<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Like many of you, I never encountered Woolf's writings in a college English literature course; she simply wasn't widely taught. Rather, midway through my senior year in college, in 1969-1970, two housemates--one a psychology major, the other studying philosophy--were suddenly raving about a novel they'd just read for a philosophy course (I don't recall which philosophy course). Since I was the English major in the house, they insisted I drop everything and read this novel too. It was <i>To the Lighthouse</i>. So, like many of you, I read it all in one day, in pretty much a single sitting, swept up and along by the powerful rhythms of Woolf's prose. What I recall about finishing the book is a shiver, then tears, then a strong impression of a blur of green and blue, like moving water. I'm not sure I could have said then and there what the book was <i>about</i>; I only knew that I had had an extraordinary life-experience through written words.<div><br></div><div>I next read Woolf the following year as a graduate student in literature, but she was assigned only in a course on comparative fiction, as an English writer whose stylistic experiments influenced twentieth-century Continental novelists. I recall the professor almost apologizing for making us read <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>, as, in his view, Woolf was "a second-rate novelist." Compared to giants like Joyce and Tolstoy and Balzac, he maintained, Woolf was rather a poor hand at representing "the stuff of real life," like war and its aftermath, politics, urban life, and human relationships. (Oh.)</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>How good that we now see it otherwise. Thanks, Virginia!</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div>Marcia Day Childress, Ph.D.</div><div>Associate Professor of Medical Education</div><div>Director, Programs in Humanities</div><div>Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities</div><div>University of Virginia School of Medicine</div><div>PO Box 800761</div><div>Charlottesville VA 22908-0761</div><div>Voice: 434.924.9581</div><div>Fax: 434.982.3971</div><div>Email: <a href="mailto:woolf@virginia.edu">woolf@virginia.edu</a> OR <a href="mailto:mdf4e@virginia.edu">mdf4e@virginia.edu</a></div></div><div><br></div></div><br></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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