As my education in the classics is mostly self-directed, there are many glaring omissions on my have-read list. As much as I know about Virginia Woolf just through cultural absorption, she is one of those authors whose work I've always wanted to explore but someone never seems to make it to the top of the reading pile, always on the shelf but left there in favor of something more pressing or shinier.
I first decided to try to bridge this gap during my last cross-country trip out to LA for a medical procedure in 2021. I wanted something small to fit in my carry-on, so I grabbed a 1955 paperback edition of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE that I picked up at a garage sale somewhere back in the mists of time.
In retrospect, there are probably better places to start one's introduction to Ms. Woolf than TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, given how hard it was for me to get through this tiny little novel. I've slowed down a bit due to chronic brain issues, but this is not my first rodeo. Let that be a word of caution to anyone who might be considering a similar journey. Ask someone who knows better where one should begin.
So anyway, yes, no, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE did not win me over the first time around. To be fair, I was dealing with serious medical issues at the time, with no spoons left to try to parse the verbal soup that is this book.
I tried again sometime late last year, with a clearer head, and after re-reading the first several pages over and over I began to get a sense for what was in front of me, much like when one stares at one of those Magic Eye images until finally the thing is there, the tiger or the sky-scraper jumping out at you. I enjoyed it, noting that the writing really is something quite special. However, I found I couldn't put the book down and walk away for a few days or weeks, or read it with other things going on in the background, otherwise my interest would wander and everything got fuzzy again.
This spring, four years after I first opened its pages on an airplane, I finally circled back to TO THE LIGHTHOUSE in my To Read list and decided to commit to seeing the thing through,for once and for all if only in the name of Sisterhood.
The now seventy-year-old book cracked in my hand almost as soon as I started, and continued to divide itself into fragmented novelettes as I went, such that now it must be kept together with rubberbands to keep it from disintegrating altogether.
Nonetheless, the third time was the charm. It took some grit, but I was able to perservere all the way through TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and I am really glad I did, because I think if nothing else, this novel is a crash-course into the mind of an icon.
I can see why Woolf is such a big deal, among many reasons, for the atmospheric description and exquisite lyricism -- the whole thing feels like a moving poem, really, as much as it is a painting in words, a snapshop of a bygone era. By the end I too feel a little bit in love with Mrs. Ramsey, and I can feel the pathos in the image of the sweater left hanging from its hook, in the ineffable quiet of a long-empty house.
I give the novel three stars only because it takes such effort on the part of the reader, at least those who take it on their own to march deep into Woolf territory all-unknowing and without a guidebook. The stream-of-consciousness, the head-hopping, the metafiction and and modernist-esque deconstruction of form are A LOT, especially if one is not used to that sort of thing. The meditations on love and marriage and gender and war and life and death et. al are all fascinating, but also at times repetitive, monotonous even, and the more impatient or distractable reader may be tempted to start skimming ahead. As I discovered, one totally can, without missing a whole lot -- except the narrative is often so lovely, one is loathe to miss anything.
I must say, to my dismay, what with all the mental calisthenics, I did not see just where TO THE LIGHTHOUSE was headed, not even in the last third of the book, not until maybe fifteen pages to the end. Then, all of a sudden, there it was, and I was like Oh I see what you did there, Ms. Woolf. Very clever. So droll.
I suspect I will return to TO THE LIGHTHOUSE time and again, now that I have read all the way through and can see the work for what it is, as a whole. For sure there are pages I dog-earred and passages marked in pen for future excavation.
Not for the reader who is faint of heart, but definitely worth the effort.
I first decided to try to bridge this gap during my last cross-country trip out to LA for a medical procedure in 2021. I wanted something small to fit in my carry-on, so I grabbed a 1955 paperback edition of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE that I picked up at a garage sale somewhere back in the mists of time.
In retrospect, there are probably better places to start one's introduction to Ms. Woolf than TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, given how hard it was for me to get through this tiny little novel. I've slowed down a bit due to chronic brain issues, but this is not my first rodeo. Let that be a word of caution to anyone who might be considering a similar journey. Ask someone who knows better where one should begin.
So anyway, yes, no, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE did not win me over the first time around. To be fair, I was dealing with serious medical issues at the time, with no spoons left to try to parse the verbal soup that is this book.
I tried again sometime late last year, with a clearer head, and after re-reading the first several pages over and over I began to get a sense for what was in front of me, much like when one stares at one of those Magic Eye images until finally the thing is there, the tiger or the sky-scraper jumping out at you. I enjoyed it, noting that the writing really is something quite special. However, I found I couldn't put the book down and walk away for a few days or weeks, or read it with other things going on in the background, otherwise my interest would wander and everything got fuzzy again.
This spring, four years after I first opened its pages on an airplane, I finally circled back to TO THE LIGHTHOUSE in my To Read list and decided to commit to seeing the thing through,for once and for all if only in the name of Sisterhood.
The now seventy-year-old book cracked in my hand almost as soon as I started, and continued to divide itself into fragmented novelettes as I went, such that now it must be kept together with rubberbands to keep it from disintegrating altogether.
Nonetheless, the third time was the charm. It took some grit, but I was able to perservere all the way through TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and I am really glad I did, because I think if nothing else, this novel is a crash-course into the mind of an icon.
I can see why Woolf is such a big deal, among many reasons, for the atmospheric description and exquisite lyricism -- the whole thing feels like a moving poem, really, as much as it is a painting in words, a snapshop of a bygone era. By the end I too feel a little bit in love with Mrs. Ramsey, and I can feel the pathos in the image of the sweater left hanging from its hook, in the ineffable quiet of a long-empty house.
I give the novel three stars only because it takes such effort on the part of the reader, at least those who take it on their own to march deep into Woolf territory all-unknowing and without a guidebook. The stream-of-consciousness, the head-hopping, the metafiction and and modernist-esque deconstruction of form are A LOT, especially if one is not used to that sort of thing. The meditations on love and marriage and gender and war and life and death et. al are all fascinating, but also at times repetitive, monotonous even, and the more impatient or distractable reader may be tempted to start skimming ahead. As I discovered, one totally can, without missing a whole lot -- except the narrative is often so lovely, one is loathe to miss anything.
I must say, to my dismay, what with all the mental calisthenics, I did not see just where TO THE LIGHTHOUSE was headed, not even in the last third of the book, not until maybe fifteen pages to the end. Then, all of a sudden, there it was, and I was like Oh I see what you did there, Ms. Woolf. Very clever. So droll.
I suspect I will return to TO THE LIGHTHOUSE time and again, now that I have read all the way through and can see the work for what it is, as a whole. For sure there are pages I dog-earred and passages marked in pen for future excavation.
Not for the reader who is faint of heart, but definitely worth the effort.