Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Issue 62, Spring 2003
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NUMBER 62 SPRING 2003 Letter to the Readers: Reader” as well as reviews of books by Jessica Berman, Donald J. Childs, Katherine Dalsimer, and David Ellison. “Never has there been such a time. Last week end we were at Charleston and very gloomy. Gloom increased on Monday. In London it was hectic and gloomy and at the same time This issue of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany represents a new phase in the history of despairing and yet cynical and calm. The streets were crowded. People were everywhere talking this publication. The Miscellany has moved across the country from sunny Sonoma loudly about war. There were heaps of sandbags in the streets, also men digging trenches, lorries to snowy New Haven, from a California State University to a Connecticut State delivering planks, loud speakers slowly driving and solemnly exhorting the citizens of Westminster Go and fit your gas masks. There was a long queue of people waiting outside the Mary Ward University. After nearly 30 years of publishing this small but vital periodical, J.J. settlement to be fitted. [W]e sat and discussed the inevitable end of civilization. [Kingsley Wilson has handed the torch to a new editorial board. The publication itself has a Martin] said the war would last our life time[.] . Anyhow, Hitler meant to bombard London, new future as a soon-to-be subscription periodical with a web presence. Members of probably with no warning; the plan was to drop bombs on London with twenty minute intervals the International Virginia Woolf Society will continue to receive the Miscellany as a for forty eight hours. It was quite different from 1914. Every one said Probably we shall win benefit of their membership. A subscription to the Miscellany will be $10 a year for but it’ll be just as bad if we do.” (Letter to Vanessa Bell, 1 October 1938) non-IVWS members (see insert for more information). The members of the Editorial Board introduce themselves on page six. This is the Editorial Board’s first adventure Reading this passage, one has a sickening sense that gas masks have not gone out of in assembling an issue of the Miscellany. If you have any suggestions regarding the fashion after all, that the strategy of shock and awe currently underway in Iraq is not publication, please contact me by mail or e-mail me at [email protected]. exactly original, that global war is a nightmare from which we will never awaken. As The editor of the Fall 2003 issue of the Miscellany will be Merry Pawlowski. Debra the doublespeak and doublethink of George Orwell’s 1984 becomes more relevant Sims will edit the Spring 2004 issue. each day, the horror of a pre-emptive attack intended to force “regime change” and purportedly liberate the citizens of Iraq moves forward implacably to an uncertain Vara Neverow outcome. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and unknown numbers of civilians were killed Southern Connecticut State University in just a week. Bombs rained down on the ancient city of Baghdad in an attack that dwarfs the firebombing of Dresden. A museum was looted by professional thieves and an irreplaceable library burned while oil wells were well-guarded. Yeats’s BACK TO BLOOMSBURY “Second Coming” continues to echo in my mind for truly ”Things fall apart; the 14th Annual International Conference onVirginia Woolf centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide 23-26 June 2004 Institute of English Studies is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is Senate House drowned.” One can at least be grateful, given the massive Malet Street international mobilization against this war, that the best do not VWM Fall 2003 Bloomsbury, London lack conviction. Merry Pawlowski will be the editor for WC1 E 7HU ***** the Fall 2003 Miscellany. The theme In affiliation with the International Virginia Woolf Society & Centuries ago, in December 2002, a world before the war, will be Woolf and adaptation. Possible the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, this conference Melissa Silverstein of Paramount Studios contacted me and topics might include further commen- brings Virginia Woolf back to Bloomsbury in order to revisit asked if members of the International Virginia Woolf Society tary on The Hours; books such as Mr Woolf’s links to the place and the group which helped to might want to attend a private screening of The Hours during Dalloway; film versions of Woolf’s inspire her life of writing. Woolf’s life and work will be the MLA convention. Might want? Well, to say the least, we novels; plays and performances relating explored in relation to her Bloomsbury contemporaries and didn’t refuse the invitation. Should Woolfians have anticipated to Woolf; and Woolf’s adaptations of experiences of London. that the combination of a Pulitzer Prize winning book and an works by others. Deadline for Oscar nominated film would suddenly catapult Virginia Woolf submissions: Topics for papers may include, but are not restricted to, into a renewed blaze of fame? Over the months since the film September 2. Electronic submissions Woolf and: The Bloomsbury Group, Bloomsbury was released and nominated for nine Academy Awards, the as email attachments strongly Aesthetics, The Omega Workshop, Bloomsbury & other controversy has intensified among Woolfians, provoking preferred. Submissions should be sent London-based Artist/Writer Groups, Modernism, New passionate and intense exchanges on the Woolf listserv and to [email protected] Critical & Theoretical Approaches, Freud in Bloomsbury, generating a tumult of media attention. Mrs. Dalloway is a or to Merry Pawlowski, English Psychoanalytic Perspectives, The Hogarth Press, Women in runaway best-seller and Woolf scholars were very much in Department, California State Bloomsbury, Feminism & Feminist Theory, Gender Theory, demand for interviews with Entertainment Weekly and The University-Bakersfield, 9001 Stockdale Queer Theory, Sexuality & Sexual Relations, Class, Race & Daily News, the Associated Press and Book magazine, and all Highway, Bakersfield,CA 93311-1099 Elitism, Politics, Political Affiliations & Activism, Social this to-do is entirely thanks to Michael Cunningham, Stephen Consciousness & Education, Representations of London, Daldry, Nicole Kidman, Paramount Studios and Miramax ******** Ideas of Space & Place. Pictures. “What will you wear to the Academy Awards,” Leslie VWM Spring 2004 Kathleen Hankins inquired in an e-mail after she and I were Debra Sims will edit the Spring 2004 The conference will include a range of keynote addresses, quoted in the company of Jane Marcus and Brenda Silver in Miscellany with the theme “Virginia plenary panels and parallel sessions. In addition to the Patricia Cohen’s New York Times article on Woolf and The Woolf: Drafting, Editing, Revising.” stimulus provided by speakers’ papers and panel discussions, Hours (February 15, 2003). The due date is Monday, February 2, there will be other fun events, including Woolf-inspired 2004, and electronic submissions are performances, tours to Bloomsbury Group residences and As the discussion of the film and related topics on the Woolf preferred. Please send questions and more. Between sessions delegates might also enjoy a listserv continues to evolve and proliferate new perspectives, articles to [email protected], or to nomadic wander through the squares in which the new correlations, new critiques, so too this issue of the Virginia Debra Sims, 33 R Water Street #18, Bloomsberries lived, and loved. Keynote speakers will Woolf Miscellany offers an assemblage of commentaries—a Guilford, CT 06437. include Gillian Beer, David Bradshaw, Laura Marcus, conversation in progress—on the film and the book and Woolf Suzanne Raitt, Morag Shiach and Brenda Silver. The call- herself. Additional articles in this issue include Peter Stansky’s for-papers with details of submission guidelines will be “Bloomsbury in Sri Lanka: Leonard Woolf and Julia Margaret circulated on 1 October 2003. The deadline for submissions Cameron,” and Anne Ryan Barton’s “On Being a Common January 2004. -1- For more information contact: Gina Vitello, Conference Co-ordinator, “Back to Bloomsbury”: 14th Annual much because of course the best bits were in the private gossips which will go International Conference on Virginia Woolf,Institute of English Studies - University of unrecorded by your avid and yet discreet reporter, J.J. Wilson. London, Senate House, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HU UK Email:[email protected] J.J. Wilson Sonoma State University WOOLF IN THE REAL WORLD: The 13th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf Smith College, Northampton, MA June 5-8, 2003 The countdown to the 13th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf continues, and the ESSAYS organizers at Smith College look forward to welcoming everyone in June. Please check the website at www.smith.edu/woolfconference for continuing updates and WHEN WOOLF GOES MISSING (FROM HERSELF): THE SURFEIT OF registration information. On-line registration is available. CONTEMPORARY SHORT ARTICLES ON VIRGINIA WOOLF’S LIFE AND WORK Among the conference highlights will be several exhibitions showcasing Smith’s Near the ending of David Hare’s film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, exceptional collections of Virginia Woolf/Bloomsbury materials including original in a move which foreshadows her departure from life some 18 years later, Virginia Woolf manuscripts, letter and first editions, Leslie Stephen’s family photograph Woolf goes missing. Resenting the stultifying effect of Richmond, where she and album, and artwork by Vanessa Bell and other Bloomsbury artists. A writing desk Leonard have moved for the betterment of her nerves, Woolf flees the desolation of owned by Woolf will also be on display, as well as photos of gardens at Monks House, their home and sits, brooding, on the platform of the train station. Although Hare has Charleston Farmhouse, Sissinghurst, and others. Down the street from Smith at a Woolf temporarily go missing from Hogarth House, it is the subtlety we associate with local gallery, Suzanne Bellamy will have a one-woman show of her own artwork her life and work that is more seriously effaced from the screenplay: a brief look at inspired by Woolf.