The City Girl and the Country Girl

There is a subgenre of literature which deserves a name and the Status, ever so exalted, that goes with being Named.  So, let us engage in a bit of nomenclature.  The subgenre is:  Books which are Famous because Professors of English love them, but which nobody else should really bother to read.  At let us hastily admit that there is a Reason Your Humble Narrator is not often asked to engage in the Act of Naming.  (If Janet and I had ever had a male child, I was most eager to name said child “Augustine.”  That name replaced my childhood fantasy of naming my child “Ivanhoe.”  (I kid you not on either name.)  This may be the Reason the Almighty saw fit to Bless Janet and me with Female Offspring.)  But I digress.  What distinguishes this set of books is that they are marked by two Traits.  First, they do have literary merit—that is why English Professors like them. They have lots of style and symbolism and other things we all learned about in high school English classes.  But, second, they are terribly boring books that have no redeeming quality other than the things mentioned in the first trait.

Exhibit A for this class of book:  Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

I am not an English Professor so you can guess what I thought of the book.  Except that you would imagine that I liked it more than I actually did like it.  A terribly boring and pointless book.  And my English professor friends (and yes, this includes my friends who will soon be English Professors) are now gasping in horror at this exhibition of philistine proclivities which heretofore I have kept hidden away.  But, seriously now, let’s be honest, shall we?  This is a really dull book.  Really dull.  And pointless.  The only character who is even remotely interesting is insane and kills himself.  And he is only interesting because he is insane.

The plot?  Surely you jest.  Plot is for mortals, not English Professors.  That is surely one of the reasons they like this book—no plot getting in the way of a good symbolic action.

Undoubtedly there are all sorts of clever things going on in this book.  But, you know what?  I don’t care.  There was nothing in this book which would make me care.  Mrs Dalloway and Septimus Warren are leading some sort of dual life?  Whatever.

The book is trying to break new ground in literature, and it surely does so.  We can mark this book, and indeed Virginia Woolf’s career, as the beginning of the era in which a Novelist with Literary Pretensions scorns the Reader by refusing to offer any reason the Reader should care about the book.  This device only works when you pack the book full of the types of things English Professors like to analyze, and Woolf has manifestly done that. 

In other words, Woolf has created the equivalent of scientific jargon.  Mrs Dalloway is the literary equivalent of the rise of the scientific journal article which outsiders can no longer read.  The timing is even right.  Before the 20^th century scientists wrote books which normal people could read.  At the outset of the 20^th century, that attempt was abandoned, and scientists wrote papers only for each other.  Mrs Dalloway is a book written for people like Virginia Woolf. 

Should you read it?  If you have or are thinking about getting a Ph.D. in English, then you already have read it.  And you probably enjoyed it.  If not, don’t bother.  Instead, you can listen to this.  I discovered this band (Carolina Chocolate Drops for those who don’t want to click on the link) in a Wall Street Journal  review of their latest album.  It is an excellent album.  I’ve been listening to it over and over on Spotify (great service—if you haven’t signed up, do so.  It’s free.).