To me this book is 66% frustrating, but 33% amazing. The Mrs. Woolf chapters completely enthrall me. I'm not entirely sure why, but I love reading these chapters that most people find "presumptuous" and aggravating because he tries to inhabit the mind of one of the best authors of the 20th Century. To me they are so well-crafted that the discrepencies and guesses that he takes about what went on in her mind as she wrote her most famous novel fade away and I start reading the chapters as if she is just another character he created for the novel.
On the contrary, the character he created solely for this novel, Mrs. Brown, I find to be depressing chapters about a woman obsessed. Though she has sort of a revealation where she decides that "She will want this second child," it just seems that she is too obsessed with the novel. It makes me angry reading about how she is dealing with the question of suicide. (Woolf also explores it, but in an indirect way as she is going to have Dalloway kill herself). I just find the desperate connection too much to bear. It seems so forced and monotonous that I dread when I see the "Mrs. Brown" heading on a page.
Likewise the "Mrs Dalloway" chapters aggravate me. I don't like the shameless mimicry that Cunningham continually executes in this chapters. Though I must admit that they are growing more interesting as the novel progresses, they still tend to dredge up a book that I had already put down (not that Mrs. Dalloway was bad in any sense). I grow to just point out where he is bringing in either specific events or broad themes that were in Mrs. Dalloway rather than try and accept this book as his own and divulge into its imagery, not Woolf's.
Yet, seeing as I tend to contradict myself constantly, I cannot say that I find this book poor in anyway. Though I have major faults with two of the storylines (so far), I love reading connected story lines and have begun to try and see where one story hints at the future of the other. In this way I think the book has begun to take a life of its own that requires no defense for the criticism it recieves as a "reanimation" of Mrs. Dalloway.
3 comments:
Wait, how do you feel about the other 1% of the book?
AJ,
Great Post! (I appreciate both the length and thoughtfulness). How interesting that you find the Woolf sections most engaging (while I agree with you that he's doing a pretty amazing job of rendering her interior life, I myself simply can't get beyond the presumption--read some of the other posts about your peers who seem to get sucked into thinking that Woolf is a fictional character, and then find that unsettling).
Anyway, read on! Keep your observations coming. I'm anxious to have you finish the novel, then read and respond to Dee's critique of it.
P.S. Trust Jacqui to slam your math!
Haha Jacqui...you know what I meant...alright to be perfect 66.66666666666666666666666666% and 33.33333333333333333333333333%
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