How to read Jacob's Room

[Hogen10]

Hello: After reading and enjoying "A Room of One's Own" I decided to try 'Jacob's Room.' I enjoy the flow of the writing but I'm having a difficult time with it never the less. Can someone tell me how to get a handle on it? Perhaps a character list? I understand it's impressions and such but I have to say when it wanders, I wander! Thanks very much.
Jim

[Christine]

Hi Jim:
I picked up Jacob's Room when I saw your comment. (I love Woolf and want to discuss her more!) I don't really know that my comments will be particularly helpful, but here you go: For this book, I found I really needed to be in the right frame of mind. I kept wandering with the text as well.

I read it twice over the course of the past two weeks, and the second time I got a lot more out of it. I know that happens with almost anything I read, but I feel it more so with Woolf. 1) As you say, her writing wanders and it's sometimes hard to maintain focus; 2) Woolf has this amazing knack of getting in subtle details and intertextual connections that are so easily dismissed on the first reading, but give an A-HA feeling the second time around, when you realize how she is weaving it all together. Her nuanced writing doesn't beat you over the head with the connections, so you really (or, I really) have to come back to the text multiple times.

For example,in Jacob's Room: his choosing Byron's work as his present from Floyd; Barfoot's role; how letters keep coming up; his attitude toward Greece v. modernity.

These are just some off the cuff thoughts.

[Hogen10]

Thanks very much for your comments and help. Now that I understand what she is trying to do, it she becomes easier to follow. (Yes, she certainly is a writer that works better the second time around!)
Thanks again.

[Hogen10]

I just wanted to mention that I put down "J. Room" and started "To the Lighthouse". My goodness such beautiful phrases....

[Christine]

Please post your thoughts/comments on To the Lighthouse when you're done. It's one of my favorite books (I've read it a number of times.). I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Kim]

I'm getting near the end of Jacob's Room. I admit I've been having a tough time with it and have put it down a number of times. Not that it's not beautiful. I find I can open any Woolf book, including this one, to any page and fall in love with her phrases. Just lost focus too. I can see where this book would benefit two readings just to grasp all the connections. I'll keep your points in mind, Christine, as I finish it up. Thanks.

[Rosangela]

Hello, Jim!

I'm sure you know that Jacob's Room is a fiction, so it's so much different from A Room of One's Own which is actually a critical book (like an essay). If Jacob's Room is the first VW's fiction you're reading, that's why you're having a tough time. It's already permeated by the sophisticated techniques the author created. But ok, we need to have in mind that the book is mainly based on mental impressions and those impressions will be the novel central conflict. By now, you already know that Jacob is dead and that his absence is the main conflict. So the book intends to raise Jacob's memories and make him alive through them. So the point is: Jacob is always present even if he is absent.

Hope this makes sense and help somewhat in your reading :)