NW, Zadie Smith

NW

Zadie Smith

England

2012

“Happiness is not an absolute value. It is a state of comparison.”

            Zadie Smith has always been good at writing about her particular time and place. What we loved about White Teeth, in addition to its comforting “warm-heartedness,” was its ability to capture the complex nature of life in the mix of London’s population at the end of the 20^th century. On Beauty gave us the dense but endearing world of academic Massachusetts, and her newest novel, NW, brings us back to London, smack in the middle of right now. But whereas those other books ultimately delivered some kind of hopeful truth about life beyond their particularity, NW doesn't seem to do that or, if it does, it’s not enough of a prize for so much time spent with this lackluster cast of characters.

             NW begins with a section called “Visitation,” in which Leah Hanwell, a white woman of Irish descent, is visited by that common London feature, someone out to scam her for money. In this case the interaction with the young woman brings up feelings of empathy as well as lust for the protagonist; we learn that she is struggling with the fact that her husband wants to have a baby while she does not, though she hasn’t actually told him so.

This section is followed by “Guest,” in which we get to know Felix (unrelated to Leah though from the same NW London neighborhood) as he visits his dad, a guy about a car, and an ex-girlfriend. Leah’s section is moody, hazy, dream-like and often disjointed, while Felix’s is far more straightforward. Both Felix and Leah talk about a past fueled by drugs and sex, but Leah wants to hold on to that past, while Felix is grateful to finally be moving on. Juxtaposed with one another, it is hard to like Leah as much as the friendly, resilient Felix, who grew up in the projects with a Rasta father and a mostly absent, alcoholic mother.

After Felix’s short chapter comes the longest section of the book. In “Host,” we meet Keisha (later Natalie) Blake, a black girl, and Leah’s best friend, from NW London. Natalie’s section feels the most laborious to read, because it’s the longest but also because it’s the “flattest” in terms of character. We are told over and over again that Natalie does not have a personality, that she has no desire except to appear successful and well-adjusted to those around her. She is well aware of her posing, especially as she compares herself with Leah: “That’s you. That’s her. She is real. You are a forgery. Look closer. Look away. She is consistent. You are making it up as you go along. She must never know.” (Natalie’s beliefs about Leah differ slightly from my own. To me, Leah is “consistent” only in that she does not feel the need to make anything up at all, and therefore is drifting, rootless, while Natalie clings to reality, “albeit a contrived “reality.” Leah pushes all such grounding as far away as possible.) Natalie vaguely knows that she wants something real, but is conflicted about how to find it.

The novel suggests that Natalie is unaware of how much she has been shaped by the world outside herself, and that she fails to recognize anything inside as having value or meaning. “Natalie Blake and Francesco De Angelis [her husband] had opposite understandings of this word ‘choice.’ Both believed their own interpretation to be objectively considered and in no way the product of their contrasting upbringings.” It’s as if Smith wants Natalie to both actually be a stereotype, a stand-in for something larger than herself, and also a warning that modern life has a tendency to create such shells out of what might have been human beings. (“Something about Natalie inspired patronage, as if by helping her you helped an unseen multitude.”) Smith suggests that modernity is to blame for this predicament. In one example, Natalie hopes to find “the Real” through giving birth, but instead opts to medicate her pain away, such that she is barely even present at the births of her own children, and certainly not “conscious,” in the way Felix claims he is trying to be. “Pregnancy brought Natalie only more broken images from the great mass of cultural detritus she took in every day on a number of different devices, some handheld, some not.” Pregnancy, for Natalie, becomes yet another way to consume and internalize manufactured ideas of what life should be like.

Another example occurs when Natalie begins to seek sexual encounters via the internet. She actually goes to a few different houses in order to have sex with people she meets online. In one such encounter, she has hopes of having sex with two young men, but instead the men continue to jack off to “live” images on the internet, seemingly afraid of “the real thing right there in front of them.” All of this suggests that though Natalie, in our “post-racial” world, can now be the “host,” presiding at her own table, the leader of her own world, instead she slowly begins to realize that the world that has been sold to her is no more hers now than it ever was; it is only a story she has bought into, often quite literally.

