s hold off on that as well.

Thoughts? Rebuttals? Questions? Let’s get into it!

An Outing with Mrs. Dalloway and Company

For those interested in virtually following the characters in Mrs. Dalloway as they go about their day, may I suggest this wonderful website? There are maps and more over there. But be warned — there are also spoilers if you venture beyond the first page.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A Very Good Place to Start

So far I’ve danced around the edges of this novel, Mrs. Dalloway, because I like to warm up and I wanted to give you plenty of time to get started reading. I know even the best of intentions go sideways in the best of conditions, let alone right now. So if you haven’t begun, go ahead. Pick it up, read a few pages, and you will soon find yourself immersed.

I’m about 70 pages from the end of Mrs. Dalloway this round. Here’s where I like to start when I’m reading a book, which may seem elementary. I pay attention to the title, study it, and ask myself what I expect from the book based on it. (Titles are important! And when I’m reading a novel, I keep an eye out for the title within its pages or for the fitness of it if I don’t spot it.)

Of course I study the cover; that’s important to me. I want it to pair with the title and make me eager to read the book. It’s okay if the cover displays a painting that only nods at the era of the story. It isn’t designed to actually tell the story, but to give hints. I especially love novels that use paintings. If it draws my eye, it’s a winner.

For a classic, I don’t pay as much attention to the front of the book because it likely has had many covers and so none of them is directly connected with the original.

I’m someone who reads the synopsis on the back of the book, as well as any blurbs. I read the forward, the dedication. Not that I always read these in that order. It just depends.

Do you read with a pen either in hand or nearby ? I do. I like taking notes in the margins, circling things, asking myself and the author questions. I write tidbits in the front of the book as well. Ever since I was a child I have written notes in books, particularly (you may gasp if you were brought up thinking this wasn’t okay) the Bible. I learned that writing was a two-way street way back then.

But let me turn to this novel. Why did I want to re-read it? To be honest, I read it hurriedly the first time (or two; I believe this is my third reading, but I can’t swear to that) and I thought I owed it better. Because it wasn’t the Woolf book I was most enthralled with (Lighthouse), I must admit to being a bit dismissive about it. Lighthouse was Sgt. Pepper’s; Dalloway was maybe Abbey Road. And yet without Dalloway, there would be no Lighthouse.

Then my writing mother mentioned she believes that Woolf was most successful with Dalloway, though she had long held my opinion of Lighthouse being superior; since obviously I respect her, I was (am) eager to read Dalloway once more to see if I can agree with her. (I’m still forming my opinion.)

Of course this novel was also the basis for a modern-day takeoff Michael Cunningham wrote called The Hours. If that also sounds like a movie title from 2002, you’re correct, it became that as well. The title comes from an alternate title for Mrs. Dalloway that Woolf considered for an awfully long time before using the current title.

While the novel doesn’t have chapters, it does have twelve slight breaks that function as such. (The Hours. Get it?) Anyway, that was another reason I read it to start with.

Why doesn’t Mrs. Dalloway have chapters, you ask?  Ah, my take on it is that she wants to highlight the unbroken nature of life, the interconnectedness: characters weave in and out of one another’s lives and consciousness. Not giving us chapters keeps the stream of consciousness flowing. After all, she is only depicting one day.

Let me share some first (again) impressions of the novel, my sketchy thoughts, and feelings. (Caveat: while I adore Woolf, I am an amateur reader of her work. I don’t know all there is to know about her. I don’t have every date related to her memorized. I may well be “wrong” about her intentions and what she’s done, but I am a passionate reader and I don’t care if I am wrong, because as an author I consider myself of her tribe and therefore qualified to discuss any damned thing I like about her work.)

I also don’t believe there are rights and wrongs when it comes to literature. It’s subjective.

So there. Insert an insolent tongue-sticking-out emoji here. The overly reverent, fearful approach commonly taken with Woolf is why more people don’t read her. But don’t forget that I am someone who wrote notes and questions to God in the margins of my Bible; I’m not likely to be afraid of Woolf. (No nod to Albee intended!)

I will say this: you don’t read her for the plot. Sure, her novels (mostly) have one, but that’s not why you’re there. You’re there to wander in her worlds and see how she’s created them and the immediacy with third person. How she doesn’t over rely on tradition. How she puts forth modern life, domestic life, as fitting subject matter. How she elasticizes language, how she makes writing impressionistic. How she makes a miracle of a meal. And for so much more.

Will you forgive me if I dive into Lighthouse for a moment here? “One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, it’s an ecstasy.” It’s a line the painter Lily Briscoe says, and I believe it speaks for itself. If you don’t think that’s a life-changing, gorgeous sentence in all senses, there’s nothing more I can do for you.

I could (and will, later) go on, but that quote has my heart full at the moment.  

The Evocative Original Mrs. Dalloway Cover Art

Photo via: https://www.modernistarchives.com/work/mrs-dalloway

Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s artist sister, painted many of Woolf’s book covers, including Mrs. Dalloway. The simple but not simplistic cover uses a white background and, of course, only black and yellow otherwise to entice a would-be reader. Works beautifully for me.

The dust jacket reveals a window with, outside it, a balcony. The balcony rail also resembles a crown, hinting to the main character, Clarissa Dalloway’s, privileged life. Curtains frame the window, bringing to mind a theater balcony box.

Flowers and possibly a fan are on the windowsill. (I’m thinking dear sister read the novel first? Good job!) They appear to be tulips — my favorite flower.

From the uneven script to the minimalistic, purposefully imperfect shapes that make up the cover, I find Bell’s artwork charming. It’s a shame any other cover was ever used, since clearly Woolf would have been intimately involved with the creation of this one. What are your thoughts on it?