Not My Favourite Woolf, But Still Exquisite

I am still reeling from only having read any Virginia Woolf this year and how much I have absolutely fallen in love with her writing, which is always beautiful and exactingly lugubrious. Her scenes and characters she paints and how time, geography, and focus meander are unsurpassed, and Jacob's Room is no exception. However, I do feel that I followed and engaged far less than I have with her other works, letting the prose wash over me like a wordbath. There's just something comforting and aesthetic about everything she does (this may well be a reflection of my own neurodivergences) and I feel like I could always listen to her work when feeling low.

Nadia May's performance is really wonderful.

I think this is a lovely little treasure, but outshone by the wondrous other works around it and would be a perfect thing to put on and possibly even drift off to on the couch (complimentary). ( )

This was a very tedious short read. Jacob turns out to be a rather stuck up, boring person, the sort who somehow still disappoints several women by not wishing to marry them. I liked Woolf's writing style well enough, but with no characters I liked, no story to really follow, and disliking the main character, I was just annoyed after a while at all the poetic detail. I was not so annoyed as to avoid the rest of Woolf's books, but this was not a favorite for sure. ( )

There is no Jacob's Room to speak of, and Jacob is mentioned at oblique angles. We hear from Jacob only about one-third into the book. Most of the time, we hear and know about him from various characters, too numerous to keep track and who appear in the story without warning. You have to be prepared to switch perspective anytime. I feel as if Virginia Woolf wrote this book principally as a vessel for her musings about life. Once in a while, she inserts her voice into the book. Feels very experimental but if you are looking for something different, try this. ( )

Virginia Woolf writes better than other people.

"We start transparent, and then the cloud thickens. All history backs our pane of glass. To escape is vain."

"The Scilly Isles now appeared as if directly pointed at by a golden finger issuing from a cloud; and everybody knows how portentous that sight is, and how these broad rays, whether they light upon the Scilly Isles or upon the tombs of crusaders in cathedrals, always shake the very foundations of scepticism and lead to jokes about God."

"... of all futile occupations this of cataloguing features is the worst. One word is sufficient. But if one cannot find it?"

"When a child begins to read history one marvels, sorrowfully, to hear him spell out in his new voice the ancient words."

She's also funny. No, really:

"Don't palter with the second rate. Detest your own age. Build a better one. And to set that on foot read incredibly dull essays upon Marlowe to your friends."

"It is the governesses who start the Greek myth."

I'll desist, though it's worth noting that Woolf is also smarter than everyone else.

'Jacob's Room' is, of course, a book written primarily from the perspectives of other people all paying very close attention to Jacob. This leads we academics to ask: Can we 'know' Jacob only from these external perspectives? Is the first person perspective absolutely essential to understand a person? And so on.

But I find the novel far more interesting than that. In fact, it shows how reliant Jacob is upon other people. He is a well formed specimen of civilization. There are parts of that civilization we could all do without (e.g., the 'greek myth'), but just becoming a functioning human being is a remarkable achievement--and an achievement of a large group of people, rather than one. Jacob's family and friends are required for Jacob to be Jacob.

(Spoiler alert...

No, really. If you don't know the end, just go read the novel).



Which makes it all the more horrific that that same civilization senselessly sends Jacob to die in a brutal war fought for no good reason. I'd somehow gone my entire life without knowing how Jacob's Room ends, and let me tell you, I'm glad I didn't. I haven't been so shaken out of complacency by a novel in a very, very long time. An extraordinary achievement. ( )

An interesting experience.

Jacob's Room has some very poetic and worthwhile language used throughout. This, alone, makes it worth reading. However, it is not a stable yarn and seems to be peppered by these moments of greatness in an uneven fashion.

Still, worthwhile. ( )