This essay on Woolf is told jocularly, a #NotAllMen to the killer critiques by men of women's writing. The smug inanity of dismissing Woolf, who pre-dated James Joyce in the invention of stream of consciousness "Helpful Men," indeed. Read more Woolf.
thenation.com/article/cultur…
thenation.com/article/cultur…
The importance of Virginia Woolf in English literature really can't be overstated. When we talk about Joyce, we should be talking about Woolf. To the Lighthouse and The Waves are such pivotal works--they re-order our thinking of how a narrative is seen, processed and revealed.
In years of reviewing Toni Morrison, I often thought about how she was the natural inheritor of Woolf: In Beloved and Mercy, Morrison re-orders our view of narration. Even in her earliest works, before her masterworks, Morrison does this. And male critics often got lost.
Inbred misogyny in reviews of women's work is reflected in the canon and then spills out into other disciplines. Would the criticism of the #1619Project be as intense if its author weren't female? I think not. Women's work is inevitably approached via the skepticism of misogyny.
The expansive, disrupted narrations of Woolf and Morrison are such unremitting genius, it's difficult to imagine missing/dismissing their literary import.
Yet I read a shockingly obtuse review of the new Adrienne Rich biography some weeks back in the NYT that framed her life and work within the narrowest of male confines. One of the greatest American poets and essayists. And a lesbian. Sigh.
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