[Vwoolf] Stuart Clarke and Murray Beja; or, Omnibuses in London and Columbus

[Adams, David]

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.

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 his 2013 commentary on “pirate” omnibuses<https://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/2013-September/000575.html> in London that transformed my understanding of a passage in Mrs. Dalloway.

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!

Finally, in a memorial mode, this personal post from 2013<https://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/2013-August/000560.html> 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.

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.

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 TTL, and the secondary source I leaned on most heavily was Epiphany in the Modern Novel 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 Miscellany 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).

I’m linking [cid:image001.png at 01DB8254.E7261CE0]  two photos of Murray<https://buckeyemailosu-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/adams_428_osu_edu/EtAK_5VK22REoi5JeoMtiaABPANpSTr8_f2lCLiOTCtoiQ>, 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, this obituary<https://www.shaw-davis.com/obituaries/morris-beja> 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 an obit for Stuart<https://bloggingwoolf.org/2025/02/15/in-memoriam-to-vwsgb-founder-stuart-n-clarke/>.

David
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20250219/a58e9d3a/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 402 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20250219/a58e9d3a/attachment.png>