The final section of the book is called, “Crossing,” and focuses mostly on Natalie’s long walk with Nathan, a man both she and Leah knew at school. All of the threads – Leah, Felix, Natalie, and Nathan – link in the end in an unexpected way. This union ultimately reinforces, rather than resists, the status quo, however. Leah and Natalie are no longer victims of the system, but enforcers of it.

Smith is excellent here, as she always is, at evoking the splendors and horrors of modern life – mentions of Amy Winehouse, a recurring gag about “the year people started saying --,” and Craig’s list ads all make an appearance. Reading the book on a malfunctioning e-reader on the packed, sweaty NYC subway, NW sometimes hit uncomfortably close to home for me. Such contemporary themes seem to emphasize the idea that some redeeming truth will soon be imparted. But if comfort is what I’m after, I’d better look elsewhere. Smith no longer seems willing to play the healer. Here she is, is quoted in a Guardian article from 2000:  "When I was little, we'd go on holiday to Devon, and there, if you're black and you go into a sweetshop, for instance, everyone turns and looks at you. So my instinct as a child was always to over-compensate by trying to behave three times as well as every other child in the shop, so they knew I wasn't going to take anything or hurt anyone. I think that instinct has spilled over into my writing in some ways, which is not something I like very much or want to continue." In NW, I think, we can see that child finally battling back against the need to be “three times as good.” I might not like what she’s doing, but I do admire the will and tenacity it must have taken her to do it.

I agree with what Lana Wachowski said in The Village Voice recently; creating art is inherently an optimistic act. And so I’m inclined to look for that shred of optimism in NW, even as it resists such a reading. Did I enjoy NW? Not really. Do I think what Smith is doing here is bold, inventive, and important? Yes. Her novel never implores but instead hints that we should resist standard readings; that we should fight against the corporatization and digitization of society; that we should create our own paths or, if nothing else, refuse to follow one at all. In light of such a message it makes sense that Smith refuses to tell us another pretty story from which we can walk away with a smile and a laugh. She wants something from us, and those of us who hear and respond to that call will be anxiously awaiting her next work, hoping that in it she will have further developed the ideas and insights she began here - in another important, and perhaps more enjoyable, book.

A run in Prospect Park

Today was the first day it hasn’t been sunny and crisp and beautiful. I went running in the park even though the clouds were wooshing grey and tumultuous across the sky and the wind was whipping the trees leaves into a furious wave-like rushing. I knew such weather would mean that the park would be empty, or close to it, and I was right. The long, sweeping meadows today contained only grass and hills. Since everywhere was shady there was no competition for the arcs of dark beneath the trees. The paths winding through the ravine and around the reservoir were wet and speckled with leaves clinging to the black asphalt, beautiful and clean and untrodden by the muddy feet of people and dogs and children. It was a lovely day, and though I ran hard and struggled now and then against the wind, my lungs sang for the comfort of breathing in fresh, wet air, and my eyes could have cried for the beauty of seeing only trees, grass, water, and the occasional fellow runner.  

A few weeks ago I made my first excursion to the Brooklyn Public Library, the big one, right at the entrance to the park at Grand Army Plaza. I went for a discussion group on Mrs. Dalloway but stayed for the books, picking up, among other things, Hermoine Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf. The thing is too heavy to take about with me; it’s over 700 pages and is exhaustive, definitely for the scholar, not a popular audience. But I’m enjoying it. Not in the same way I enjoy the novels, of course, but it does at times have a similar quality of transporting one to an idyllic English past. You see, I’m a bit of an Anglophile. I have always loved reading Victorian and other early English literature, hell, even modern English literature, because it takes me over there, across the pond, and makes me feel like I, too, know something about the grey skies and the sloping heaths, the tea, the fish and chips, the fireplaces and cold English nights. I studied in London as a college student, and my romantic relationship with the Isle has never ended, though my romantic relationship with one of her subjects certainly did (and badly). But that hasn’t tainted my love of England. So, when I run in Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, on a dreary, wet day like today, I am partially running in Alexandria Park, and at Hampstead Heath, and in Hyde Park. I’m trudging through the muddy paths at Highgate Cemetery, and when I’m done I’m coming in out of the cold to a bathtub, and then a drawing room complete with drapes, and a fire, and a cup of tea.

