Sunday Seconds -- there are books that I would really love to re-read -- if I could make the time. Sometimes books have profound impacts on one's reading experience. Sometimes you just know these books could be even greater if you could go back and read them with again better understanding and life experiences under your belt. Sometimes books don't hold up the memory the second time around -- that's the risk. Sunday Seconds will be a cataloging of that kind of wish list.

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A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf

It is an extended essay. First published in 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled "Women and Fiction", and hence the essay, are considered non-fiction. The title of the essay comes from Woolf's conception that, 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. Woolf notes that women have been kept from writing because of their relative poverty, and financial freedom will bring women the freedom to write; "In the first place, to have a room of her own..was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble". The title also refers to any author's need for poetic license and the personal liberty to create art. The essay examines whether women were capable of producing, and in fact free to produce work of the quality of William Shakespeare, addressing the limitations that past and present women writers face.

I've read some but not all of Woolf's fiction. I much prefer her nonfiction and letters. Though she was not allowed an education (she was in the era still where only boys were educated), she is a very intelligent woman. This essay in particular is gorgeous in laying out her thoughts. It is a strong statement regarding woman and education and independence. Some day I would like to own all of Woolf's nonfiction and take the time read them.

As a society, for the most part we've gotten away from reading in general, yes, but also reading or understanding material that is, say, denser, than the norm. Language in both speech and that which is written down have become fast, easy, lazy, uneducated. A part of me wishes for the past in that way. There was a time when people memorized and knew poetry and used it in everyday conversation. Our brains have become lazy. We cater to the lowest common denominator and it's sinking lower every day. I've been plugging away at Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series, and ohmygosh, sometimes I don't know what the heck she is saying. Me! And I read a lot. Dunnett's thought process was amazing as was Woolf's. Cultures evolve and sometimes not for the better. I'm not dissing the way we live now but sometimes .... I just feel inadequate. And I've been lucky in that regard and put forth some effort. Others? I feel real concern for the future not only in terms of economics and the republic, but also for the sustainability of our civilization. Some people have difficulty understanding Shakespeare but within one generation we have a society that probably can't understand the syntax of just 50 years ago.

In 6th grade, thoughout the entire year, Mrs. Forseth made us memorize poetry such as "Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands..." And even "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...." which would totally be the subject of a lawsuit today.

Off my soapbox. It is denser than what you're probably used to but give it a shot and maybe if it helps, slow down word by word and imagine this as a woman speaking: this is the first paragraph of A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN:

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction — what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point — a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions — women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial — and any question about sex is that — one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here — how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; ‘I’ is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it.

I have a flash of a memory of seeing A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN performed as a one woman show. It must have been on PBS or something similar. That would be fantastic to see again.

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Today, I'll do clothes laundry and walk Tug then start December's issue of Premeditated. Tonight, Dallas plays Green Bay but I probably won't watch it -- we're having a horrible season. I will watch Psychic Kids. After my little tirade up there I should watch something educational and high handed or read the dictionary but there it is.

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster