Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway III

"Mrs. Dalloway doesn't make sense."


"Also, there are no chapters, and I personally find that a more difficult read. On top of these things, VW switches from one character's perception to another, leaving the reader wondering just who is doing what and necessitating a re-read to figure out just what happened to the character one was reading about and who this new character is.

The weird thing to me was, it seemed as though one could almost feel/read the disorganization and distortion that was perhaps VW's mental illness.

I know there are many books which have been deemed 'classic' by some literary force but which people in modern day can't figure out exactly why. This is one of those books. It's reputation does not live up to its actuality."


"Maybe some people are afraid to admit they don't like it
I really like 20th Century literature, particularly Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Proost, and Joyce."


"Frankly, a knowing book editor would have helped this book a lot. On the upside, there are some very serious Sapphic undertones to the rambling of the book which make it more interesting than James Joyce whining about how he got beaten by the other boys in boarding school."


"All I took away from this novel was the impression that Woolf had a huge obsession with semi-colons."


"The book just does not make any sense. After 65 pages I still could not discern the point of anything I'd read.
I suppose Woolf is considered a genius since she was apparently a cavalier writer of her generation, but I'm grateful that contemporary writers can at least string together 2 sentences that follow one another in a logical sequence.
I tried, I really did; My suggestion: just watch The Hours - you'll get all the beauty and none of the confusion."


"The only good thing to say about this 'literary' drivel is that the person responsible, Virginia Wolf, has been dead for quite some time now. Let us pray to God she stays that way as we, the people, all work together to make sure that no future generations ever have to read this nonsense again. Lets burn every sentence she ever penned to end all the unneccesary suffering that curious readers have to go through when they first pick up 'Mrs. Dalloway.' Aside from being dreadfully boring, might I add that it is also terribly written? Thats right, you heard me. The narrative reads like the inner thoughts of a sugar crazed autistic kid with ADD in the middle of a carnival."


"One of the basic problems of modernism in its form, is that it has no coherent plot and therefore, if you ask someone years later what Ulysses is about, they are probably going to shrug and say something like 'Dublin?'. The same is true of Mrs. Dalloway, a work that I read in college and really dont' remember. I didn't find it altogether a very good novel about anything particularly interesting ... Great works are memorable, that was the basic theme of Joyce and Woolf, therefore if one can't remember one of their works, it must be counted a failure."


"In closing, Virginia Woolf sucks. No, seriously. She's awful. Don't feel bad if you didn't like her books. It doesn't mean you're stupid. Many readers just ascribe to the Woolf camp to make themselves sound more intelligent. Even Woolf lovers don't understand what she was talking about, because really, it makes no sense."