And, when the air gets misty and lush, and refreshing droplets start to fall from an otherwise blessedly blue sky, I’m also back in Oregon. Running along that winding path of mine beside the calm, sturdy Willamette River, watching the birds flit and the squirrels scamper and the trees and grass blow in the breeze. It just feels so good to be out in air, to feel air on my skin, air untainted by garbage or urine or cigarette smoke or even pizza, perfume, or the fruity, welcome smell of marijuana. Just earth, damp and wet, dark and sweet, reminding me that while I am happy to be here, thrilled with the way life is going and excited about all the opportunities this city of cities has to offer, deep down, what I really want, is more time outside. This question keeps popping into my head as I run, as I feel the air on my skin, and it’s a good one, and I know the answer (miracle!) – what do you really want? I want a family, and a warm, cozy house to settle us all in. I want enough money to travel regularly. I want to keep on writing and teaching. And I want to be outside; I want to see more of the outdoors of this world, in all countries, in all places, and I want to meet the people who know the outdoors. I want to have these simple things, and I can. If I just come back to home – to the feeling of the air – and breathing, and reminding myself of the answer to that simple question every single day. 

The Waves, Woolf, part 1

The Waves

Virginia Woolf

England

1931

"I have been traversing the sunless territory of non-identity. A strange land. I have heard in my moment of appeasement, in my moment of obliteration satisfaction, the sigh, as it goes in, comes out, of the tide that draws beyond this circle of bright light, this drumming of insensate fury. I have had one moment of enormous peace. This is perhaps happiness. Now I am drawn back by pricking sensations; by curiosity, greed (I am hungry) and the irresistible desire to be myself.”

Virginia Woolf is generally considered a Modernist. But if Modernism is concerned with the individual, as I have argued here before (http://mostlynovels.blogspot.com/2011/11/you-dont-love-this-man-deweese.html), then The Waves is an odd example of it. Woolf doesn’t ask the question, “Who am I?” in the usual way. Identity in The Waves, I would argue, not only doesn’t have anything to do with what one is like, but in fact the particularities of our personalities actually cover up the truth about what we are. As Louis says, "It is Percival … who makes us aware that these attempts to say, 'I am this, I am that,' which we make, coming together, like separated parts of one body and soul, are false. Something has been left out from fear. Something has been altered, from vanity. We have tried to accentuate differences. From the desire to be separate we have laid stress upon our faults, and what is particular to us. But there is a chain whirling round, round, in a steel-blue circle beneath" (99, italics mine). To describe ourselves as individuals, Woolf says, is to miss the ever-present “steel-blue circle” just beneath. We desperately want to dwell on, to hold on to what makes us unique, special, different – but it is precisely this desire which makes us miss out on the truth.  

To say that our differences don’t matter is an unusual conclusion, but The Waves is definitely not an average novel. In fact, Woolf herself did not describe it as a novel at all, but as a “play-poem.” This makes sense in that the whole book is dialogue, yet the characters never really “speak.” For the most part, the dialogue is internal (even though we’re notified of the speaker each time by the convention “Rhoda said,” “Bernard said,” etc.) The book follows six characters – Rhoda, Jinny, Susan, Neville, Louis, and Bernard  - from nursery school to late middle age. A seventh central character, Percival, is silent, though much spoken of.

No one would blame you if you finished reading The Waves, put it down, and said, “What the hell?” It is hard to figure out. Unless of course you read it through the lens of Buddhist thought; in which case, it makes all the sense in the world. But how can I explain what I mean, without getting deep into Buddhism, and without knowing how much you know about that? You’ve probably heard it has something to do with enlightenment, and maybe you’ve seen a monk or two wearing the saffron robes, but my guess is that the majority of my readers probably feel a little bit lost when I hop on my Buddhist soapbox. So how about if I just tell you a little bit about it? Virginia Woolf is hard to understand, and Buddhism is hard to understand, too. But I think looking at the two together will make things easier. Let’s try.

The first thing to know about Buddhism is that it’s based on the Four Noble Truths. Let’s start with just the first one for now.

