What intellectual groups exist in the world today? Which movements of writers will make up the Canon of Literature, and where are they now? Are any of those writers clustered together in groups at all similar to the Bloomsbury set? What people are today’s Bloomsbury Set? And if that is impossible to predict, is there a group of writers that has more potential than the other ones? What benefits come with being part of a group that comes together to expand ideas and bounce them around? It took me a while to note that I am not the only Bloomsbury in the room. So many of my friends and classmates here in this contemporary world, are prolific economists, provocative gardeners, and artists with lives of interest. This insight tempted me to tell the tales of the personalities who I know today, of what makes them vibrant. Bloomsbury was a place where intellectuals connected with one another, fed from each other’s art, and fought battles of different viewpoints. My reactions towards Bloomsbury Set stem in my eagerness to have intellectual community and conversation of my own.
To find what intellectual groups exist in the world today, I looked into internet directories of writers. Fortunately, I was quick to find Redroom. Redroom.com describes itself as an “ecosystem” where
writers can “have a home, find friends, and colleagues and participate in the marketplace.” A self described “social hub,” Redroom originates over one hundred years ago off the internet in an actual
room in California. At this time, the website represents thousands of writers. Indeed there are many more writers today than there were in the early 1900s. Redroom is an online social networking community, like the popular Facebook or the less famous, Myspace. At Redroom, aspiring writers can write blogs and come together in book clubs and other literary associations. But is that really the case? I started this course not convinced that our post-modern internet writers, copying and pasting their limitless self descriptions, links to their poetry, or even book clubs add up as does a pile of beans in
comparison to the Bloomsbury Group.
Because emails and blogs can be written by anyone with no great skill or practice, these forms of multimedia are often dashed off in a rush. I do not foresee future literary scholars searching through the hotmail of whichever of the million writers from today makes it into what they call their canon of literature. Autobiographical diaries and letters of Bloomsbury writers on the other hand, are the types of relics that we savor. Virginia Woolf’s thoughts came alive in her diaries. Much more informed that the participants of Redroom.com, she used their pages to sort through her opinions and to critically
evaluate what she was reading. Virginia Woolf’s diary is thick with literary references, conversations with great writers who she knew personally like (Tom) T.S. Elliot, and remarks about what she is
writing at the time. In her August 16, 1922 diary entry, she casts some very negative commentary on Joyce’s Ulysses which she describes as a “queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.” She then goes on to make the beautiful remark that she “is laboriously dredging her mind for Mrs.Dalloway and bring up light buckets” and says she doesn’t “like the feeling I’m writing too quickly.” Her words became vessels on which English students should go on joy rides. On October 23, 1929 Virginia refers to A Room of One’s Own and its “shrill feminine tone” as perceived by her “intimate friends,” (Lytton, Roger, and Morgan.) These criticisms were most valuable because of their well thought out
opinions.
Imagine facebook with thoughtful, witty remarks; that just wouldn’t be facebook. No matter how many social networks a writer signs up for, she cannot become a classic writer with a click of her mouse or a really nifty status line. The only definitive thing that social networking does to us is to occupy our time, which in turn, takes us away from our life of writing. If, perhaps, there is the same
quantity of literacy in the world today as there was a century ago, it has been spread thin and scattered throughout the classes. Elite writing communities like the Bloomsbury group have become extinct.
Right?
If there are no intellectual communities left in the world, if the internet has globalized and dispersed literacy, what could that mean for Literature? For now more people are reading and writing, even if their writing is generic and their reading is the shallow skimming of utitles. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neal Postman's most interesting arguments came in the first chapter of the book. In that chapter, Postman looked back as far as Plato who he said “knew that the written word would lead to a cultural revolution.” In that case, the use of electronics is bringing us to a kind of intellectual evolution. I did not just take his word for it. But he wouldn't have liked that anyway. Epistemology allows the readers of the written word time to pause and think between the words and to digest what they have read at the end of a piece to feel for its truth. Television assumes that its viewers have no opinion and the viewers assume that the content presented on the TV (and internet) is without lie. In reality it is only the charismatic whose voices are heard. So is wealth shifting from upstanding intellectual families to pretty looking actor types? I doubt it. Most of the wealth in the world today is kept in the hands of corporations. However, it is relevant to talk about television and the role it plays in the post-modern intellectual downfall. Websites like Redroom give a false sense of security and an
unreal feeling of flattery over a piece of writing that is posted on the site.
