Really, I do Still Read

I think I mentioned finishing Woolf's A Room of One's Own? A series of lectures (or perhaps just one, I'm not sure) on women and fiction. The pinnacle of it is that a woman must, in order to write fiction, have a room of her own, time and at least 500 a year. I enjoy feminist theory, but often find it too militant. Women must write themselves into literature. Bah! "... she had – I began to think – mastered the first great lesson; she wrote as a woman, but as a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman, so that her pages were full of that sexual quality which comes only when sex is unconscious of itself." She is right. Great women write not for women, or as women, but as writers. I don't write as a woman, and I have no need of writing myself into literature.

You could argue that I can say this because of feminism, suffrage. And I don't deny that, I just think that it has gone too far. As has the debate over whether or not Willoch's (former Norwegian politican, that has been critical of Israel) statement was anti-semitic. While I appreciate the butthurt, there is a difference in critiquing Israel's politics and being anti-semitic.

Bolano's "'2666' is a writers novel, best appreciated by academics (or so inclined) and other writers, often commenting on itself, the craft of writing and the creative process. For the average reader the ending lacks coherence, seemingly 900 pages of often depressing anecdotal tangents about death," says a review on Amazon. I've finally gotten my hands on it. It allegedly reads a bit like stream of consciousness, lacks proper punctuation at times (post-modernism, anyone?) There is even a sentence with over 2000 words! I know I've ranted about writing a bachelor thesis of sorts before, I'm always on the prowl for suitable topics; this might be it. Bolano. I will not sully Nabokov with analysis, I can't. But this, this might work.

Really, I do Still Read

I think I mentioned finishing Woolf's A Room of One's Own? A series of lectures (or perhaps just one, I'm not sure) on women and fiction. The pinnacle of it is that a woman must, in order to write fiction, have a room of her own, time and at least 500 a year. I enjoy feminist theory, but often find it too militant. Women must write themselves into literature. Bah! "... she had – I began to think – mastered the first great lesson; she wrote as a woman, but as a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman, so that her pages were full of that sexual quality which comes only when sex is unconscious of itself." She is right. Great women write not for women, or as women, but as writers. I don't write as a woman, and I have no need of writing myself into literature.

You could argue that I can say this because of feminism, suffrage. And I don't deny that, I just think that it has gone too far. As has the debate over whether or not Willoch's (former Norwegian politican, that has been critical of Israel) statement was anti-semitic. While I appreciate the butthurt, there is a difference in critiquing Israel's politics and being anti-semitic.

Bolano's "'2666' is a writers novel, best appreciated by academics (or so inclined) and other writers, often commenting on itself, the craft of writing and the creative process. For the average reader the ending lacks coherence, seemingly 900 pages of often depressing anecdotal tangents about death," says a review on Amazon. I've finally gotten my hands on it. It allegedly reads a bit like stream of consciousness, lacks proper punctuation at times (post-modernism, anyone?) There is even a sentence with over 2000 words! I know I've ranted about writing a bachelor thesis of sorts before, I'm always on the prowl for suitable topics; this might be it. Bolano. I will not sully Nabokov with analysis, I can't. But this, this might work.