The first Noble Truth is that there is suffering. Maybe you have heard something about this before. I think the first noble truth can seem, by turns, both completely obvious, and completely misleading. First of all, you might think, as I did when I first heard it – well, duh! Obviously life is full of suffering. I’ve been suffering this whole time – that’s why I’m coming to Buddhism in the first place, to somehow get rid of this suffering. What I mean when I say that it’s misleading, is that many people, myself included, when they first hear about the first noble truth, take it to mean that all of life is suffering. But actually, to say that everything is suffering is quite different than to say that there is suffering. Buddhism is saying the latter, not the former. Buddhism in fact recognizes that there are a lot of spaces for pleasure in the world, and that it is okay and even good to acknowledge the possibility of pleasure, as long as we don’t cling to it (but we’ll come back to that later). It is important to recognize that the first noble truth merely admits the existence of suffering; it does not personalize it.  

In fiction, and in religious texts, phrasing is important. The first noble truth does not say “I suffer,” or “I have pain,” or “I feel sad, scared, anxious, alone, afraid,” etc. etc. It doesn’t mention mine or yours at all. It only says, “there is.” One of the central tenets of Buddhism is the idea of non-self, that this notion we have of ourselves as possessing certain qualities and emotions is false. We are not “selves,” individually, but small parts of the vast whole which is made up of everything in the world. Maybe the monk Ajahn Sumedho can explain it better than I can. In The Four Noble Truths he explains that “to let go of suffering, we have to admit it into consciousness. But the admission in Buddhist meditation is not from a position of: ‘I am suffering’ but rather, ‘There is the presence of suffering’ because we are not trying to identify with the problem but simply acknowledge that there is one. It is unskillful to think in terms of ; ‘I am an angry person; I get angry so easily; how do I get rid of it?’ – that triggers off all the underlying assumptions of self and it is very hard to get any perspective on that. … We tend to grasp and identify rather than to observe, witness and understand things as they are” (17). The first noble truth does not judge; it simply acknowledges.

Upon reading The Waves for the second time, I noticed that some of the characters speak in this non-possessive way. "There is agitation and trouble here. There is gloom. … There is anguish here" (8). "I shoot to the bottom among the weeds and see envy, jealousy, hatred and spite scuttle like crabs over the sand as she speaks. They are our companions. … Here are hate, jealousy, hurry, and indifference frothed into the wild semblance of life. These are our companions" (116). Interestingly, these two examples come from Bernard and Rhoda, respectively, the two characters I believe to be most advanced on the path to enlightenment, or seeing things as they truly are. In contrast, some of the other characters speak in a less “skillful” way: Susan, “Now I will wrap my agony inside my pocket-handkerchief" (7), and Neville, “I excite pity in the crises of life, not love. Therefore I suffer horribly" (93). Unable as they are to separate the “violence” of emotion from their concept of them“selves,” they struggle to see beyond the “veil” into the truth of reality.

The second Noble Truth is that there is an origin of suffering, and that the origin of suffering is attachment to desire. But more on that later – this is enough to think about for one day!    

The Portrait of a Lady, James

The Portrait of a  Lady

Henry James

England 1881

“It appeared to Isabel that the unpleasant had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often a source of interest and even instruction.”

            I think I’m the only one who still reads/loves Henry James. Okay, maybe they still teach The Turn of the Screw in undergraduate courses (they did in mine, anyway) but I’ve yet to meet anyone else who loves the lengthier psychological novels as much as I do. I don’t know what it is, exactly. I guess I like the feeling of time travel, the sense that I’m sitting next to an English gentleman overlooking the sloping fields and tailored gardens of a country house, or, in the case of The Portrait, that I’m wandering among the ruins of Rome under the particular gleam of an Italian sun. Of course there’s also the fact of getting into someone else’s head that I like, and James’ psychoanalysis is so expansive. His omniscient narrator explores the mind not only of Isabel (the “Lady” in question), but also of her friends, family, and acquaintances over many years, so that by the end one feels that she understands these people better than they understand themselves. Why do people do the things they do? James wants to know, and so do I.

