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purejuiceI belong to a bunch, among which the most active is the mushroom hunters of D.C. and the old time musicians of Blacksburg, VA, and the least active of whom are the genocide scholars. Not for lack of material, I hasten to add, with extermination of one's own kind at least as prolific as morels in the Blue Ridge.
Today on the Virginia Woolf listserv, this most extraordinary piece from Believer magazine, resurrecting from the births and censuses and ships' passenger lists of 19th century England the roommate Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia, had in Ceylon as a civil servant in 1905.
There's a whole long piece about this guy and why Leonard must have hated him, headlined THE DEATH OF A CIVIL SERVANT: IN 1905 MODERNISM AND FANTASY MET IN THE JUNGLES OF COLONIAL CEYLON.
Like Woolf and Dutton, modernism and fantasy are each other’s uncanny double.
The resemblance isn’t immediately obvious.
http://www.believermag.com/issues/201005/?read=article_grossman
Mmmmhmm.
I have to tell you it's so far off the mark, and so inordinately assiduous about a person who had absolutely no relevance to Leonard Woolf's modernism, of which he was totally unaware in 1905, and absolutely no relevance to Woolf's life in Ceylon or anywhere else, except as an example of the kind of completely out-to-lunch loser expat with which the foreign services of the world teem, that I can only fall back in my chair and say to myself, again, why do the wicked prosper? There is a kind of Jewish-Prince-who- writes ethos, in which every twee idea and thrice-shitty pun -- or even really excellent and famous and career-defining prose about, oh, let's say jacking off -- is assayed with a coy simper as something Mama Will Dote Upon.
The author of this Leonard wank, Lev Grossman, has written such a piece forcing one of the literary canon's great iconoclasts into a relationship with fantasy. Grossman inflates the tenuous connection, and indeed the roommate's dubious role as a fantasist, in just such an ohhh-aren't-I-a-clever-little-man manner. It is this what-if streak of fantasy, that is, a form of nostalgia for the future, in which the willfully inflated story of the road not taken -- or the fate of the loathed roommate left pounding out Beethoven on an out-of-tune piano for one of the local lady missionaries -- has always given me the willies. Woolf tells the story impeccably, as an eye witness, and the image of his roommate entertaining the missionary ladies in sweaty Ceylon is perfectly rendered. What happened to the man in that vignette is far less interesting than the clever little man Grossman thinks, and it makes my skin crawl to think he spent time looking this "fantasist" up.
I have a relative, one of the ones who inherited the boring and malicious depression, but not the brilliant and creative mania of our progenitress, who has spent his whole life figuring out what if. The jacking-off, I can't even begin to go there. And, of course, not working. 'Cause his mother told him he was a genius and didn't have to.
Leonard Woolf was more of the Jeremiad apocalypse Fabian socialist type of Jewish Prince. And he hated his mother.
Go, Leonard.
Today on the Virginia Woolf listserv, this most extraordinary piece from Believer magazine, resurrecting from the births and censuses and ships' passenger lists of 19th century England the roommate Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia, had in Ceylon as a civil servant in 1905.
There's a whole long piece about this guy and why Leonard must have hated him, headlined THE DEATH OF A CIVIL SERVANT: IN 1905 MODERNISM AND FANTASY MET IN THE JUNGLES OF COLONIAL CEYLON.
Like Woolf and Dutton, modernism and fantasy are each other’s uncanny double.
The resemblance isn’t immediately obvious.
http://www.believermag.com/issues/201005/?read=article_grossman
Mmmmhmm.
I have to tell you it's so far off the mark, and so inordinately assiduous about a person who had absolutely no relevance to Leonard Woolf's modernism, of which he was totally unaware in 1905, and absolutely no relevance to Woolf's life in Ceylon or anywhere else, except as an example of the kind of completely out-to-lunch loser expat with which the foreign services of the world teem, that I can only fall back in my chair and say to myself, again, why do the wicked prosper? There is a kind of Jewish-Prince-who- writes ethos, in which every twee idea and thrice-shitty pun -- or even really excellent and famous and career-defining prose about, oh, let's say jacking off -- is assayed with a coy simper as something Mama Will Dote Upon.
The author of this Leonard wank, Lev Grossman, has written such a piece forcing one of the literary canon's great iconoclasts into a relationship with fantasy. Grossman inflates the tenuous connection, and indeed the roommate's dubious role as a fantasist, in just such an ohhh-aren't-I-a-clever-little-man manner. It is this what-if streak of fantasy, that is, a form of nostalgia for the future, in which the willfully inflated story of the road not taken -- or the fate of the loathed roommate left pounding out Beethoven on an out-of-tune piano for one of the local lady missionaries -- has always given me the willies. Woolf tells the story impeccably, as an eye witness, and the image of his roommate entertaining the missionary ladies in sweaty Ceylon is perfectly rendered. What happened to the man in that vignette is far less interesting than the clever little man Grossman thinks, and it makes my skin crawl to think he spent time looking this "fantasist" up.
I have a relative, one of the ones who inherited the boring and malicious depression, but not the brilliant and creative mania of our progenitress, who has spent his whole life figuring out what if. The jacking-off, I can't even begin to go there. And, of course, not working. 'Cause his mother told him he was a genius and didn't have to.
Leonard Woolf was more of the Jeremiad apocalypse Fabian socialist type of Jewish Prince. And he hated his mother.
Go, Leonard.
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Date: 2010-08-22 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 05:50 pm (UTC)ohhh grrl.
is it, do you think, part of any legit pomo pastiche thing?
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Date: 2010-08-22 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 10:09 pm (UTC)http://achewood.com/index.php?date=06302003
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 11:02 pm (UTC)many thanks!
Both of the dead cats have a mediocre opinion of McSweeney's
Date: 2010-08-23 03:35 am (UTC)Re: Both of the dead cats have a mediocre opinion of McSweeney's
Date: 2010-08-23 04:08 am (UTC)