such and such, …” – how often I have started a sentence so; inconsistently placing a hyphen, as in ‘re-reading’, or sometimes not – how then delighted I am by reading this essay written by Larry McMurtry in The New York Review of Books in 2005. (The NYRB is showing a great kindness of late by heavily digging into their archives, but available for only a limited period I would suggest.)
Referring to Leonard Woolf’s autobiography, McMurtry says:
[…Woolf…] records that his widowed mother, Marie Woolf, got herself a copy of Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas, kept it by her bedside, and reread it “dozens of times.” …As one who has so far failed to make it through Rasselas even once, I consider Marie Woolf’s devotion to the book a matter worth pondering. […Should what WooIf said be true …]—Marie Woolf was probably the world’s biggest fan of Rasselas, […as I…] might claim to be the world’s biggest fan of Slowly Down the Ganges, a wonderful travel book by Eric Newby, which I have been rereading more or less continuously since 1965.
On Rereading, Larry McMurtry, NYRB JULY 14, 2005 ISSUE
And does then go on to ponder whether rereaders generally have the “one book fetish” he shares with Marie Woolf, or are more inclined to reread over a greater range. Anthony Powell and Shakespeare, but a thing for The Sun also Rises (humanising him, says McMurtry). Kenneth Clark and Ruskin, but Clark takes a shortcut and edits a collection (presumably including his favourites), always to keep near. And Edmund Wilson and Cyril Connolly ? Rereading was par the course inherent to their work, but one must think also an abiding pleasure. Did they have a “talisman”? McMurtry seems not to know. One could though go asearchin’ in the University of Tulsa repositories for clues. (By the way, okay Wilson is a renowned American literary figure, but I always wonder why the papers of others – like the aforesaid, and very British, Connolly – end up in universities in the middle of the US! Yes I know the answer I suppose – $$$!)
Of course my personal interest here is elevated by the Woolf association, and not by that of Johnson; known to me only in a very vague historical context. In her diary, Virginia Woolf mostly speaks about Leonard’s mother with various degrees of disparagement (and, yes, with anti-Semitic jargon), and I recall mention, though perhaps also disparaging, of Dr. Johnson in other contexts; perhaps more related to her father’s generation and their ideals, and the radical break with tradition made by her own – which she never fails but to bring to the fore. Curious as to whether I have missed something, a browse (at the Internet Archive) of The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume 2 includes a correspondence with Philippa Strachey on March 5th 1922 bemoaning that the “shadow of my mother-in-law hangs over this week like a bird of prey – a very tattered old eagle, poor woman…” and goes on to inform of the intentions and misfortunes of Leonard’s siblings and then admits “…Yet I get on with Mrs. Woolf. She reads Rasselas [Samuel Johnson, 1759]. Isn’t the world odd?” [pp. 511-512] And does VW mean she gets on with Mrs. Woolf because she reads Rasselas, or the other round? And is the world odd when either is true? Or both? Whatever, her surprise is evident, and whether an extended discourse on the said work between Woolf & Woolf followed one can but wonder. Interesting, in terms of what McMurtry is saying, is VW’s pregnant statement “She reads Rasselas.” – period, now and in continuum.
And me? I would say I read and reread in equal measure, but like Larry McMurtry I could imagine morphing into an absolute rereader. And, yes, it is to be guessed I suppose, Virginia Woolf’s diary has accompanied me now for quiet a few years, and as McMurtry says of his own proclivities, it became a constant at a time in which I was in need of the familiar and trusted, in search of common ground. I am the born Common Reader, and, yes, the two volumes so named from Woolf and other collections are also read intermittently; stories, reviews essays pulled at random. And the “Common Rereader” McMurtry ponders upon? Or just as intriguing, an absolutely “UNcommon Rereader” ! Perhaps … for I too am often curious of the (re)reading habits of others, and note with interest (and am sometimes flattered by) commonality discovered in odd places.
Not in either volume of her Common Readers, nor referred to by McMurtry, but in the collection The Moment and Other Essays (1947) published by Leonard Woolf after Virginia’s death (and also to be found in other collections), is her 1922 essay “On Rereading Novels”, in which she ponders the hows and whys of, and whether what is taken from the second or third or …reading of implies the first reading was insufficient, not good enough, misunderstood or just plain bad. Reading (that is, my reading) of that essay now, inspired at the time it seems by a flurry of new editions, is a little hard going; for it seems to have a lot to do with Woolf’s rereading of the Victorians, and anyone knowing something of Woolf’s literary sensibilities is well aware of her ambivalence towards the writers of her father’s generation, and takes in that essay as an example one of the aforementioned new editions, George Meredith’s Harry Richmond, and implicitly criticizes the literary formalism favoured by a certain Percy Lubbock.
Suddenly I am overwhelmed, with thoughts of all things “common” – sense, law, good, weal/th… Something else to explore sometime; this (rather ordinary) word that has found particular and lasting resonance in various political and philosophical traditions.