Reflections

Currently Reading: All My Puny Sorrows

Having been on a classics streak for quite some time, I knew that I wanted to return to the 21st century for my next read, though I had no idea who, what, or where. I spent the first Saturday of May in Golden Gate Park, and within the first hour I had ventured outside its perimeter on the hunt for coffee. After successful completion, I breezed past and then turned back around into Green Apple Books, encountered the “Staff Picks” shelf, and was startled by this note:
 

 
In case you have trouble catching every word, this is the promise: “On average, I recommend this book to someone at least once a day. It is hands-down one of my favorite books of 2014 (and maybe in my life). I am offering as close to a money-back guarantee as you can get without actually using currency…Please, do yourself a favor and read All My Puny Sorrows.”
 
I do not remember the last time I read such an effusive book review, and I was quickly made vulnerable to its influence, as anything that anyone considers their favorite intrigues me (especially books and songs). I think of it as a shortcut education, or at least enrichment, to expose myself to something that someone else has already studied and determined to be exceptional. You learn a lot about someone by learning their favorites, and if you accumulate enough of that information from enough individuals, you start to learn a lot about people in general.
 
In Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows, Elfreida and Yolandi Von Reisen are sisters who mean the world to each other but also suffer the ultimate conflicting interest: Elfreida wants to kill herself and Yolandi wants her to live. I am only 50 pages into the book, but those pages have jumped back and forth between their childhood growing up in a Mennonite household and their adulthood, Elfreida as a world renowned pianist and Yolandi as a divorced mother of two. Elfrida, especially in childhood, is mesmerizing. She is the kind of talented, independent, brilliant, and miserable character that I love.
 
There is a scene early in the book when the elders of the Mennonite community visit the Von Reisen home to reprimand them for one thing or another. Elfreida goes into the spare bedroom next to the front door and begins to play the piano, which is not allowed in the community. She plays her obsession, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor, Opus 23, a piece she praises for “its total respect for the importance of the chaotic ramblings of an interior monologue” (p. 18). I immediately searched for the piece online and listened to it as I continued to read. I am very eager to dive further into this book, and to discover whether someone else’s favorite will also become mine.

Post-Reading: Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf weaves together the minds of countless characters to portray life in post-WWI England. Though the book is often described as a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, the characters and their life stories are so varied and numerous that together, a much larger story involving feminism, class, suicide, and friendship is told.
 
Mrs. Dalloway proves that you learn far more about someone through their random and unfiltered thoughts, no matter how brief, than you do learning details like where they were born or what their hobbies are or who they keep company with. While the story spans only one day, and relatively little information is offered of any given character, I was left with such vivid impressions of each of them simply because I heard snippets of their innermost thoughts. It is often not he said, she said, but rather he thought, she thought. The emphasis on each character’s own stream of consciousness gives vibrancy, almost legitimacy, to one’s inner life; it is as real as what goes on outside of one’s self.
 
There are characters whom I do want to learn more about, and their stories feel incomplete only because of the sheer interest they raise. One of these characters is Sally Seton, the woman that inspires Clarissa to quote Shakespeare: “If it were now to die ‘twere now to be most happy.” Woolf magically pins down that feeling of infatuation when she has Clarissa exclaim to herself, “She is beneath this roof…she is beneath this roof!” It is the most appropriate expression in the fewest words, like poetry.
 
The most tragic of characters is Septimus Warren Smith, a young WWI veteran who is suicidal and unknowingly suffering from severe PTSD. He is going mad, hearing things, seeing things, and the way Woolf depicts his mind is brilliant. As you read through passages of his thoughts, you become convinced that writing with sense and purpose is almost easy, while conveying the unpredictable and broken, Septimus’ mind, serves the challenge. Two lines summarize the story of Septimus and perhaps many others due to the war:
 
“Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square” (p. 130).
 
Then after the war, the look in his eyes: “The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?” (p. 20).

Currently Reading: Mrs. Dalloway

The copy of Mrs. Dalloway that I own is impressively annotated by one of its previous owners. I wish that the notes were legible, because the few words that I can decipher include heavyweights like “trap of consciousness” and “death of soul.” Mrs. Dalloway surfaced in my mind on International Women’s Day (March 8) with its infamous first line, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” and I thought it was about time that I read the classic. While the story follows a single day in the post-WWI life of Clarissa Dalloway, readers weave in and out of the minds of several characters, abruptly dropping into each one’s stream of consciousness. Not only are there sudden shifts in person, place, and time, but there are also no chapters or paragraph breaks to delineate where it is appropriate to pause, so sharp attention is required. The book is a shining example of modernist literature, with its unconventional and lyrical flair: “Life; London; this moment of June” (p. 5).
 
Though the case with every book that I read, I am particularly aware that there is absolutely nothing new that I can say about Virginia Woolf or Mrs. Dalloway. Anything and everything critical, brilliant, subtle, funny, and beyond has already been said, and most likely by someone far smarter than I am. Author Anna Quindlen brings up a similar idea in her oft-quoted commencement speech at Mount Holyoke College:
 
“Every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel.”
 
Don’t worry, she then counters herself: “Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her own personality, her own voice.”
 
With that in mind, I continue Mrs. Dalloway (I’m halfway through) with the hope that I will indeed have something unique to share. May has begun, the perfect month for finishing those lingering to-read books before summer inspires a brand new list. I’m happy to consider Mrs. Dalloway the first book of May, and to discover its influence on the month’s remaining book selections.