           

In The Portrait of a Lady James tells the story of Isabel Archer, a young American who travels to England to visit her aunt and uncle, and has her life inexorably altered by the events that happen there. The question under scrutiny, or one of them, at least, is what difference does money make to a young woman’s happiness? Her cousin Ralph, among other men, admires her sense of adventure and originality: “She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature; but what was she going to do with herself? This question was irregular, for with most women one had no occasion to ask it. Most women did with themselves nothing at all; they waited, in attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny. Isabel’s originality was that she gave one an impression of having intentions of her own.” Realizing, however, that Isabel would not likely be able to fulfill her intentions, given that she was poor, Ralph convinces his dying father to leave the girl a fortune, thereby, he supposes, setting her free from the obligation of finding a husband.

The question now becomes what will make Isabel happy? The results of his social experiment, however, turn out to be not at all what Ralph imagined. Presumably free from the danger of being taken advantage of due to her poverty, Isabel is now “made use of” for her money. It’s a complicated story, the details of which don’t emerge until the end of the novel, but the upshot is that Isabel becomes so focused on not following society’s edicts that she swings in the opposite direction, marrying a poor man in order to set him “free.” The match turns out to be a bad one. Still, there remain plenty of opportunities for Isabel to rearrange her life to better suit her own happiness. She could follow the example of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, for example, and live apart from her husband for most of the year. She could, the narrator and Isabel’s friends suggest, leave him altogether. She could accept the offers of other suitors who could also take care of her. But Isabel does none of this. It’s almost as if she has acquired a taste for the misery she never knew in her younger life. Suffering, for Isabel, seems to be the sign of a higher nature. It is Isabel’s desire to be free from the scrutiny and expectations of those who wish her well which holds her captive. It is, in essence, her own mind which causes her suffering. In this sense, the tale is as modern and relatable today as it ever was.

One wants Isabel to be a feminist heroine, but James does not allow that wish to be fulfilled. Even with plenty of avenues for escape, Isabel returns to her cruel husband and a life she appears to hate in Rome. So is there no hope for woman, according to James? Are we doomed, not only by societal circumstance, but by our own perverse natures? I don’t think so. In the guise of a secondary character, Isabel’s friend, Henrietta Stackpole, James suggests not. This lady, a traveling journalist, is a mix between Mrs. Touchett who, while completely in control of her own life, is too cold for Isabel’s tastes, and Isabel, who bends to her husband’s every whim. Henrietta is sensible yet caring. And though Isabel is disappointed by her friend’s eventual decision to marry an Englishman, it seems to me the most logical and happy marriage of all. But, of course, logic and happiness does not for a good novel make. And, by extension, perhaps not for the most interesting, or “original,” life, either.

To the Lighthouse, Woolf

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

1927

England

“No, the other was the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.”

            The essence of the book is that everything one thinks, feels, and sees is real, at least for that moment. One wants to sum the book up with some definite truths – either there is connection among people, or there is not connection among people and we all, as Mr. Ramsay says, “perish, each alone.” Come on, Woolf, make up your mind already! a reviewer might be inclined to shout. But the flashing in and out is, of course, the point. Can people connect, the book asks? Yes. When, how? Seldom, it answers; the how changes all the time.

            The book has three parts: The Window, Time Passes, and The Lighthouse. The first sets the scene of the Ramsay family at what might be considered the height, or heyday of their communal happiness. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are staying at their house at the seaside along with their eight children and several family friends. Though the story comes to us primarily through the consciousness of Mrs. Ramsay, the thoughts of a few of the children and several of the guests are also conveyed. The overall impression is of a cozy life of pleasure, marred by only fleeting disturbances of emotion.  

In the Time Passes section we are told, in small, bracketed paragraphs, that Mrs. Ramsay and two of her children have passed away in separate incidents. The beautiful and melancholic descriptions of nature, light and shadows here reminded me a little of Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson, which I have reviewed on this blog before.

Finally, in The Lighthouse, a few of the family members – Mr. Ramsay and two of his children – and two of the guests return to the seaside house. This section is primarily told through the still (happily) unmarried painter, Lily Briscoe.

            “Was there no safety? No learning by heart the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? – startling, unexpected, unknown?” 

