STREAMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Reading James Joyce and Virginia Woolf with Patrick McMahon
Every other Sunday, 5:00 to 7 p.m. (early arrivals from 4:30).
Suggested donations $10-$20 per discussion. Sandwiches, tea and wine included
For registration and syllabus, please contact Patrick McMahon, mcahab@comcast.net
In 1919 Virginia Woolf, bemoaning the demise of the contemporary novel, still placed hope in various young writers experimenting with fresh forms:
They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve more sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them . . . record(ing) the atoms as they fall upon the mind, in the order in which they fall . . . tracing the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness.
One of the most promising of those young writers, she noted, was James Joyce, whose Ulysses, then a work in progress, would in its published form open up the technique of “stream of consciousness,” an approach to narrative attempting to get closer to life and finding coherence in profusion. Woolf would in time be greatly influenced by Joyce in her own experiments with narritive voice, from Mrs. Dalloway to The Waves. Tracing the paths by which both artists arrived at their masterworks, our course of study will be sequenced in three, three-month series, of 7- 8 meetings each.
Fall/Winter, September 17th through December 10, 2017
We'll select our readings from The Portable Joyce, edited by Harry Levin, and The Virginia Woolf Reader, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska.
