The Writing School · Miranda France

Yesterday I listened to the latest episode of the TLS podcast and one of the guests was Miranda France, talking about her new book, The Writing School, published this week by Corsair. I have never read anything by her but was intrigued and added the book to my wish list after reading these lines in the publisher's synopsis: 'A delightful and unusual blend of storytelling and memoir, ... The Writing School is a moving and often very funny book about why people write, as well as being a uniquely generous masterclass on the art of writing itself.'

The Writing School
By Miranda France
Hardcover, 224 pages
ISBN: 9781472157348
Corsair

№ 15 reading list | #WITMonth

A heatwave has set in. I hope we will be rid of it soon, for I cannot read in this heat, cannot concentrate. I was born close to the Arctic Circle, for crying out loud, I don't do heatwaves. These days we use ice cream and TV shows to cope. The reading list, which I meant to share sooner, has gone through many changes: I have e.g. removed two rereads and The Human Stain by the deceased Philip Roth. The library didn't have it so Roth will have to wait.

№ 15 reading list:
1  Enduring Love  by Ian McEwan
2  Draft No. 4  by John McPhee
3  Under the 82nd Airborne  by Deborah Eisenberg *
4  The Hare with Amber Eyes  by Edmund de Waal
5  Cheerful Weather for the Wedding  by Julia Strachey **
6  Comet in Moominland  by Tove Jansson **

* My copy is unavailable. The link leads to another collection.

** Rereadings.

I bought John McPhee's book in spring and finished it weeks ago, but I wanted to include it on the list; recommend it to anyone interested in writing. It's not a typical writing style guide with examples and bullet points, but a collection of essays. Professor McPhee uses personal anecdotes to share his insights into creative nonfiction, as he refers to it. On the list is artist Edmund de Waal's family biography. It was textile designer Lisa Fine who recommended the book here on the blog and it's time to read the copy I purchased in Scotland last summer.

August is Women in Translation Month, presented with the #WITMonth tag on social media. It was blogger Meytal Radzinski of Bibliobio who took the initiative and introduced it in 2014. I have never partaken in it, probably because being an Icelander I have been reading translated books by women (and men) since I can remember. Reading translations comes naturally for people born in countries where English isn't the mother tongue. To acknowledge #WITMonth I decided to add one Moomin book to the reading list: Comet in Moominland by Finnish author Tove Jansson, translated by Elizabeth Portch.

A fun fact: The Icelandic word for a comet is halastjarna, literally a star (stjarna) with a tail (hali). In Iceland the book is called Halastjarnan (the definite article) and was translated by the late Steinunn S. Briem, a woman who was a prolific translator.

The Diary of Virginia Woolf - Volume 1 1915-19

'Something interesting happens every day' are words spoken by Virginia Woolf that my son and I have taken to heart and turned into a question that we ask each other every day. It started in the summer when I was reading The Diary of Virginia Woolf - Volume 1: 1915-19, part of my ongoing Woolf-and-Bloomsbury-group phase. They appear in a short documentary, The Mind and Times of Virginia Woolf, in the bonus material of The Hours (2002) DVD (towards the end, at minute 24). One interviewee was the late Nigel Nicolson, the son of Woolf's closest friend Vita Sackville-West. He talks about his childhood memories of Woolf, about the questions she would ask about events of the day, and how she would encourage keeping a diary because 'something interesting happens every day'.

For those who thrive on the thrill of a good plot in novels, perhaps reading diary entries with everyday descriptions of, for example, the weather doesn't sound interesting. I think one has to be intrigued by any kind of life writing to enjoy such books. In the case of Woolf's diaries, it helps to be a fan of her work. My idea was to end my evening reading with one or two entries from Volume 1 but I always read more. What I found fascinating is how she observes people and her surroundings. The precise descriptions sometimes feel like poetry, especially when she describes the weather or the changing of the seasons. Then there is life during the Great War, which interested me. 'Happily the weather is turned cloudy; spring blotted out, but one must sacrifice spring to the war' (p. 128 - 15 March 1918).

The diaries, five volumes, were edited by Anne Olivier Bell (wife of Quentin, the son of Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell). There are footnotes for those who want to know more about the people and events Woolf writes about. The first volume covers the years 1915 to 1919. 'My writing now delights me solely because I love writing & dont [sic], honestly, care a hang what anyone says. What seas of horror one dives through in order to pick up these pearls—however they are worth it' (p. 20 - 16 January 1915). After six weeks of entries the diary stops in February 1915, when Woolf slid into madness, right before the publishing of her first work, The Voyage Out, in March 1915. Sadly, two years before she had tried to commit suicide. Because of her mental problems there is silence until 1917 when she starts again with brief entries. In the autumn the entries get longer but it isn't until in 1918 that the diary takes off and becomes an essential part of her life. In January 1919 she writes:

I note however that this diary writing does not count as writing, since I have just reread my years diary & am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles. Still if it were not written rather faster than the fastest typewriting, if I stopped & took thought, it would never be written at all; & the advantage of the method is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap. (pp. 233-34)

On the back cover: The Monk's House kitchen entry, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's home in Rodmell

In April 1919, Woolf writes a long entry where she contemplates on her diary writing:

I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough & random style of it, often so ungrammatical, & crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat. ... But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practise. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses & the stumbles. ... What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit, & yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace any thing, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds & ends without looking them through. (p. 266)

I am currently waiting for a copy of Volume 2: 1920-24 to arrive in the mail, looking forward to picking up where I left off. For those of you who aren't into diaries but are interested in her life, there is a biography called Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee, which I intend to read when I'm done with all the five volumes of the diaries. Lee is one of the interviewee in the aforementioned documentary.