            These thoughts of Lily’s hint at one of the central themes of this book, and of all of Woolf’s fiction – Time. How do we, and how do others, change? Why does everything always change? Perhaps most importantly, what remains? All of the characters in To the Lighthouse ask themselves these questions in different ways. What they do not do, however, is ask each other. This brings us to the next most important theme in the book – Connection. Everyone here seeks connection with others, and all find moments of it. For no one, though, does this sense of connection to humanity last longer than a few brief, blissful moments. This remains true. The characters’ understanding and acceptance of that truth changes.

            All of the typical Woolf elements are here: waves, the seaside, rocks, light, shadows, parties, artist characters. And, as I said, so are her usual preoccupations – Time and Connection. It’s tempting to judge a writer, such as Woolf (or Robbins, or Auster, or Austen, or Huxley, etc etc) for getting stuck on a theme or a particular set of questions. We could dismiss these writers as “one trick ponies,” but I contend that in so doing we would miss out on each of their beautiful attempts to convey what haunts and inspires them.

            What do you think? If a writer always comes back to the same themes, do you get bored? Do you stop buying their next books? Or do you find that you love their voice, style and particular way of looking at the world so much that you don’t mind the repetition, instead enjoying journeying along with them on a new, slightly different foray into their obsessions?

Our Man in Havana, Greene

Our Man in Havana

Graham Greene

1958

England

“There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?”

            What I like about Graham Greene’s novels is the flavor of exotic locals, that sense of armchair travel to foreign times and places. Greene really did travel to and live in the places he writes about, and he is more than willing to divulge the bad along with the good, conveying settings that seem real precisely because of their confusing mix of beautiful scenery and repulsive humanity. Since I, too, am a lover of world travel and have spent time living outside my home country, I also appreciate that Greene doesn’t varnish the truth of what ex-pats are like abroad. He paints us in all our drunk, detached, sentimental glory, and explores, albeit in an offhand, sardonic way, our reasons for leaving, for staying away, and for every step in between.

            Our Man in Havana follows Wormold, a (horrendously named) English vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana. Wormold’s wife left him long ago and he has had to raise his now-teenage daughter, Milly, by himself. This plot twist allows Greene to show that Wormold is a better guy than many we’ve encountered in the stories of other British humorists. He’s not just trying to get along for his own sake, but for his daughter’s, who he raises Catholic in spite of not being a Catholic himself (his wife was). Concerned with mustering enough wealth to provide for his daughter, who has expensive tastes, Wormold accepts a position as a spy with a British intelligence agency when an agent from the London office somewhat randomly offers him a job in a bar bathroom. Of course, he has no idea of how to be a spy, so he makes up stories and invents fake agents, whose salary and expenses he then collects. It’s fraud, yes, but the reader feels more sympathetic twoards the meek and unassuming Wormold than the “intelligence” agency. This is not surprising considering Greene’s depictions of the men at the top in his “Interlude in London” sections: “Hawthorne, I believe we may be on to something so big that the H-bomb will become a conventional weapon.” “Is that desirable, sir?” “Of course it’s desirable. Nobody worries about conventional weapons.”

            The ideas and questions Greene raises in this novel are interesting, but the way he raises them is often so heavy-handed that one loses the sense of discovering something for oneself. There is hardly a question of meaning here: Greene lets us know what we are supposed to think. “A family-feud had been a better reason for murder than patriotism or the preference for one economic system over another. If I love or if I hate let me love or hate as an individual. I will not be 59200/5 in anyone’s global war.” What our countries do should not define us as individuals, even though that’s exactly what they hope to achieve, subsuming our individuality in order to bend it to their own purposes. We may be tempted or conditioned to believe that our countrymen and women are closer to us than people from other cultures but, as Wormold finds out, it doesn’t matter where someone comes from, it’s what they do and how they live that counts.

            Greene’s books are short, quick reads that transport you to another time and place without ever leaving dear old England very far behind. I enjoy traveling to these places with Greene and I will continue to do so, even though I know I’ll have to look further to move beyond the important but somewhat basic idea that England just doesn’t have all the answers.

Between the Acts, Woolf

Between the Acts

Virginia Woolf

1941

England

“And if we’re left asking questions, isn’t it a failure, as a play?”

