Fallon’s 20th Century Novel Blog

Virigina Woolf isn’t a writer She’s an actress!  And also a sock puppeteer (read to the end to see why). I’ve been consuming an increasing amount of media about acting lately, because I think it’s cool. As a result, I’ve begun to realize the introspective aspect of acting. A good actor knows themself very well in order to pull bits of that self into a character (or so I’m told). And that is exactly what Virginia Woolf does in Mrs. Dalloway! She draws on her own experiences, views, and feelings, and wraps them into characters that exist both fundamentally tied to her and as their own separate entities! Then, in doing so her finished work is a spectacular insight into her own self as well as an interesting exploration of different facets of human experience in general. Acting. Boom. In Mrs. Dalloway, the characters have so many different life experiences, and yet many of them have suspiciously significant ties to Woolf. Septimus struggles with a misunderstood mental illness, as Woolf...

  Consciousness in The Mezzanine  I’m going to start by likening human consciousness to a tangled mess of yarn. There are strands to grasp at, thousands of colors, and once you follow one line for any amount of time you can no longer be sure you have the same one. As in the image above, this tangle of fleeting impressions, long-forgotten experiences, and passing observations nonetheless informs your view of the world. It takes up the area you use to comprehend the space around you, resulting in muddled confusion. Baker does an excellent job in his novel of not only navigating but imitating these twists and turns in Howie’s brain through his unpredictable footnotes and topical shifts. The portrayal of Howie’s consciousness in The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker seems very similar to that of actual human beings, based on my experience with my own human consciousness. Baker provides a net, a sort of filter, that allows you to be enveloped in the folds of Howie’s brain and view the...