*A Room of One's Own
A Room of One’s Own -Virginia Woolf
Perhaps now more than under other titles it is obvious that this booklog is more than a series of review but also, (see February’s review of The Prophet) obviously, a sort of self-chronicle. I flew to Philadelphia to visit with my father and visit and interview with NYU. It was a big reading weekend. I finished Remembrance of Things Past and started A Room of One’s Own on the first flight. Before even getting on the flight I remembered my knife in my pocket and bought an envelope to mail it back to myself. Not an omen, but a submission to defenselessness. I paid five dollars for a small bottle of red wine, and I blame the expenditure on Virginia Wolf. My father and I, the day after arrival, in a yuppy corner of downtown Philly, finished a bottle of Chianti and trucked page by page through my novel. New York City the next day by train and touristing with Joel and Simcha and up til four in the morning East Village in the afternoon and then NYU open house followed by informal, successful interview with assistant director. The school impressed me. Excited me. I finished Woolf’s essay on the train back to Trenton. Couldn’t sleep the night, read Marilynne Robinson by the half-light, awake before six, delayed flights, stuck in Denver, finish Housekeeping after they shuffle us back off the plane still in Denver, then open Stonemason and finish it streaming over the Rockies, Nevada, Yosemite, all in one flight. (see last August’s Child of God) When I finally, spent, walk back into my Berkeley house a letter from NYU postmarked the day I left for Philly, tells me that they don’t want me. So now I keep looking sidelong at my bookshelf. It’s me and you baby.
No! I don’t consider books sentient in that respect. But I do admit some sadness. Not sadness. Shadowboxing. Roiling. I’m not waiting for anything. Maybe there isn’t a sentence yet for a woman. But if that were true then neither is the contemporary sentence completely masculine. Now, who knows what sex we are. Then, 1929, I’m not sorry for anything. Maybe there was a dichotomy. I do believe in progress. I know that Virginia Woolf is part of our progress. I know that she’s in me whether I like it or not. I know because of her essay I excused myself and simpered to the back of the cabin and paid five dollars for a mini bottle of Chilean Cabernet. I know that my writing will never be the same. I know she promotes Proustian androgyny. I know that without it there will be no writing at all. Neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female, only art, not art, nothing, not nihilism, fullness, a seed, by the Grace of God.
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the act of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated.”
Perhaps now more than under other titles it is obvious that this booklog is more than a series of review but also, (see February’s review of The Prophet) obviously, a sort of self-chronicle. I flew to Philadelphia to visit with my father and visit and interview with NYU. It was a big reading weekend. I finished Remembrance of Things Past and started A Room of One’s Own on the first flight. Before even getting on the flight I remembered my knife in my pocket and bought an envelope to mail it back to myself. Not an omen, but a submission to defenselessness. I paid five dollars for a small bottle of red wine, and I blame the expenditure on Virginia Wolf. My father and I, the day after arrival, in a yuppy corner of downtown Philly, finished a bottle of Chianti and trucked page by page through my novel. New York City the next day by train and touristing with Joel and Simcha and up til four in the morning East Village in the afternoon and then NYU open house followed by informal, successful interview with assistant director. The school impressed me. Excited me. I finished Woolf’s essay on the train back to Trenton. Couldn’t sleep the night, read Marilynne Robinson by the half-light, awake before six, delayed flights, stuck in Denver, finish Housekeeping after they shuffle us back off the plane still in Denver, then open Stonemason and finish it streaming over the Rockies, Nevada, Yosemite, all in one flight. (see last August’s Child of God) When I finally, spent, walk back into my Berkeley house a letter from NYU postmarked the day I left for Philly, tells me that they don’t want me. So now I keep looking sidelong at my bookshelf. It’s me and you baby.
No! I don’t consider books sentient in that respect. But I do admit some sadness. Not sadness. Shadowboxing. Roiling. I’m not waiting for anything. Maybe there isn’t a sentence yet for a woman. But if that were true then neither is the contemporary sentence completely masculine. Now, who knows what sex we are. Then, 1929, I’m not sorry for anything. Maybe there was a dichotomy. I do believe in progress. I know that Virginia Woolf is part of our progress. I know that she’s in me whether I like it or not. I know because of her essay I excused myself and simpered to the back of the cabin and paid five dollars for a mini bottle of Chilean Cabernet. I know that my writing will never be the same. I know she promotes Proustian androgyny. I know that without it there will be no writing at all. Neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female, only art, not art, nothing, not nihilism, fullness, a seed, by the Grace of God.
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the act of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated.”
posted by JohnWashington at 5:38 PM
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