When I began exploring Virginia Woolf as a person and author, I identified with what I saw in her. Only after much therapy and contemplation I now emerge from my study of her with a lucid
distinction in mind. I was identifying with Virginia too much. I am not Virginia Woolf. I kick my feet in the waves. I never would take rocks in my pocket and go for a dip. I am buoyant in body and my
spirit. I am more resistant than she. Perhaps this is why she concocted tragedy so easily in the life of Septimus Warren Smith, when she wrote his character into life in her Mrs. Dalloway. Like Septimus
and some of her additional characters, Virginia and I were both touched by fire, as Kay Redfield Jamison, a manic depressive psychiatrist, refers to our mental illness. Virginia referred to her
own “madness.” In a class lecture we decided Virginia’s motive for killing herself was based in a sort of logic. She was afraid of the impact that World War II would have on her. Bipolar disorder is a big
part of my identity, and in a sense that is what I have been learning about in our class. Poked and prodded by lectures, readings, and reflections, I have learned a lot about my bipolar disorder during the
course of this semester.
I went to two readings of literature that built on each other. When I listened to Frank X Walker, I was intently concerned with the metaphorical trees that obscure the forest from our vision. I wanted
to know the impact of community on Walker, so I asked him how it helps his writing for him to be in the group, the Afrolachian Poets. To my dismay, his answer was not what I wanted to hear. Walker said his group of writers grows in wondrous ways having one another. When they got together they were all students or on the road to becoming students and now all are professors. But his answer did not stir my juices any more than my off topic question added to the large group of people who endured it. Then, tonight, I reluctantly went to hear Dorothy Alison without any real expectations beyond getting some intellectual stimulation. Looking around the room, I saw a community of intellectuals, specifically readers and writers. The listening group is as important as the writer doing the reading. The excitement that happens in a situation like this is its own kind of movement. People are not enriched by their Facebook connections in ways like Bloomsbury set. But the vibrancy of intellectual community is still alive today. In Quaker Meeting, when the group of Friends is really on the same
page spiritually, it is called a “gathered Meeting.” Friends, or Quakers, come together in silence. But our mutual understandings go deeper than one might expect from people sitting together in a quiet
place. At times, our thoughts and emotions, meet almost as if we are psychically connected.
When a group of writers assembled today in the home of Dr. Libby Jones, we experienced a similar mutual understanding. Several themes carried from the beginning to the end of our retreat. I cannot have evidence that the Bloomsbury Set experienced this exact feeling of being gathered that my Quaker peers and I felt today, but the people of Bloomsbury were held together by common glue. The intellectuals who made up the Bloomsbury Set had their Literature, their writing, their sexual exploration, their relationships, in and out of marriage, their elite place in society, and their open-minded curiosity. They were a group of people who got fired up by ideas. The reason we are
still studying these people almost a century after their time is because the Bloomsbury Group not only beckons to us to participate in their lives, we the readers see ourselves in them. Studying
Bloomsbury is much like joining together with them in a Gathered Meeting. People today are not interested in Bloomsbury because of who they are or what they do. The bodies of the Bloomsbury Set are dead.
