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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Thanks, Karen and Vara, but if I am going to “get credit” I should have some skin in the game (gee, am I mixing metaphors here?) and tell my little (but of course earthshaking to me) story: growing up in the horrible l950s, I had never heard of V. Woolf until, seeking relief from my secretarial job at the Bank of America by taking a creative writing course at night, I got a note on the bottom of one of my leaden Dickensian short stories from Professor Foff: “You might want to read some Virginia Woolf so that you can see that prose can be winged too.” (Alas, he committed suicide so I could never thank him for his advice.)<BR>
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It was difficult in those benighted days even to find her books, but at the Discovery Bookstore in North Beach I did find a used copy of the paperback containing both <I>Jacob’s Room</I> and <I>The Waves</I>, a perfect pairing for me. As one consequence, I left the secretarial position (paying “pin money” of $350 a month!) and entered graduate school in literature (my undergraduate degree had been in political science). As another, I never tried to write another short story!<BR>
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J.J. Wilson, the lucky<BR>
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On 8/28/13 2:392:25, "kllevenback@att.net" <kllevenback@att.net> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Hi, Catherine.<BR>
To give credit where credit's due--the thread began with J.J. Wilson, one of the founding members of the Virginia Woolf Society who is represented on the oral history preserved at the IVWS Collection at the University of Toronto--and was picked up and generalized by Vara Neverow, former president of the IVWS and current editor of the <I>VWM</I>, which began with J.J.<BR>
(Don't you all love acronyms and abbreviations It's oh-so Bloomsbury, in a 21st-century way.)<BR>
Cheers--<BR>
Karen Levenback<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><FONT FACE="Arial"><B>From:</B> Catherine Hollis <hollisc@berkeley.edu><BR>
<B>To:</B> Kristin Czarnecki <Kristin_Czarnecki@georgetowncollege.edu> <BR>
<B>Cc:</B> "Vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu" <Vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu> <BR>
<B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, August 28, 2013 1:02 PM<BR>
<B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vwoolf] Encountering Virginia Woolf<BR>
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Finally reading these! What a wonderful thread... thanks to whoever started it. <BR>
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Mrs. Dalloway was my first. I found her at St. Mark's Books in NYC during the fall of 1985. Who was she? Why was she buying flowers? I began to buy myself flowers at the local Korean grocery to keep in my dorm room. I wrote a mash note to an indie rock guy making him guess who wrote "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." He couldn't. Then I wrote on the walls of my room in magic marker: "Pity, for the loss of roses." I walked down 10th street in Greenwich Village looking up at the French windows, wishing I could burst them open and take the plunge myself into the early morning air (I had an 8:30 class). I was so disappointed to learn that Clarissa wasn't me. But what a lark to read her as a girl of 18!<BR>
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Catherine<BR>
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