Originally Posted by Marie Monday

I just finished Virginia Woolf's The Waves. The best Woolf I've read so far, it's incredible. She writes about people's inner lives in a very unique way. Like, of the mayor writers who are masters at describing complex inner life, Joyce does it by transcribing the flow of thoughts directly, Proust stretches language and vocabulary to its limits of descriptive power, Tolstoy attaches the inner life to outward situations and objects like comets or oak trees for illustration, but Virginia Woolf does does something less obvious. It's neither an outer or inner monologue, nor detached description. I guess instead of a literal transcription, it's a translation of inner life into poetry. (Not that Joyce isn't poetic, but his approach is more direct) Anyway it's beautiful