Virginia Woolf: "Words"

I could not read "Mrs. Dalloway" without hearing the voice of the author in her work. This is my first time to read the novel, or to know anything about the author, Virginia Woolf. I have heard the name "Virginia Woolf," but had no idea about who she was, only that she was a writer and maybe a movie had been made about her. I started first reading the novel, with no background information, and I immediately began to get an impression of her. I wondered if she was young when she wrote it, I also wondered if she was sane. I felt that the book was like the proverbial fruit cake that people give as gifts during the holidays, but no one wants to get, and I had just bit into it. I thought it was too much, too thick with meaning, too rich with words. The words that lived in this mind must have been difficult to manage as they ran their stream of consciousness from the inward to the outward descriptions, so thick that it took the ringing of Old Ben with each hour to separate the layers of meaning, too saturated to distinguish a single train of thought, past to present, memory to reality. I tried to tolerate it in order to get to the good parts, but I felt left with sticky parts in between. All in all, I did not like the book. I felt I needed more information in order to be able to appreciate this writer. My ignorance is sometimes my biggest hindrance to appreciating someone's work. I think the timing also has something to do with it, too bogged down with so many things to read and do at the same time this week. My plate was already too full when I started to read, so "dessert" on such a full plate was not as welcome with no time between occasions. It also happens to be Thanksgiving, a time when the metaphor is more a reality. I hope to try it again at some other time, when I can see the book with different eyes.

I don't want to sound judgmental or harsh regarding the author. I was amazed that my impression of her was close to the truth, that she had suffered from abuse as a child and disorders that led her to take her own life eventually. She was brilliant and her writing reflects that, however, as she says in her video, words live in the mind, and they also reflect her struggle to some degree. At least that was my initial impression. I have much to learn about her writing and life, she was an intellectual and one of the most important modernist literary figures and authors of the 20th century. Her style reminds me somewhat of another author I read, Christina Garcia's "Dreaming in Cuban." I had a similarly difficult time reading her novel, but when I decided to write an essay about the use of color in her book, I worked with the text enough that it grew on me and has become one of my favorite books.

After reading the book and looking at a little more information about the life of Virginia Woolf, the author, I definitely have a high opinion of her. I especially like her description of words on the video recorded in her voice, which I included in this post.