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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">I’m still processing the loss of two prominent Woolf scholars, Stuart Clarke and Murray Beja, less than a week apart. Others knew them much better than I did, but I thought I’d add some personal memories.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">I knew Stuart primarily if not exclusively through this listserv. Others have noted his meticulous scholarship, encyclopedic knowledge, and generous sharing. One of many many listserv posts exhibiting all three is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/2013-September/000575.html" title="https://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/2013-September/000575.html"><span style="color:#96607D">his
2013 commentary on “pirate” omnibuses</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in London that transformed my understanding of a passage in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">I enjoyed another feature of Stuart’s posts that has received less attention: his wicked sense of humor. ‘Theory’ in particular inspired his dry wit. One of many examples is this intervention from 2011: he joined in a discussion
of Woolf, Forster, and India to declare simply, “I may not have many things in common with the Dalits, but not knowing what ‘parapraxis’ is is one of them!” After receiving a playful, helpful definition, he responded: “As it happens, I knew what the Greek
words para & praxis mean -- just not when they were put together. // It occurs to me that perhaps Emily Eden's book should not have been called ‘Up the Country’, but ‘Anabasis’ -- or would that have been too revealing?” He could be so erudite in skewering
academic erudition! He could say so much in so few words! <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">Finally, in a memorial mode,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/2013-August/000560.html" title="https://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/2013-August/000560.html"><span style="color:#96607D">this
personal post from 2013</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>shows both his meticulous record keeping and his longstanding love of Woolf. I’ve been missing his posts in recent months and will continue to do so.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">I also had occasion to laugh in remembering Murray. The link Ben shared for last year’s salon begins with Murray saying, “I don’t see myself.” My mind instantly turned this Zoom glitch into an existential lament, remembering Bernard’s
and Lily’s famous lines about the importance of other people’s eyes for knowing oneself.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">The first time I read Woolf (as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon around 1980, give or take a year), I wrote a term paper on moments of being in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>TTL</i>, and the secondary source
I leaned on most heavily was<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Epiphany in the Modern Novel</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>by Morris Beja (1971). I couldn’t imagine I’d become his colleague at Ohio State, though by the time I did
he was no longer Chair (a book chapter is devoted to this era before my arrival: “The ‘Omnibus’ English Department: The Beja Years”). When I met him, he was spending more time on Joyce than on Woolf—I attended a Joyce conference in Trieste with him—but he
always remained an advocate for Woolf and Woolfians. As Vara and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Miscellany</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>100 have noted, this listserv is still hosted at Ohio State because Murray was its first
“owner” (and this gives me an opportunity to call out his latest successor, Elisa Sparks, who works efficiently behind the scenes administering this list for all of us).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">I’m linking <a href="https://buckeyemailosu-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/adams_428_osu_edu/EtAK_5VK22REoi5JeoMtiaABPANpSTr8_f2lCLiOTCtoiQ">
<span style="color:blue;background:#F3F2F1;mso-ligatures:none;text-decoration:none"><img border="0" width="21" height="21" style="width:.2187in;height:.2187in" id="_x0000_i1025" src="cid:image001.png@01DB8254.E7261CE0"></span><span class="MsoSmartlink"> two
photos of Murray</span></a>, one taken by Jim Griffith of Murray escorting Borges on the Ohio State campus in 1983, and a more recent one chosen by Ellen Carol Jones to accompany the news of his death. Also,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.shaw-davis.com/obituaries/morris-beja" title="https://www.shaw-davis.com/obituaries/morris-beja"><span style="color:#96607D">this
obituary</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>includes information about a celebration of his life on April 6th, for those within reach of central Ohio. Supplementing the tributes of Stephen Barkway and others, Paula Maggio has written<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://bloggingwoolf.org/2025/02/15/in-memoriam-to-vwsgb-founder-stuart-n-clarke/" title="https://bloggingwoolf.org/2025/02/15/in-memoriam-to-vwsgb-founder-stuart-n-clarke/"><span style="color:#96607D">an
obit for Stuart</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">David<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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