I still will never understand the level of fame given to Virginia Woolf. We had to read A Room of One's Own in college and I got an A on a paper detailing why it was one of the most poorly written things I'd ever been forced to read.
EDIT: It’s been 20 years. The only reason I remember it at all is because I was certain I was going to get a failing grade on the assignment because of the approach that I took.
But the very nature of your dissent increased the chances of you getting that A - this is a little similar to why we have Publication bias in scientific papers. What more interesting things would you have to say on this paper by concurring with all the popular opinions of the time that Woolf deserves recognition? Much easier to find something novel to say through disagreement, and therefore, easier to receive that high mark.
That doesn't mean you had the right opinion... something about the fact that you are lauding your own opinion on Hacker News while Woolf's place in literary canon remains unassailable makes me think otherwise.
> I still will never understand the level of fame given to Virginia Woolf.
Woolf’s writings, unlike the work many of her contemporaries, deal with issues that are of keen interest to the public today: feminism, homosexual desire, gender queering. Maybe the prominence of these themes in contemporary discourse represents a fad, and in a few decades’ time some other modernist author from the first half of the 20th century will seem more relevant. But for the time being, it is easy to understand why Woolf is hot.
Counterpoint: The the Lighthouse is one of the best novels I've read. Orlando 's also beautiful.
Though I've not read A Room of One's Own. Perhaps it's terrible.
(goes away for a moment)
Read the first couple pages—not obviously bad yet, anyway. Even manages, so early, to build tension and expectation effectively, which is key in a good essay and pretty hard to do as well as this does. Does it get a lot worse further in?
I found it an extraordinarily important and well-argued essay. Most distinguished men of letters have had the luxury of both physical private space and mental space uncluttered by societal demands. Her essay continues to be relevant even now, particularly in places like India and China.
In case anyone else is a bit confused - I had to look this up:
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters that were published as "Letters to a Young Poet" in 1929 (posthumously). These were, in fact, genuine letters from Rilke to a young poet (who was the one who eventually published the letters).
Virginia Woolf wrote and published "A Letter to a Young Poet" in 1932 (the OP here), as an epistolary letter prompted by the writer John Lehman (who was ultimately dissatisfied with Woolf's work).
It's striking how ambitious hotshots receiving letters from famous and accomplished people never seem to amount to much. We never would have learned about the mere existence of Lucilius if not for the lectures he got from Seneca.
EDIT: It’s been 20 years. The only reason I remember it at all is because I was certain I was going to get a failing grade on the assignment because of the approach that I took.