If It's Fine Tomorrow

“Self-Portrait” and “Virginia Woolf” both by Vanessa Bell.

Please, to read aloud, preferably standing up (this is the first page of Woolf’s To The Lighthouse):

“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.

To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystalize and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army Navy stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling—all these were so colored and distinguished in his mind that he had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public affairs.

“But,” said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, “it won’t be fine.”

Okay. Now read it three more times. Twice more quietly, and then a third time out loud again. (And pay attention to the way the lengths of the sentences make it difficult sometimes to breathe…)

For reasons that are not relevant here, I have been monstrously sad. I have been throwing a grownup temper tantrum all week. Yesterday, I sat down to grade papers and instead stood back up, went to our bookshelves, picked up To The Lighthouse and began typing out this first paragraph for you.

I felt a little steadier. I felt returned to a rhythm that has meant so much to me, that, when I first read it—it always feels overblown to say this, type this, but reading Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, and then all of it, late at night and early in the morning—I never left my dorm room then and had very little relationship to time, very little relationship to the world outside my head. For weeks on end, I did nothing but read Virginia Woolf and it feels actually not overblown at all to say those books saved my life.

Thinking about James Baldwin from last week, the triumph that he talked about, so few people hear it, except when they do...

It’s rare for a book to mean that much to a person, but they did, they still do. I imagine, if you read this newsletter, some books have, might still, mean that much to you. I think sometimes when a book infuriates me, when I’m annoyed by it or dislike it more than feels reasonable, I think it’s because it seemed in moments like it might be capable of roiling me like that, but then it didn’t, then it turned out to be just another book instead.

First to say, (and I am obsessed with structure, obsessed with shape and how writers collide or don’t different moments and sections) how the title is used here: To The Lighthouse is on the cover, and then, the first page: Yes, of course, if it’s fine. How little the reader needs, how quickly our brain thinks, to the lighthouse! Of course! We can go, if it’s fine. This is a conversation, a goal, an idea, so full to bursting that the title bleeds right into the first page.

Our attention is drawn immediately to our hero, Mrs. Ramsay. She says Yes to start the book. Even after her death (I don’t believe in spoilers) her memory will remain the hero of the book. Of course, Woolf’s books are too filled up with truth for Mrs. Ramsay to not also be flawed, complicated, infuriating, for her not to break her loved one’s hearts from time to time, but she is the voice we look to, the body we are compelled toward, even after she has died.

But you’ll have to be up with the lark, she says. So specific to her personality. Remember, I just wrote in the margins of a student story, dialogue is rhythm and particularity as much as it is what is said. Her yes gives us her authority, her affirmation, but up with the lark brings her to life.

And then James is “her son” before he’s James. This book is so many relationships; its primary character is the organism of this ever changing, growing, shrinking, clinging and then separating and then coming back together group. The order of information teaches us how to understand a character and a book’s priorities: James is defined first by how he relates to Mrs. Ramsay; her son, who happens also to be James.

Teach the reader what to look toward, yearn for: We enter a moment of possibility, of longing and anticipation (I’ve been thinking so much lately, about what lives in the anticipatory spaces of both life and books; it feels worth noting, we don’t get to the lighthouse until the very end): the expedition…the wonder to which he looked forward, for years and years, it seemed…and then, she qualifies: The book knows, of course, that this trip to the lighthouse is not really life or death. A war lives in the middle of this book. Except, the lighthouse is still in the title. The book both knows there are other things that may well be more important, but this also—and by extension the daily lived desires of each of these characters—is deadly important within the world of this book.

And also, right here at the outset, Woolf loops a whole group of us with James. She gives us not just what he feels but situates that feeling in a great clan of us: those who struggle to calibrate our feeling, to differentiate, in our wanting and our heartbreak, between the small and the big. She reminds us that we too sometimes cannot keep this feeling separate from that, that in moments, for so many of us, any turn in the wheel has the power to transform and crystallize.

And then just to call out this sentence because what a perfect sentence, because how to make language feel bigger than you think language can feel, how to make it feel alive? Why not fringe something with joy? Why not endow a cut-out picture of a refrigerator with heavenly bliss?

Throughout all this we have objects. James is not just sitting, not just thinking. He is acting, cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy store. James is only six, but already, he has secrets. A private code, a secret language…we should stick around and pay attention. The book has access to this character, lots of others, and to many of the things they keep to themselves.

His mother has conditionally approved the journey toward the thing that James yearns for. But there is no guarantee.

But, in comes his father, it won’t be fine. And so also, we meet the counter to our hero. So much worse than a simple villain, he is James’s mother’s partner, fellow parent—remember she uses a but, too. Mrs. Ramsay loves Mr. Ramsay, is often allied with him, even as he so often breaks her children’s hearts. Stopping in front of the drawing room window, he is not only an equal if not greater authority than our beloved Mrs. Ramsay, he is the one who knows well enough to look out the window, to see the world, as James and Mrs. Ramsay sit and look at pictures, feel.

Everything is here: the character wants, but also is afraid; oppositions, tensions, alliances, secrets and the promise that they’ll be revealed. Beauty, I think. The start of a near perfect book.

I have not for years taught Virginia Woolf. I’m thinking vaguely, nervously, that To The Lighthouse might be on my “Novels about Art” syllabus in the Spring. When I was twenty-two and taught high school, I handed this first chapter out to my juniors, and they were annoyed and baffled by it: I threw a pen. Years later, I assigned the first few pages of Mrs. Dalloway and people weren’t that into it and I tried very hard to stay still and not to speak. I tried to banish the whole conversation from my brain in order to still love all of my students the next week. I understand that taste is personal, particular. It can sometimes feel very lonely, devastating when the things you love most, do nothing at all to people that you know. And also: it feels incredibly important that you not let this not seeing, feeling, hearing, diminish what the listening has done or might be able still to do to you.