Selby Wynn Schwartz
Author of After Sappho
About the Author
Selby Wynn Schwartz is Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stanford University.
Image credit: Selby Wynn Schwartz
Works by Selby Wynn Schwartz
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- 1975
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Reviews
It took me until around halfway through the book, but I finally came around to this novel of fragmented fragments. I was at last settled into its choppy but regular rhythm and familiar enough with the surroundings, perhaps. The title may lead one to expect a wider lens but in fact it is focused on a very specific group of women, mostly upper class, mostly wealthy, in Italy and France in the decades preceding and following World War I who were active in the arts - literature, painting, dance, show more design - who could be imagined, who saw themselves, to be continuing in the artistic vein of Sappho. Who are individually lightly fictionally drawn, who are collectively the Sapphic chorus observing and commenting on each individual’s actions.
I read this due to its appearance on the Booker longlist and like some others on that list it addresses a topic that has already had plenty written about it, which can appear as a criticism, but for me there’s usually always room for someone new’s personal and well-written approach to the subject. This telling is cut up into chapters of short entries, usually 2-3 paragraphs long, increasingly it seemed to me as the book went on following a regularly progressing timeline (whereas the earlier chapters moved back and forth among years more often; I’d have to go back and check to see to what extent this impression is accurate).
In retrospect I see that I particularly enjoyed the entries for Virginia Woolf, so, here’s one such with which to end my impressions, which suggests both the struggle of these women against a restrictive society and within themselves:
I read this due to its appearance on the Booker longlist and like some others on that list it addresses a topic that has already had plenty written about it, which can appear as a criticism, but for me there’s usually always room for someone new’s personal and well-written approach to the subject. This telling is cut up into chapters of short entries, usually 2-3 paragraphs long, increasingly it seemed to me as the book went on following a regularly progressing timeline (whereas the earlier chapters moved back and forth among years more often; I’d have to go back and check to see to what extent this impression is accurate).
In retrospect I see that I particularly enjoyed the entries for Virginia Woolf, so, here’s one such with which to end my impressions, which suggests both the struggle of these women against a restrictive society and within themselves:
VIRGINIA WOOLF, CASSANDRA, 1914show less
In the autumn of 1914 Virginia Woolf opened the newspaper. On the third page she was instructed that there had been no female of first-rate literary ability since Sappho; on the fourth she was assured that the war was utterly necessary and right. She sighed. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples. Then she opened her eyes, threw the newspaper onto the andirons, and began to write about Cassandra.
In those years Virginia Woolf published her first novel, but she also began to try to kill herself. Like us, she was desperate for someone to light the way to a future where we might see our lives unlatched before us like windows. Virginia Woolf knew that the newspapers would always insist that there were no more Sappho, only more wars. She invented a Cassandra for 1914. Cassandra was the one who saw everything and instead of sighing, screamed.
2022. Wow. This overwhelmingly beautiful, lyrical book is the best thing I’ve read in a while. It consists of vignettes about a bunch of real lesbians throughout history. They are mostly centered around Natalie Barney and the lesbians in Paris in the 1920s, but there are also some amazing Italian lesbians that I hadn’t heard of before. Schwartz blends fact and fiction so artfully that it’s hard to tell what was true and what she made up, but it feel like doesn’t matter. It’s more show more about what one wants to be true: that the lesbians live in a continuous lineage back to Sappho and Cassandra through to Virginia Woolf. They are sort of trying to get back to Lesbos. Like where is the island where we can be free to love and make art without men interfering in our lives? It is very feminist. It talks about the laws in Italy, France and England that oppressed women. These women are all writers, poets, artists, playwrights, and actresses. The characters involved are Natalie Barney, Renee Vivien, Romaine Brooks, Colette, Gertrude Stein, Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Eleanora Duse, Lina Poletti, Radclyffe Hall, Lady Una Troubridge, Virginia Woolf, and Vita Sackville-West. I’m sure I forgot a few. It interweaves the fragments of Sappho in a wonderful way. It mostly chronicles some incidents in their lives between the 1890s and the 1920s, ending in 1928 with the publication of Orlando. It duns Radclyffe Hall more than I thought was necessary, but I guess most people hate The Well of Loneliness. I love it. Ms. Schwartz is obviously an accomplished classicist and probably speaks Italian and French. It’s written in English, but there are a lot of quotes in other languages but they are mostly translated for you on the page. It strikes me as a book I will dip into in an ongoing way. You can just pick it up and read a little bit from anywhere, and it will all be sublime. show less
This is the fourth and final book that I needed to read for the Future Learn course How to Read a Novel. In this last week we are focusing on setting and After Sappho is the book chosen from the shortlist that most fits with this building block of literature.
