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A review by korrick
A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf by Leonard Woolf, Lyndall Gordon, Virginia Woolf
5.0
I have to wonder at my timing on this one. Here I am, picking up one of the most perfect books for spurring the self on to writing during the merry month of NaNoWriMo, only to finish in the midst the most recent surge of action in the great Gramazon debacle; a debacle wholly embittered by the concept of self-published authors. Now, I'd like to go the traditional rout of publishing myself, but still. It gives both this review and my dream of writing for a living an air of antagonism, watch your step/mince your words or be misunderstood severely.
Or that could be me thinking too much.
But see here, though, that's what this whole work is all about. Thinking about writing, and when the person doing the thinking is Woolf, well. One hesitates to define one's principles about the 'too much thinking' business, for on one side lies her suicide and on the other, her body of work. And if you've ever had the privileged pleasure to experience her work, you know what I'm talking about.
What I'm actually attempting to talk about, here, in this review, is harder to say. The comfort I feel in comparing myself to Woolf is eerily seductive and not nearly as obsequiously awestruck as I would like it to be. I mean, Woolf! Bloomsbury group! Only one of the greatest prose artists to grace this poor world of ours, a life led during the interwar period filled with famous names, famous intrigues, and famous writing. Eurocentric and even more despairingly Anglocentric, to be fair, and her easy disparagement of others and her half-handed hypocrisy on women's rights set my teeth on edge, but my god. This old English lady who drowned herself fifty years before I was born understands me, down to the marrow of my meaning of life.
This compilation of cut-outs from a 27 year run of personal record is chock-full of that feeling, that sense of one's heartbeat relying on the pace and pound of words both writing and already written, a heartbeat that is sensitive in all the ways both right and wrong. It is not practical. It is not objective. It is everything to do with how a question of how I write put by a unwitting bystander is going to set me off on a complete and utter rhapsodizing on the power of literature in every facet of life. It is both unbearably personal and the manifesto of my character that I would proclaim to all, if I got the chance to. For, as you all know, literature means publishing, and publishing means business, and it is a very rare case indeed where those as devoted as Woolf to their craft avoid having their soul sucked out by the reality of writing for a living. Advertising, academia, pick your grindstone and hang on for dear life and the slow weathering down of passion in the face of life.
Did I mention that this book is not practical? Good. This isn't a creative fictioning self-help book, for all its sociocultural periphery. This is a lifeline.
Woolf was lucky to have a living situation such as hers. I am lucky for her being lucky enough to create such a body of work of not only reading and writing, but commentary on said reading and writing, especially writing. Especially how intimately and horrifically her mental state was tied to it, in as much a way as anything one lives for becomes. Which makes the state less of a tragedy and more of a best of all possible worlds, except not, except. Maybe? Or one could stick with 'that's life'. That is a much more honest answer, one that if you're lucky spools out enough years for the ink to spread out and flow.
I'd say more, but really, what else is there to say but: writers, read this. Readers, read this. As for me?
Or that could be me thinking too much.
But see here, though, that's what this whole work is all about. Thinking about writing, and when the person doing the thinking is Woolf, well. One hesitates to define one's principles about the 'too much thinking' business, for on one side lies her suicide and on the other, her body of work. And if you've ever had the privileged pleasure to experience her work, you know what I'm talking about.
What I'm actually attempting to talk about, here, in this review, is harder to say. The comfort I feel in comparing myself to Woolf is eerily seductive and not nearly as obsequiously awestruck as I would like it to be. I mean, Woolf! Bloomsbury group! Only one of the greatest prose artists to grace this poor world of ours, a life led during the interwar period filled with famous names, famous intrigues, and famous writing. Eurocentric and even more despairingly Anglocentric, to be fair, and her easy disparagement of others and her half-handed hypocrisy on women's rights set my teeth on edge, but my god. This old English lady who drowned herself fifty years before I was born understands me, down to the marrow of my meaning of life.
I thought, driving through Richmond last night, something very profound about the synthesis of my being: how only writing composes it: how nothing makes a whole unless I am writing: now I have forgotten what seemed so profound.To reiterate the perfection above, writing is both everything and nothing, depending on whether I'm paying more attention to my self or the grander scheme of things. A fervor delving into the very core of existence's delight, or a waste that asks the ultimate question of why I'm still bothering with everything in general. Once upon a time, if given the chance of control or perhaps even some means of getting rid of the nihilistic face of the coin completely, I would have taken it. These days, I'm not so sure.
This compilation of cut-outs from a 27 year run of personal record is chock-full of that feeling, that sense of one's heartbeat relying on the pace and pound of words both writing and already written, a heartbeat that is sensitive in all the ways both right and wrong. It is not practical. It is not objective. It is everything to do with how a question of how I write put by a unwitting bystander is going to set me off on a complete and utter rhapsodizing on the power of literature in every facet of life. It is both unbearably personal and the manifesto of my character that I would proclaim to all, if I got the chance to. For, as you all know, literature means publishing, and publishing means business, and it is a very rare case indeed where those as devoted as Woolf to their craft avoid having their soul sucked out by the reality of writing for a living. Advertising, academia, pick your grindstone and hang on for dear life and the slow weathering down of passion in the face of life.
Did I mention that this book is not practical? Good. This isn't a creative fictioning self-help book, for all its sociocultural periphery. This is a lifeline.
Woolf was lucky to have a living situation such as hers. I am lucky for her being lucky enough to create such a body of work of not only reading and writing, but commentary on said reading and writing, especially writing. Especially how intimately and horrifically her mental state was tied to it, in as much a way as anything one lives for becomes. Which makes the state less of a tragedy and more of a best of all possible worlds, except not, except. Maybe? Or one could stick with 'that's life'. That is a much more honest answer, one that if you're lucky spools out enough years for the ink to spread out and flow.
I'd say more, but really, what else is there to say but: writers, read this. Readers, read this. As for me?
You see, I'm thinking furiously about Reading and Writing. I have no time to describe my plans.Toodles.