[Vwoolf] Weighing in

atleswoolf at aol.com atleswoolf at aol.com
Fri Aug 23 07:44:53 EDT 2013


Michael Cunningham tends to get knocked around a lot on this list, but that's where the interest in Woolf started for me.  While in college, I'd read bits of A Room of One's Own in a literary theory anthology (where it was helpfully listed under "Feminism"), but very little else -- no one else taught her.  In 1998, I read a rave review of The Hours in the gay magazine The Advocate a few months before it won the Pulitzer Prize, and I thought, "That sounds interesting."  I went straight to the bookstore, bought it, and read it in one sitting.  I knew at that instant that my life was now different.  I walked over to my bookshelves -- about a year earlier, I'd bought a book-club four-pack paperback set of the Bell biography, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas which I'd not touched since.  I picked up the Bell biography, began reading, and have not stopped with Woolf since that moment.  As fortune would have it, I was beginning graduate school around that time, so I was free to make her the focus of my work and my writing.  So yes, all because of Cunningham.  I recognize his flaws, but it's not all bad, folks.  I've had plenty of students over the years begin reading Woolf after reading The Hours, which I think was Cunningham's point all along.

Best,
Drew Shannon
College of Mount St. Joseph


-----Original Message-----
From: Bonnie Scott <bkscott at mail.sdsu.edu>
To: Toni McNaron <mcnar001 at umn.edu>
Cc: woolf list <VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Thu, Aug 22, 2013 11:23 pm
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Weighing in


I was aware of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf  and during my freshman year in college I decided on a rainy afternoon to check her out in the library.  I pulled To the Lighthouse off the shelf, sank down on the floor and began reading.  Before I knew it the bell for the library closing was going off.  My roommate was sure that something dire had happened to me, not just because I barely made curfew, but because I returned in a slightly dazed condition. I did my honors thesis in Woolf and Joyce, a combination I've never turned from.


Best,
Bonnie

On Aug 22, 2013, at 2:13 PM, Toni McNaron wrote:


Vara asks other of us to say how we became captivated by Woolf.  I was in graduate school in Madison at the University of Wisconsin, working on Renaissance (as we called it then) literature.  I had never even heard of Virginia Woolf.  A woman to whom I was entirely attracted asked me if I read her and I tried not to answer.  I went right to the library and got /To the Lighthouse/ because the object of my crush had mentioned that title.  I was completely stunned and amazed and just kept reading.  As soon as I had a little wiggle room as a professor, I began teaching her to other young people who didn't know who she was.  The relationship with the woman only lasted 7 years, but my connection to Virginia continues to grow as I continue to age.

Toni


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Bonnie Kime Scott, Ph. D.
Professor Emerita of Women's Studies
San Diego State University
bkscott at mail.sdsu.edu











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