I need to say, before I even start, that the writing is sublime. I can't think of a book that I have read over the last year that has been as beautifully written as this one - the word choice, the weaving of ideas and women and the show more threads that pull them altogether are gorgeous - and it needs to be because there are other elements that made this book quite hard to read. I am not really even sure if this is a novel. As the books says:
p228
Written in short, fragmented pieces it tells of the lives of Sapphists who have wanted more. From Lina Poletti to Virginia Woolf and many women inbetween (too many to list) we listen to a crescendo of voices who are restricted to marriage, running a household and ruled by men but who have broken free and are looking for that island where they can be themselves, have a room of their own and create and love as they wish.
Running throughout the braiding of these stories are the fragments of Sappho's poetry or lyrics, used to show us the relevance it still has today through the direct influence on the characters in the novel. As we move from the late 1800s to the early 1900s we encounter war and this inverts everything. Women can work, drive a bus or ambulance, nurse soldiers even become spies and so now they are Sappho with Woolf being the 'modern Sappho'.
Things I loved about this book are many. I loved the fact that men were written out of the story just as women have been throughout history. This is a great book to read after [Trust] by Hernan Diaz for that reason. I loved the way that Greek grammar is woven in to describe the moods and spirals round and round through the book right up until the end.
p16
There were the optative moods the characters felt and the aithussomenon that forewarned with the trembling of leaves - 'the weather of afterwords'.
I loved the use of colour to describe. When Natalie met Eva Palmer 'whose long red hair was like a poem', they ended up living in a vermilion cloud. Or Romaine Brooks who dressed in black, furnished and decorated her house in black and paints faces with shadows 'like a black cap'.
p125
I also loved the way settings dissolved into characters or feelings with the continuation of vocabulary.
p51
Or, how about
p171
There were two things that challenged me. The first was the fragmentary style the book is written in. For some reason, the chunks of writing made me read faster and faster, gathering speed until I didn't really know what I was reading. I had to force myself to slow down and linger, to catch the ideas and words and how they trailed after each other.
The second challenge is that this is a book written about middle-class, white women who had the luxury of travel, building their own homes and finding the life they wanted when it went against society. The book is written in the first person plural with the pronoun 'we', a Greek chorus if you like, but the we, rather than being inclusive, excludes those who are not European or American or those of colour. Josephine Baker does warrant a line or two but not enough to really count. I haven't read anywhere about the author's choice of women but it would be interesting to know why she chose who she did. It might also mean that there is a gap here for someone else to round out the 'we'.
This is a book about the right to an identity that you choose, creativity and education. Schwartz has bound us to a winding road from the past to the present, paving the way for those who identify as creatives or artists. Towards the end Woolf describes what a biography is.
A genre telling people as if they were stories also tells people how to read them. It is a book that slyly goes both ways. A biography attending to the subject herself is also, with a slight bow, turning to face her readers, like a quadrille in a dance.
p240
Whilst you might not call this book a biography, it dances with the subject and the reader. Remarkable for a debut. show less
I need to say, before I even start, that the writing is sublime. I can't think of a book that I have read over the last year that has been as beautifully written as this one - the word choice, the weaving of ideas and women and the show more threads that pull them altogether are gorgeous - and it needs to be because there are other elements that made this book quite hard to read. I am not really even sure if this is a novel. As the books says:
You may have sensed in this novel that the novel does not exist?
p228
Written in short, fragmented pieces it tells of the lives of Sapphists who have wanted more. From Lina Poletti to Virginia Woolf and many women inbetween (too many to list) we listen to a crescendo of voices who are restricted to marriage, running a household and ruled by men but who have broken free and are looking for that island where they can be themselves, have a room of their own and create and love as they wish.
Running throughout the braiding of these stories are the fragments of Sappho's poetry or lyrics, used to show us the relevance it still has today through the direct influence on the characters in the novel. As we move from the late 1800s to the early 1900s we encounter war and this inverts everything. Women can work, drive a bus or ambulance, nurse soldiers even become spies and so now they are Sappho with Woolf being the 'modern Sappho'.
Things I loved about this book are many. I loved the fact that men were written out of the story just as women have been throughout history. This is a great book to read after [Trust] by Hernan Diaz for that reason. I loved the way that Greek grammar is woven in to describe the moods and spirals round and round through the book right up until the end.
The genitive is a case of relations between nouns. Often the genitive is defined as possession, as if the only way one noun could be with another were to own it, greedily. But in fact there is also the genitive of remembering, where one noun is always thinking of another, refusing to forget her.
p16
There were the optative moods the characters felt and the aithussomenon that forewarned with the trembling of leaves - 'the weather of afterwords'.
