William > Recent Status Updates

Talking about development of in vitro in the 1930's. Comparisons to dystopian futures, worries that it would lead to host-mothers bringing children into the world not related by blood, eugenics fears of people with special aptitudes giving birth to dozens via surrogates, and the best one a world in which men are no longer necessary. Guess that explains why Republicans are attacking it so much now.

"Half strangling on the goo and crud of threescore daily Camels, I was surprised that I was coherent at all."

Uh, come again? Sixty cigarettes a day?!

The place was crowded with people, most of them elderly, spooning their borscht and munching at potato pirogen; and a great noise of Yiddish - a venerable roar - filled the dank and redolent air with unfathomable gutturals, as of many wattled old throats gargling on chicken fat.

I know what's happening! I think I got it.

Not today, work, not today.

"She will live to be a hundred; she knows exactly what she enjoys; her life seems to me incredibly happy. She is very plain; but entirely unvexed, unambitious; and I believe, entirely right. Yes; that's what I've fallen in love with - being a stockbroker."

lmao.

Virginia about her sister-in-law Freda Woolf.

Virginia's letters to Vita are by far the longest to any person I've seen yet. Perhaps Jacques Raverat a few times.

On characters and places:

"...I can't write about people I am in the habit of seeing, anymore than I can describe places until I have practically forgotten them. It's not humour; it's the way my mind works.

There were originals for some of the people in Mrs Dalloway: but very far away-people I last saw 10 years ago and even then, did not know well. Those are the people I like to write about."

Perhaps it is this lack of criticism, or rather the fact that I affect different people so differently, that makes it so difficult for me to write a good book. I always feel that nobody...lays hold of the thing I have done: they meet ion conflict up in the air; and so I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time.

Virginia receiving reviews of Mrs. Dalloway.

"I never expect anyone to agree with me in liking the books I like, because I rather want novels to depress me, and I don't much mind whether I like the people in them or not. So I expect the books I write to be depressing and full of horrid monsters."

27 May 1925. Mrs Dalloway was published on 14 May.

Just finished the eponymous essay on Haight Street and the late 60's drug scene and I'm definitely a square. Thank God I never got into drugs.

Sounds like the party was shit. Hosted by Karin Stephen, Viriginia's sister-in-law, and Leonard who was very bored. Vanessa, Viriginia's sister, sat on the couch and talked to a sculptor (who later sculpted a bust of Viriginia) and ignored everyone else. There were 40 Oxford men and 3 women, and Clive Bell (Vanessa's husband) showed up late. Punch, and a gramophone at 11pm with waltzes. Yowza.

LMAO, sure. I've gotten sick like that, too.

31 January 1925 - "An appalling party is being given ... Wednesday next ... No wine; no food; nothing."

2 February 1925 - "I had to retire to bed again on Friday, and am still there and shan't be able to go to the party after all...."

...but his head was large, bulging, an archaic dome of curled sculpture, and his eyes shone with gleaming of intensified personal vision.

"...and then I observed that Vanity Fair is inferior as a work of art to Wuthering Heights..."

Nobody knows this little Rose -
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey -
On its breast to lie -
Only a Bird will wonder -
Only a Breeze will sigh -
Ah Little Rose - how easy
For such as thee to Die!

There is something beyond ourselves in the wind and clouds. I never feel heaven can be at all like July.

I write - read - write - read - from morning to night. For an hour I wet myself on the high road - back to tea - Shakespeare, Joyce - and so on. It is a very exciting life, entirely devoid of human beings. But, as you say, leads to damned dull letters.

These books are super interesting, but it's kind of weird to find yourself in a book entirely without a redeemable character. Like, they are all evil, murderous, duplicitous, backstabbing bastards.

This book is incredible.