Who was the maroon who scheduled a Deathmarch right in the middle of election season? Oh yeah, I was the maroon. Sorry to all excellent Deathmarchers. I’ve really punked it up this week, missing Week 4 on Wednesday and remaining behind on my reading. But heck, I’m just one marcher. Fortunately, there are a lotta the rest of youse doing a great job staying up-to-date or near it. So let’s charge on. With only two weeks to go, hopefully I can get my act together by next Wednesday.
Comment-wise, this would now be the place to post on anything up to the end of Part I.
And speaking of next Wednesday: I hope to see ya at the end of Chapter II, Part II, just past “an extraordinary face!”
Frist!
I just can’t bring myself to identify with Mrs. Ramsey. I want to, really I do–she shoulders the world, a place where I often feel I am. But then every now and then she turns petty, at least by my 21st-century far-left standards, and I think, Maybe I’m Lily after all.
I love the theme that says the worst thing that can happen to you is for someone else to really look at you.
I’m behind in my reading, as many others are, so I haven’t read the last few comments from week 3. I must say, though that I’m still enjoying it, although I end up rereading pages since I don’t always have the luxury of a good stretch of uninterupted hours, and my memory is not what is used to be… such is life. But I do find it helpful to reread the passages because as I’m reading again I pick up stuff I missed during the first go around. I’m thinking I probably have missed a ton of details…
Ugh, due to family nonsense I’ve fallen completely behind. But I am making this post in hopes I’ll be caught up over the weekend!
I didn’t see my last comment make it up. It was not a legit comment anyway…
Any guesses on the recipe for Boeuf en Daube? I want some!
My favorite character so far is Augustus Carmichael: because he’s a poet, because he slips laudunum drops quite openly into his tea, & because (like our own Raptor Mage) he’s indifferent to Mrs. Ramsey’s subtle but insistent need to be needed.
These Victorians all appear in their best light reciting poetry. About to Google “Luriana, Lurilee”… guessing it’s Swinburne … nope, Charles Elton. Never heard of him. Learn something new on the Deathmarch every day.
I never liked Mr. Ramsay so much as when he’s riffling through Scott trying to convince himself it’s still solid stuff.
i’m enjoying this book on one level, i know i will fly through what ever i read next. since i’ve never read wolfe before, i wonder if her other stuff moves at this pace.
on another note, i don’t care what food spoils, who loses heirlooms, and why everyone is filed with some sort of anymosity. i’m not finding a connection with any of the characters. seems from the other comments that i may be alone with this sentiment. i will continue to plod along and i’m giving VW a chance to win me over.
just in case–here’s one for the magnet.
Sadly, I do connect with a long marriage of 50 somethings who can carry on an entire conversation without words. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay sharing disapproving comments from opposite ends of the dinner table, each completely knowing the other persons part in the dance–I have some experience with that.
Does anyone else wonder what the Ramsays’ real household (non beach location) is really like? What do they do when they don’t have Carmichael or Lily around? Are their bedspreads threadbare? What do the children play with? And where? Do they just run up and down the stairs like the Darling Family (Peter Pan, for the forgetful)? And who cares about philosophers at the beach? Moreover, who cares about them in the city? (I just don’t believe Mr. R’s self-important reminiscences.) Sorry–this week I have just questions rather than answers.
cecil, your opening note sets the goal at Ch2, ptII, but it’s really ptIII–which is a whole storm-on-saturn away in terms of plot. so i’m a little afraid to comment on ptII now given that many may not have read it. i await your instructions.
litbabe, where are you?
I’m so far behind! And I’ve lost out on the magnet, I guess. But on the plus side, I like what I’ve read much more than the first time I read it, so I’ll keep at it.
Although I’m not marching to the lighthouse, I had to thrown in a clever asside for the group. TRP just took a panning from the NYTimes. Here’s a link if anyone wants to start Against the Day with a somewhat sour taste in their mouth.
http://tinyurl.com/y6hkvt
Oh NO! I think I forgot to comment this last week. I’m far behind, but I have a lot of faith that, if I apply myself and the world stops turning for just a few days, I’ll catch up. I don’t suppose I’ll be getting magnets, huh Ceec?
Sigh.
But I AM reading, and I’m finding it easy to understand. What frustrates me about Woolf is that for every one thing said or done, she has to write 8 to 12 paragraphs explaining all the ins and outs of why that thing was said or done.
That was great reading for the first ten pages, but frankly I’m getting weary with it. Do I really want to know every little personality nuance and quirk of every single character mentioned? Not unlike a good strip tease, leaving an audience guessing until the end makes a better read, me thinks.
My 2 cents.
Re: Against the Day, Michiko just whetted my appetite something fierce. It’s that second-to-last paragraph, where he reveals that Vineland and Mason and Dixon are the books he likes most, finding the older stuff so much brainy razzle-dazzle. His main complaint–too many characters too briefly described–shouldn’t be much of a problem for anyone who spent 800 pages with Slothrop & Co.
Glad for the link: it’s being able to react to stuff like this as it comes out that makes the idea of reading the book just after publication so appealing.
rodney, thank you for the anodyne, for reading between the lines (i stay away from reviews until i’ve read the book; scared of spoilers.)
i can’t wait to get started; seriously, somebody better hold. me. back.
Back from the dead. Sick at home with NO internet!
The last lines of The Window section are kind of famous: “For she had triumphed again. She had not said it: yet he knew.” There’s this huge literary debate. Did she truly triumph? If so, at what? Personally, I’m not so sure she triumphed. That’s not such great communication, loving someone, but holding it over his head and not saying it. Besides, she doesn’t love him every moment. Sometimes she feels like she has no interest in him at all, like when they go in to dinner. She thinks, “She could not understand how she had ever had any emotion or affection for him.” Or when she fantasizes about the rooks outside her bedroom window while picking out gems to wear to the dinner. The one she calls the father rook, Joseph, is disreputable, and reminds her of an old man in a tattered coat, a begger. The mother rook, Mary, is harried and distracted by him. Yet she finds the shapes (shapes again! Beautiful scimitar shapes!) they make together are beautiful. She ascribes human attributes to birds. She does this all through the book. The only married couple in the book are she and Mr. R. She’s comparing these birds behavior to her own marriage, and she’s doing it at such a subliminal level she doesn’t even notice she’s doing it. Not to mention the whole Joseph/Mary martyrdom connection. It seems like an example of a mis-communication, an anti-triumph. Mr. Ramsay could know anything at all, or nothing of the way she feels. Her feelings are ambivalent and highly variable. I guess I’m crazy. All these little details that are driving people crazy are what I love about Virginia Woolf.
Good gad that was long. Sorry. Making up for lost time, I guess.
litbabe, i read that line this way–her specific triumph is not what she’s communicating (in this instance, love) but that she is confident that she can communicate wordlessly (i think she’s successful in this, but even if we can’t be sure mr. r has understood her, mrs. r thinks he has). sure sometimes they are annoyed with each other, but when they’re in sync, isn’t it because mrs. r’s willed them into sync? her triumph is the exercise of her powers of perception and subtle expression. (and–another kind of triumph–aren’t her powers greater than his, although he is the revered public figure? he’s willing to shoot for “R” and stop there; i can’t believe she’d settle for anything short of “Z”; she doesn’t even think in those terms.)
i think, too, of stepping back out of the novel, to where the author knows she’s willed us to understand her meaning and she believes she’s been successful. perhaps mrs. r’s triumph parallels the author’s triumph?
and i absolutely agree with you–she’s a favorite of mine for these very details.