I loved the use of colour to describe. When Natalie met Eva Palmer 'whose long red hair was like a poem', they ended up living in a vermilion cloud. Or Romaine Brooks who dressed in black, furnished and decorated her house in black and paints faces with shadows 'like a black cap'.
If grey encompassed many feelings, then black was where they were buried.
p125
I also loved the way settings dissolved into characters or feelings with the continuation of vocabulary.
Leslie Stephen's study was at the top of the house, over all of the rooms of women and children. One floor down in the night nursery, a fire burnt through long winter evenings; Virginia watched the nervous, flighty shadows flung on the walls. As the firelight came in flickers and glimpses, her thoughts flared and fell into a charred confusion. Voices were coming and going like shadows, muttering at her, leering, crackling, casting themselves at the windows. She could hear them mouthing burnt words at her.
p51
Or, how about
After the war we were left with ash in our eyes, in our mouths. We set about clearing the rubble and dust from our vision; we were free to buy butter and petrol, we could walk the streets without fear.
p171
There were two things that challenged me. The first was the fragmentary style the book is written in. For some reason, the chunks of writing made me read faster and faster, gathering speed until I didn't really know what I was reading. I had to force myself to slow down and linger, to catch the ideas and words and how they trailed after each other.
The second challenge is that this is a book written about middle-class, white women who had the luxury of travel, building their own homes and finding the life they wanted when it went against society. The book is written in the first person plural with the pronoun 'we', a Greek chorus if you like, but the we, rather than being inclusive, excludes those who are not European or American or those of colour. Josephine Baker does warrant a line or two but not enough to really count. I haven't read anywhere about the author's choice of women but it would be interesting to know why she chose who she did. It might also mean that there is a gap here for someone else to round out the 'we'.
This is a book about the right to an identity that you choose, creativity and education. Schwartz has bound us to a winding road from the past to the present, paving the way for those who identify as creatives or artists. Towards the end Woolf describes what a biography is.
A genre telling people as if they were stories also tells people how to read them. It is a book that slyly goes both ways. A biography attending to the subject herself is also, with a slight bow, turning to face her readers, like a quadrille in a dance.
p240
Whilst you might not call this book a biography, it dances with the subject and the reader. Remarkable for a debut. show less
Booker long-listed a couple of years back, this is an interesting piece of...historical fiction? The author has created a fictionalised account of the interactions between prominent Sapphists and feminists from the late 19th century through to the early 20th century, post WWI. They're an eclectic mix of artists, writers, actresses, playwrights, poets and activists, some very well known (Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Sarah Bernhard), others less known (at least to me anyway) such as show more the Irish architect Eileen Gray, Lina Poletti, Natalie Barney, etc.
Weaving some fragments remaining from Sappho's writing, heralded as the first literary crusader of feminism and lesbianism, the book is a series of vignettes set in Greece, Italy, France and England as the lives of the different key players intertwine, either in real life or through their works.
I found the first third of this book absolutely fascinating, as I learnt about everything from the horrendous laws in Italy forcing a rape victim to marry their rapist to early attempts in the House of Lords to make lesbianism illegal. Whilst there is quite a lot known about British laws against homosexuality, I knew very little about how the hardships of lesbian women during this era, and it was fascinating to learn more about this from some incredibly interesting characters. I was slow at reading it, as I kept stopping on nearly every page to Google more about the characters I was being introduced to.
By the second third of the book, my interest waned a little. There were so many characters it became difficult to keep up with who was who, who knew who and how, and I felt the content, whilst fascinating to begin with, became a little repetitive. The final third piqued my interest again - I knew I was in the final stretches and so settled back into figuring out who each character was again.
4 stars - It's a book I was glad to finish, yet at the same time I'm glad I read it. It's well written, original and I learnt a lot from it. show less
Weaving some fragments remaining from Sappho's writing, heralded as the first literary crusader of feminism and lesbianism, the book is a series of vignettes set in Greece, Italy, France and England as the lives of the different key players intertwine, either in real life or through their works.
I found the first third of this book absolutely fascinating, as I learnt about everything from the horrendous laws in Italy forcing a rape victim to marry their rapist to early attempts in the House of Lords to make lesbianism illegal. Whilst there is quite a lot known about British laws against homosexuality, I knew very little about how the hardships of lesbian women during this era, and it was fascinating to learn more about this from some incredibly interesting characters. I was slow at reading it, as I kept stopping on nearly every page to Google more about the characters I was being introduced to.
By the second third of the book, my interest waned a little. There were so many characters it became difficult to keep up with who was who, who knew who and how, and I felt the content, whilst fascinating to begin with, became a little repetitive. The final third piqued my interest again - I knew I was in the final stretches and so settled back into figuring out who each character was again.
4 stars - It's a book I was glad to finish, yet at the same time I'm glad I read it. It's well written, original and I learnt a lot from it. show less
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