The Hours

I was sick on Friday so while I read a summary of the film later, there's the big gap for me between right when the movie was getting into the action and then the last few minutes of conclusion, and obviously I didn't really enjoy the film as much as I might have. I thought it was interesting that it wasn't just a 1:1 reproduction of the novel but rather messed around with some things. Some of the things I liked most about Mrs. Dalloway weren't in the movie -- for one thing, the most interesting thing for me about Mrs. Dalloway was how Woolf portrayed the characters, and you simply can't do that in a movie. One of the most interesting things about the book for me was the way Woolf both got into people's thoughts but also flitted between people, painting a picture of a crowd. The medium of the movie took that away and while the cinematography was visually appealing, it wasn't as interesting a format.

In the book, I also thought it was interesting how Woolf sort of quartered Septimus's plot, which was much more intense and depressing than the other plots, but let Clarissa feel some of the aftershock of the suicide. I felt that in a way, this made Septimus's suicide more painful. I remember in the book it goes straight from his suicide and the doctor going "oh well" to someone else thinking about something trivial. The suicide popped up once more in the novel, at the end, and I thought Clarissa's thoughts about death were more powerful for being surrounded by her just going about her life, giving parties, etc. The plots in the movie all had suicide, all had people not just not fully happy, which I feel like Clarissa may have been, but very depressed. This is a more focused view on one issue but I feel like it's maybe not as interesting and maybe too much. Overall, I found that while I enjoyed aspects of the movie, it took away some of the things I enjoyed most about Mrs. Dalloway.

Ripples

The main focus of Mrs. Dalloway, and the most impressive part of the book, was how Virginia Woolf fleshed out the characters. I remember during a discussion at the beginning of class someone brought up how they felt disoriented, being dropped in the middle of the action without much explanation. I do like exposition, but I also really like just being airlifted to a scene and left to piece together what's happening. During one of the panel presentations one of the questions was about who do you have a better sense of, Howie or Clarissa. With Howie it felt like someone was painting a portrait and really focused on the left eye or something, just putting a lot of detail into one part and kind of neglecting other parts, like his job or friends or L, etc. I got a broader idea of Clarissa, but I also got a good idea of a lot of her friends. I thought it was really interesting how Woolf used other people to flesh out Clarissa, because through seeing their thoughts about her, you get a good idea of who they are. For example, Peter spent most of the novel thinking about Clarissa, which itself is telling, but you also get an idea of Peter through what bothers him about Clarissa, what he likes about her, and what he dwells on.

It's interesting to look at this sort of ripple effect -- if you want to know Clarissa, see what everyone thinks of her, but what does everyone think of them, etc. Mrs. Dalloway has such a web of characters who provide insight on each other, even the minor characters, that it's interesting that Septimus and Rezia are so isolated where everyone else is connected. Rezia was making a hat for a someone she knew that neither she nor Septimus seemed to like very much, but other than that they didn't really seem to socialize, which made me feel even worse for the couple. You get flashes of perceptions from other people, such as Peter thinking they're just a couple having a fight, but mostly they're isolated, similar to the isolation Septimus feels.

Richard

Mrs. Dalloway is an interesting book to read after The Mezzanine because while both books focus on really delving into certain subjects and exploring their connections, Nicholson Baker writes about objects and Virginia Woolf writes about people. And while I enjoyed reading about staplers, humans are much more deep and complex. I found Virginia Woolf managed to make all the characters in Mrs. Dalloway intriguing and worth reading about, one character who I found interesting in his relative simplicity was Richard Dalloway.

The novel starts with describing Clarissa's everyday actions, but it soon gets into her mind and how she considers what her life would have been like had she married someone else and various other reflections back on her earlier life. Peter, another character who gets a lot of pages about his thoughts, similarly reflects back a lot on previous times and revisits positions on people in his mind over and over, especially going over Clarissa and going back and forth on whether she's snobby, judgmental, charming, kind, etc. Richard, on the other hand, does none of this. I have very little idea of what his life was like and his experiences at Bourton. You get a sense from the other characters' memories, but in the relatively short time that Woolf delves into his thoughts, he never really things back to the past except to consider that hey, everything turned out pretty ok -- "his life had been a miracle, he thought." This isn't really an exceptional stretch of the imagination, as he has a nice wife, a daughter, a good job, and as Lady Bruton says, is in the "pink of condition." However, several characters mention that he has fallen short of some office (I forget what), and Richard's view shows a definite optimism. He's sure of his miracle of his life, too, which sort of stands out against Clarissa's constant "I guess I'm happy now but I wonder where I would be if I married Peter." Richard isn't happy about everything, but he only seems to have minor annoyances, such as Hugh the "intolerable ass." While Clarissa has intense feelings about Miss Kilman, Richard certainly doesn't like it but "these things pass over if you let them."

One thing I found kind of endearing about Richard was the way he thought about Clarissa and Elizabeth. They both came up naturally in his head and both times he got this rush of gratitude. Whereas Clarissa and Elizabeth considered people in a more complex and decidedly cooler way, Richard just seemed very happy that they were in his life.

I really enjoyed seeing the thoughts of all the characters in this novel. I thought Septimus was really interesting but his perspective was intense and almost exhausting, whereas Richard has, as Clarissa says, an "adorable, divine simplicity."

Routines

Looking back on The Mezzanine, especially after writing the pastiche, I noticed one of the things it made me think more consciously about is my routines. Howie spends a lot of time appreciating objects, but he also talks about his routines. Every time one comes to he analyzes every step, noting things he discovered and added to the routine because they save time or are produce better results or simply are more enjoyable.

I think morning routines are one of the most interesting kinds because while I know people who try to take different routes every time they go somewhere, I imagine that even people who love spontaneity don’t change their morning routine every day. However, the routines differ from person to person. Some people shower in the morning rather than the night before, because for them, the pros (wakes you up, makes you feel fresh, no bedhead, etc) outweigh the cons. I shower at night because I don’t like to go to bed sweaty, but mostly because I can’t find the time in the morning to take a shower.

Currently I wake up to my cell phone alarm. The reason I started doing this: I can only plug in two things by my bed. It used to be my lamp and my alarm clock, but I like to listen to podcasts on my phone before going to sleep and it was a pain to get up and plug it in on the other side of the room. I need the lamp but now the alarm clock is permanently unplugged, and occasionally out of habit I look at it for the time only to see a blank black face. When I still used it, I would put it behind my nightstand where I would have to get up to turn it off, in order to make myself get out of bed. Before that, I hit snooze two or three times on my alarm clock (nine minutes each, so sometimes I would sleepily do simple addition to figure out when the alarm clock would buzz again) until my dad came in to make sure I get out of bed. This kind of progression makes me happy, as if someday I’ll achieve the perfect routine. I know realistically this won’t happen, which is also kind of fun, knowing I can experiment with it forever. I have routines for other parts of my life, too: this year the only times I stop at my locker are lunch and before and after P.E., but last year I would plan out my locker stops (after this class I go to my locker but after this class I just go straight to the next class) and it changed throughout the year as I figured that for one class it’s better to get there earlier, but for another it’s a little awkward to be one of the first ones in the room. I said earlier that The Mezzanine made me think more consciously about my routines - looking back I’m not sure that’s true because like Howie, it’s always something that runs through my head every so often, popping up when I have a spare moment to consider it.