not afraid of Virginia Woolf

Apr 29, 2008 22:56

I used to know nothing about Virginia Woolf, other than she was in the same part of the bookshelf at the library and bookstore when I was searching for other Tom Wolfe novels to read. My introduction to Woolf was probably through watching The Hours and then wanting to go kill myself afterwards. I decided that surely Woolf was depressing to read and left it at that. My books I want to read list was too ridiculously long anyway to want to add her. I used to be a fervent reader, however, something in freshman year of college happened to kill that and thus the list kept getting longer as I wasn't reading anything on the list.

My good friend Paul, an English major, suggested I take a course entitled Modern Novel with him. I jumped into the fray as an excuse to get back into the swing of reading things again. I'm taking this course as kind of a book club. Which is interesting, because Paul feels the same way about it. Drew Shannon, the instructor, picked a simply delightful list of novels to represent the development of the novel throughout the 20th Century. I've enjoyed all of these novels with the exception of Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins. That was only because throughout the entire novel nothing really happened and yet everything happened. Higgins's use of the English Language was rather remarkable, but other than that it was a crappy novel.

My favorite has been Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. I fell in love with the way that Woolf wrote and much of her views on literature and writing. She once stated that nothing has ever happened unless its been written about, which is certainly an interesting thing to ponder. In the same sense that I fell away from reading every day, I've also fell away from having a desire to write everyday. I think that I need to start doing both of these things. I'm a fairly decent writer, although I could be much better if I did it on a more reliable basis. I'll just have to see where it takes me.

modern novel, virginia woolf, paul, writings

Previous post
Up