By Cecile Andrews. Well, actually I just skimmed at least half of it. A few gems:
But who speaks up anymore? I ran across a quote by Virginia Woolf that made me yearn for some sort of good old days when people said things that had some substance and bite. Woolf writes to Lytton Strachey after reading the first six chapters of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “Never have I read such tosh. . . . Of course, genius may blaze out on page 652, but I have my doubts.”
But then, she botches the William Penn and the sword myth when she gets into her flabby spirituality chapters, so I must take the Woolf quote with a grain of salt.
She has an unfortunate tendency to refer to “we” and “us” in ways that make it clear that I’m not her audience. That’s when I really started skimming.
Not recommended.