Gobstruck.
So I love reading Virginia Woolf. Have all of the essays, diaries, novels, short stories and letters. Love them. The complexity, playfulness, command of language. The courage and intelligence, the glorious internal revelations (Cam in To the Lighthouse, for instance), the ... well. I've trekked to her childhood home and wondered why the only notice on the wall was for her father, Leslie Stephen. She was such a genius, and the force of her brain comes through most clearly in her essays and reviews.
But my god, I have never heard her voice before today.
And today, I am, I am, well, overcome with the weirdness of hearing the voice of this author who has always spoken in my mind, as I read, with some voice that must have been much closer to my own. (Do people hear other voices besides their own when they read? Hm.)
Hermione Lee, one of many Woolf biographers and one of the best, wrote, "If you listen to the only surviving recording of her, you hear a voice from another century, which to us sounds posh, antiquated, class-bound, mannered." Um, I think that's fair to say. Also? It's just weird. A weird experience, a voice that sounds ... weird. So unlike the playful qualities of Orlando, unlike the vulnerabilities in the diaries. Unlike the arch gossip of the letters. Ah. Just wow.
Want to hear it? You'll need RealPlayer.
Hi Suzi, just wanted to say yes, the author/narrator/and or all the characters have their own voice in my head. Do you find it confusing when movies are made of something you've read and the voices don't match?
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Submitted by J (not verified) on Wed, 05/07/2008 - 15:27.Well, I think this brings up two issues:
1. Movies, in which I'm not usually confused or disturbed by diff voices because I hope to gawd actors have voices that are different from, and far, far less chipmunk-like, than mine.
2. Books. I'm thinking I perhaps confused authorial "voice" (that is, narrative bits, exposition, etc.) with an actual author's voice. On the one hand, I expect that the voice reading in my head ... if there is one, since I'm a fast reader and not listening as much as absorbing ... for a novel would sound more like the constructed narrator's voice, esp if first-person. But I was thinking of VW's ACTUAL voice, and I'm not sure I can apply that to the novels. To the essays and criticism, to the letters and diaries, yes. But not to, say, Flush.
In any case. The movies, they don't confuse me. But to hear a nonfiction writer's physical voice as opposed to her voice on the page ... well, that can sort of realign the thought process. If I weren't so addicted to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer right now, I'd go reread some Woolf. Um, perhaps that wasn't phrased correctly. When I come to the end of Season 3, I'm quitting for a while, and then I will go back to my beloved VW bookshelf and peruse. And my writing will immediately become more ornate. Fun for everyone!
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Submitted by Suzi Steffen on Fri, 05/09/2008 - 11:17.Post new comment