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<p>I've always taken VW to be saying that the incessantly rain of
atoms of experience is the existential condition of modern life,
leading to the question: how does the artist make a work of art
under this condition? I don't think that's an unusual reading.
It's also important to reflect on what she means in referring to
JJ as "the spiritual Mr Joyce." </p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/18/2020 7:58 AM, Mark Hussey via
Vwoolf wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman",serif">I don’t quite agree with Naremore here.
Woolf mentions Joyce as ‘the most notable’ of ‘several young
writers’ who are chafing at convention, and I think it is
reasonable to see herself as implicitly included among those
‘young writers’. Her complaint about Joyce is more specific;
his (narrative) ‘self’ ‘never embraces or creates what is
outside itself and beyond’, he lays a ‘didactic’ emphasis
upon indecency. I don’t think those writers you quote are
taking the lines from ‘Modern Fiction’ out of context, and
it seems to me reasonable to take the essay (in both its
1919 and 1925 iterations) as a modernist manifesto, though
not necessarily as a recipe for how to make a Woolf novel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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Roman",serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Vwoolf
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:vwoolf-bounces+mhussey=verizon.net@lists.osu.edu"><vwoolf-bounces+mhussey=verizon.net@lists.osu.edu></a> <b>On
Behalf Of </b>Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, May 18, 2020 7:52 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> vwoolf <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:vwoolf@lists.osu.edu"><vwoolf@lists.osu.edu></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Vwoolf] Number 1 misreading of Woolf?<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p>Looking through some old notes I came across this, taken from
James Naremore's 1973 book <i>The World Without a Self:
Virginia Woolf and the Novel</i>. Naremore quotes a
celebrated sentence from Woolf's "Modern Fiction" essay: "Let
us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in
which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however
disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or
incident scores upon the consciousness." He comments that the
sentence "has been quoted out of context over and over again
to describe her technique. In its proper context, however, it
is clear that the passage is an abstract of what Virginia
Woolf thinks Joyce's method tells us. She herself was seldom
predisposed to "record the atoms as they fall." She rather
dislikes such a method, and she explains why a few lines
later: [quotes from "Is it the method" to "into the bargain"]
(p. 72)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I wondered whether the sentence was still being taken as a
description by Woolf of her own method, or of a method that
she recommended, and so carried out a quick Google search. To
be fair, a good number of commentators correctly noted that
Woolf was not describing her own compositional method or
recommended principles. But many persist in asserting that
this was indeed what Woolf was doing. The following are
representative (I have changed the wording slightly so as not
to enable the identification of specific individuals).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>* . . . her own instructions to her fellow modern novelists
in "Modern Fiction": "Let us record the atoms as they fall . .
. upon the consciousness."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>* Woolf asks that the novelist should "record record the
atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they
fall”"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>*. . . she seeks an art than comes "closer to life," that
tries to capture what life is really like: "let us record the
atoms . . . upon the consciousness"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>* Novelists, Woolf stated, should "record the atoms as they
fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us
trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent…"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>* "Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the
order in which they fall," she advised<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>* Woolf called on the novelist to find new ways to represent
consciousness: "Let us record etc etc"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>* Woolf insists that writers must instead "record the atoms
as they fall upon etc etc"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I think that Naremore must be pretty irritated that 47 years
later critics are still making the same mistake.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p>Jeremy H<o:p></o:p></p>
<pre><o:p> </o:p></pre>
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