petty, brilliant Virginia Woolf (and, okay, a pic of Annabelle)
I. Um, Everyone is Actually Very Afraid of Virginia Woolf
When I used to buy tomes like The Diary of Virginia Woolf, I'd despair when I didn't gut it out and read the thing straight through. "I must be a pretender! I must hate literature!" Thank God for turning thirty. Books like that are the best sort of bathroom books. Pick them up, put them down, peruse haphazardly. Woolf's diary entries are high-culture gossip and/or literary works of genius that go down best when taken like shots. I like to snatch my two-volume edition from the shelf and turn to whatever day it is and have a peak only as the spirit moves. Last week, the entry for December 15, 1917, was entertaining enough I continued with January 3, 1918, which contained this treat:
I was caught in the net of Sylvia Whitham, who cross examined me about her husbands novels; & in despair of revealing my true opinion I pretended never to have read Wolfgang--Most suitably, of all our friends shes the one to have a bomb dropped next door, & to receive it without surprise. And shes taking to literature, & begins by translating Flaubert--a remarkable instance of a person without gift of any kind, always pushing along in the wake of other more advanced people.
Poor Sylvia. Though what an introduction! "Of all our friends she's the one to have a bomb dropped next door, and to receive it without surprise" is an amazing insult that still manages to sketch some complexity.
The funniest feature of such old diaries is that they're written so clearly with an audience in mind. Western print culture primed us for the internet long before its advent; every time a person wrote "Dear Diary" they were so clearly whispering, "Hello, Posterity." That's the posture of the writing, if not the intent. Maybe the internet, which has turned the previously private into public, will eventually cure us of this hunger by continuing to disappear writing in a way previously reserved for fires and censorship.
II. Christmas Cards from 100 Years Ago
Merry Nightmares, and you're welcome.
III. How to Ruin a Book with Your Dumb Sentences
Geoff Dyer, British novelist, reviews a book about soccer (football) in Harper's and writes mostly about the bad writing. Really, his hobbyhorse in this essay is the book's transition sentences, which pile up in such a heap that they eventually collapse inward, causing a cave-in of "Let's just say".
At intervals he does seem conscious that something is awry, but acknowledging the “slightly ugly wording” of a formulation is a lot easier than fixing it. “I know this is going to sound odd to those who don’t follow football but self-evident to those who do, but I want to claim that there is a genuine intelligence at work in being a football fan.” Well, yes, now that you mention it, that sentence could be read as an oddly garbled guide to the dos, don’ts, and buts of clear style.
Content rendered null by delivery? It's an epidemic.
IV. The African Enlightenment
This essay isn't the best written, but the information is fascinating.
What if the Enlightenment can be found in places and thinkers that we often overlook? Such questions have haunted me since I stumbled upon the work of the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob (1599-1692), also spelled Zära Yaqob.[...]
Kraus stresses [that with] ‘the development of Christian doctrine, how many were its promoters who came from Africa!’ And he cites intellectuals such as Augustine, Tertullian, and the Amazigh (Berber) Apuleius as examples. The rector also underscores the European Renaissance’s African heritage, ‘as the Moors coming from Africa crossed through Spain, they brought knowledge of the ancient thinkers, while also bringing much assistance to the development of letters which were coming out of the darkness little by little’.
V. Christmas with a Baby
I know the holidays is hard for a lot of people for a lot reasons. No family, on the outs with your family, or worse. I've found being a father to be a lightening, or at least a shifting, of some of my own baggage. I love it, and if you're having a crap year, I hope your next year is better. Annabelle does as well (picture below).
