To the Lighthouse (1927)

The language is so beautifully evocative. The careful echoing of the longer first section, which allows the reader to meet and understand the Ramseys and Lily Briscoe in particular, with the concluding section where Lily (the artist) is forced to come to terms with what it all means is balanced by the much briefer middle part. That section is where we learn of the events of the painful period of Mrs. Ramsey's death, World War II and the passage of time. It functions as a sort of intercession for both the reader and Lily, allowing us to gain perspective (almost without realizing it) on how "we perish, each alone." Such a very powerful book. ( )

One of the great books. ( )

2-stars for enjoyment, 4-stars for significance. I compromised at 3-stars.

While I can fully appreciate the depth and importance of the themes Woolf deals with in this novella, it is her style and approach that make it so hard for me to praise it. It is a scant 159 pages and yet I have read books of 1000 pages with less drag and suffering (my suffering not the characters). I must say, for me, it was like reading one very, very long run-on sentence without being given even the respite of a comma to allow me to take my breath. I think Virginia Woolf would be happy to know I felt that. I believe it was her intent.

Woolf packs a wallop into such a short work. One gets a true sense of the almost insurmountable differences between the sexes and, for that matter, the isolation of the individual from the society in which they figure. The lighthouse looms as the unattainable goal at the beginning of the novel and the ultimate disappointment at its end. The mid-section is a jarring departure from the already loosely constructed story, and again that is Woolf’s full intent. It is almost in passing that we learn that Mrs. Ramsey has died suddenly, and the impact of how we are told is a reflection of the way in which people pass from life to death in reality. In fact, the lack of meaning in life itself seems to be another of Woolf’s themes. We see in both Mr. Ramsey and Lily a search for meaning in their work, something of permanence that will outlive them and we know that there is little chance that either of them will be remembered in any significant way when they have gone.

I believe this work has significance and fully understand why Woolf receives high regard and accolades, so it will seem a bit confusing when I say that this will no doubt be the last Woolf I will tackle. It is my third try, and I am either too shallow or she is too complicated, but I am far too old to devote time to reading that feels more like torture than satisfaction. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Well, Mr. Albee, I can now answer that question. I am. ( )

a family goes to the same vacation house through the years ( )

There are moments of great crystalline beauty here, seamless amalgam of little sharp perceptions and language their vehicle, and I won't forget this family, in particular the two parents, in whom I see so much of archetype, of my parents and my friends' parents transfigured and ennobled by, well, class, I suppose. Mrs Ramsey regal and anxious, Mr Ramsey needy and forbidding, which is almost another (male) way of saying the same thing. But a sprawling family deserved a sprawling novel that would let the modernist psychological superstructure unfold at a less compressed pace. I feel like that pressure relief would have led to fewer "But what is it all? And what does it all mean? And what are ... WE???"-type eruptions. Sure am glad James made it to the Lighthouse and had a moment with his dad though.

(On class: the last gasps of compulsive Victorian world-building as well as Victorian formality are on display here, and it's affecting to watch that world list and capsize and the hard-won homeliness of it convert into something more twentieth-century and atomized. But I guess that made the proscribed lighthouse trip possible?) ( )