I can’t help but feel that critics have missed the point of Virginia Woolf’s fiction altogether, and when I think about that I find that I’m not surprised she ended up killing herself. I don’t mean that killing herself was the right thing to do, or that I fully understand why she did it, because of course we should all be brave and carry on, and because of course I am personally not able to write like Virginia Woolf. Still, when I read proclamations like the one on the back of my copy of Between the Acts, I feel deep sympathy for the famous writer: “Miss La Trobe is Virginia Woolf’s burlesque of herself as artist, and through her she states the truth about the artist and his increasing endeavor to make his audience see.” Probably I’m missing a great deal of Walter Allen’s argument because I’ve only read this single sentence on the back of my book, but based on this excerpt I have to wonder if he’s read the book at all, or any of Woolf’s other novels. Surely Allen is correct that Woolf presents aspects of herself as artist through the character of the playwright, Miss La Trobe, but I find the idea of assigning the person of “Woolf” to just one character at best limited, and at worst to miss the point of every Woolf novel I’ve ever read.

A short novel, Between the Acts is set in a single day in 1939. As in all of Woolf’s work however the passage of time and the “spirit” of the various ages play as much of a role as the present moment, giving the reader a broad-lens view of the world as well as a close-up of a variety of characters. On this particular day there is to be a play on the grounds of the country home of the aging brother and sister, Bart and Lucy. The plot consists mostly of these two, along with some friends and family, attending the play. The narration is omniscient, giving us a great deal of insight into the major and minor characters’ thoughts. A second, somewhat more accurate, blurb on the back of my book says that “during the performance the spectators are held together. Unity appears to be triumphant. But not for long. When the play ends they fall apart again. And even between the acts the semblance of unity is lost…” I agree with the essence of this statement, but not the tone. It seems to me here to be presented as a pessimistic message, but it is only gloomy if read without the lens of Buddhism. With “right thinking” in terms of Buddhism, one can observe the truth of reality without judging it. Unity and disunity, pain and pleasure, beauty and ugliness are real, present, and constantly in flux. This book dwells on impermanence but hints that it is not a cause for despair. Instead, Woolf suggests, we should look to the present moment, not the past or future, for our enjoyment of life and all its fleeting charms.

The recurring image of the church is the most conclusive evidence to support my point that Woolf is exploring larger spiritual questions here than merely the role of the artist. The profits raised by the play, we and are told, will be used to install electric light in the church, thus “illuminating” it (i.e. “enlightening” it?). Convention, in this case symbolized by the Christian church, works as a blind which veils reality. Though Woolf questions the church, and its adherents’ unexamined belief in it, she doesn’t ridicule believers. Lucy, in her earnest search for spiritual meaning via her Christian faith, is respectfully and sympathetically rendered. Yet her brother’s thoughts about her - “How imperceptive her religion made her! The fumes of that incense obscured the human heart. Skimming the surface she ignored the battle in the mud.” – also carry weight. And still, again, we must consider that it is the Reverend who, at the end of the play, offers what is (in my opinion) a plausible interpretation not only for the play, but for the novel itself. “…we are members one of each other. Each is part of the whole. […] We act different parts; but are the same.” The Buddha himself can hardly explain interconnection better. And isn’t it lovely that it comes from a man of God in Woolf’s vision? What do you make of that?

For reasons as yet unclear to me, Virginia Woolf was either unaware (partially, perhaps, but surely not totally), or unable to accept or openly acknowledge the teachings of Buddhism, despite the fact that they crop up all over her work: nothing is solid, everything is constantly changing, true reality is hidden, everything ends, the past and the future are no longer with us; all we have is the present moment, and that is often painful. Or maybe the truth is that she understood Buddhism, but also recognized the necessity of finding another, and another, and still another way to convey these truths in order to reach as many audiences, and as much of herself, as possible. Most probably, it is all of these, and more. Between the Acts is conflicting, unclear, momentary, fleeting, weighty, beautiful, and melancholy because that is how life is. It is the work of a brilliant mind trying and, in my opinion, succeeding at inventing a new plot – that of exploring life as it really is: troubling, tense, and full of contradictions.