Orlando

[tjs_whatnot]

So, I've been reading Virginia Woolf's book, Orlando. Wow! I wasn't expecting that! Here I was thinking I was reading what might be an actual biography of some English nobleman I'd never heard of (that's how good Ms. Woolf is in sucking you into her reality) then about 100 pages into it, he goes to bed a man and wakes up, a woman...HUH? Not only a woman, but a lesbian! Whoa, I can't wait to see how this ends. No wonder the Indigo Girls have a song about her. It's all starting to make sense.

My favorite part of the book though, is her take on writing. Because not only is Orlando a transmorphedsexual; he/she is also, of course, a writer, poet actually. But of course, not a real poet, because, well, because he's rich, and you can't be rich and a writer...duh?

So here's my new favorite quote, "...once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the inkpot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."

Anyone else read it?

Comments

[zafania.livejournal.com]

I keep meaning to read that book, ever since i saw the film with tilda swinton, which must have been at least a decade ago. it sounds as though the film and book are very close, sort of like a modern retelling of tiresias. i think i got the right name - the blind prophet who spent part of his life as a woman and said that woman took ten times as much pleasure from sex as men do?

[apythia.livejournal.com]

Yays! She got her icon to work!

No I haven't read that one but I did read a lot of her work in college. Got it in both my lit classes and women's studies. Her work is surprising because you don't expect that sort of thing to happen. I will definitely have to check that one out!