Jessica Rosevear

Ever wonder what my voice sounds like (or why I like writing as opposed to articulating thought under the pressure of the moment)?  You can find out if you watch me tonight on Cash Cab at 6:30 PM on the Discovery Channel.  Spoiler alert… I learned that sometimes it’s best to quit while you’re ahead…

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be an artist, here’s the greatest explanation that I’ve ever read:

“She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked:  it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed.  It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child.  Such she often felt herself–struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say:  ‘But this is what I see; this is what I see,’ and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her.” 

From Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

I was in Barnes & Noble the other day (mostly just window shopping–I’ve been really getting into buying used books on Amazon for pennies plus shipping) when I saw a disturbing sight.

A very poor rendition Virginia Woolf’s face being used to sell the Nook, B&N’s e-book device. 

Woolf is also being exploited in a recent development in YA fiction–a popular book called A Room of My Own (a spin-off of Woolf’s groundbreaking feminist essay “A Room of One’s Own”) delivers the message that a girl’s selfless sacrifice is more important than having her own room.  If you know anything about Woolf, let alone her original essay, you know this theme couldn’t be any less Woolfian.

I wonder if Woolf would have been pro-Nook.  The Bloomsbury group was often criticized for its dismissal of tradition, and Woolf was one of the most experimental writers of her time–if not of any time.  She was once quoted as saying that some books should have a limited shelf life, and, after a few months time, crumble into dust, allowing room for new books to grow and be read. 

I like to think she relished holding a book, turning its pages, as much as she was committed not just to the act of writing, but doing so in purple ink.  But I can’t speak for Woolf.  I wish everyone else would realize that they shouldn’t speak for her, either–much less exploit her for their own gains.