Without Lifting A Finger

ee um fah um so foo swee too eem oo  

"Life is wicked—life is detestable," cried Rose Shaw.      The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner? * Possible "to read": Tom Jones. Fielding. * It is a strange reflection that by travelling two days and nights you are in the heart of Italy. Accidental villas among olive trees appear; and men-servants watering the cactuses. Black victorias drive in between pompous pillars with plaster shields stuck to them. It is at once momentary and astonishingly intimate—to be displayed before the eyes of a foreigner. And there is a lonely hill-top where no one ever comes, and yet it is seen by me who was lately driving down Piccadilly on an omnibus. And what I should like would be to get out among the fields, sit down and hear the grass...

Fishing around for something that'll grab me. Nothing much does lately. Have resorted to an old standby: Virginia Woolf. Though I've not yet swallowed her whole, I've read a lot of her. Started rereading Jacob's Room . Seems like I saw the movie too. Anyway, the impressionistic, water-colored beginning has pulled me in. Let's see if Virginia can keep my interest up. I've forgotten so much about the story: It'll be like reading her anew. Excerpt:      "I saw your brother -- I saw your brother," he said, nodding his head, as Archer lagged past him, trailing his spade, and scowling at the old gentleman in spectacles.      "Over there -- by the rock," Steele muttered, with his brush between his teeth, squeezing our raw sienna, and keeping his eyes fixed on Betty Flanders's back.      "Ja -- cob! Ja -- cob!" shouted Archer, lagging on after a second.      The voice had an extra-ordinary sadness. ...

She is at least part of why I am dipping into De Quincey again. In which of her works did she say, Read Quincey. That I no longer remember. * Woolf on De Quincey: Clearly, therefore, De Quincey as an autobiographer labours under great defects. He is diffuse and redundant; he is aloof and dreamy and in bondage to the old pruderies and conventions. At the same time he was capable of being transfixed by the mysterious solemnity of certain emotions; of realising how one moment may transcend in value fifty years. He was able to devote to their analysis a skill which the professed analysts of the human heart–the Scotts, the Jane Austens, the Byrons — did not then possess. We find him writing passages which, in their self-consciousness, are scarcely to be matched in the fiction of the nineteenth century: And, recollecting it, I am struck with the truth, that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass to us as invo...

This passage made me smile. Mixing domestic with literary concerns. Had one good writer thinking about (and reading) a great writer. * I was getting worried about becoming too happily stodgily practical: instead of studying Locke, for instance, or writing - - - I go make an apple pie, or study the Joy of Cooking, reading it like a rare novel. Whoa, I said to myself. You will escape into domesticity & stifle yourself by falling headfirst into a bowl of cookie batter. And just now I pick up the blessed diary of Virginia Woolf which I bought with a battery of her novels Saturday with Ted. And she works off her depression over rejections from Harper's (no less - - - and I hardly believe that the Big Ones get rejected, too!) by cleaning out the kitchen. And cooks haddock & sausage. Bless her. I feel my life linked to her, somehow. I love her - - - from reading Mrs. Dalloway for Mr. Crockett - - - and I can still hear Elizabeth Drew's voice sending a shiver down my back ...

Almost finished with Virginia's essay: her tributaries are sometimes more entertaining than the major thrust of the work (IMO not a negative); finished with Moravia's  Contempt  (perhaps the ending was a bit contrived, but it was still a very powerful read); have just scratched the surface of Musil's monument: The Man Without Qualities (though I loved his short stories I'd hesitated at taking this on -- we'll see if I have the stamina). Once a man has put his house in order it is time to go courting. Ulrich's girlfriend in those days was a chanteuse in a small cabaret who went by the name of Leontine. She was tall, curvaceously slender, provocatively lifeless, and he called her Leona.

Virginia Woolf , a photo by Julia Casimira on Flickr. Finished Moravia's Boredom and have just started his Contempt . Have also started re-reading Woolf's extended essay, A Room of One's Own . This is a nice "mixed media" piece on Virginia. Thanks Julia Casmira.