We like Bloomsbury because when we study them, we can stick our hand for one moment into the canon of greatness. Reading about Bloomsbury opens the passage between us and them, sends us down a hall of Literature, and brings their people to life here where we are. When our group and two professors gathered in the home of Libby Falk Jones we were predominantly made up of English majors. One theater major, an art major, and a student of philosophy also attended the retreat. The day long retreat was silent and broken up in segments by a guided intermission at lunch and a closing circle of sharing. David Bellnier sent us on our silent contemplative journeys, reading a passage written by the poet Basho. We found it was good to have a philosopher in the bunch. When we reunited in the end of the day, Mike Bryant, the philosophy major, pointed out something that I had experienced but had never put to words. He said he usually does not write in a silent group with other people, that he thinks it was intriguing to be surrounded by people who were quietly writing about and experiencing equivalent moments and putting them to words. It is so easy for me to forget the big picture. I actually spent an hour trying to work on this paper during the retreat. Finally now, I realize the retreat was in a sense one piece of my personal Bloomsbury Group. When I took the course Contemplative Writing in the winter of 2010 that was another type of temporary intellectual community. Intellectuals feed off of one another. The Bloomsbury set was just one of myriad groups of intellectuals that have lived together, sharing ideas along with space, pursuing independent but parallel paths. Other examples of circles of writers include Beats, Existentialists, Transcendentalists, Expatriates, Realists, and contemporary groups like the Afrolachain Poets. Though I need time alone for me and my writing, I am drawn to groups because I have experienced writers groups in my own life. My father helped form several poetry groups in Abingdon, Virginia, Washington DC, and South Carolina. The Abingdon group contributed to the founding of the Sow’s Ear poetry magazine which he set in motion out of a room of my childhood home. It makes me feel special to think that the groups I have lived in could have similarities with literary sets. Intriguing me more is thinking of intellectual groups that exist in the world today that I cannot currently name. I imagine that groups of intellectuals, like the Bloomsbury Set, grow out of an informal collection of interested people, gathering together to discuss literature, art, economics, philosophy, and other intellectual fields. The culmination of my journey into realizing my personal Bloomsbury when finally I realized that this class was a study of myself, of who I am, of how I am changeable as weather in these times, of my creative temperament, but also of the brilliant people I know. Friends and acquaintances who weave hay into gold or make purses from sow’s ears. I made an investment in art. Now I suppose I am a patron. I am proud of this title. This is what I wrote after my friend helped me carry the painting down the stairs.
They say invest in art and gold in a recession. I made a big investment. I just bought a $350 painting. Cloud forest. Appalachian cloud scape. Home. I just made an investment. Not in Jeff Enge with the spark in his eye. Or in Sarah Culbreth, his wife who owns the establishment. I invested in a painting that feels like home. I invested in my heart, my mind, my soul. With me comes the environment and the land and all the people around me. With me is Henry who
watches Winnie the Pooh and peeled me a turnip to eat raw while he went numb from the wedged up contorted way he sat in the back seat. Thanks to Henry for lecturing me on not beating myself up. Thanks to the son who encouraged me to get it from the back porch. Thanks to Jeff Enge and his eye for crazy beauty, thick paint that, heck, I could touch, because I, raised a simplicity loving Quaker and a Berea student, I own it. I never used to want material things. Or I wanted them, then realized they were without meaning. But Appalachian Cloud Forest Home has a plethora of meanings that all come together in a womb of self appreciation and love. I AM THIS PAINTING. And because of that, because its barn wood frame speaks to me, because the nine bails of hay whisper poems to me, and the hills promise me someday I will have all my secret wants and desires. Because, I care for this as I
have always cared for myself and as I will care for my eventual house, my life will be full and rich and happy. And though my life is painful and right now I feel my foot pain coming on, and I confess my
foolishness in opening the car door and the Pooh jar fell out and shattered. But I will piece it back together. For even that holds symbolism now, even when it can't hold water. I will take care of
myself and what I have. My mind can be so active. But I am NOT Van Gogh or Virginia Woolf. I know my limits. I know the hard reality of the material world and I am well versed in her pleasures. And because when I look at that painting my prayers are answered, that is a reason, a good reason to own it. As good of a reason as any. Though it's match, I'll leave for another, mine was Jeff's first. But mine,
mine will not be my last. Sum up by connecting my purchase (the community of all sorts of
people), mini-London is Berea, place where dreams make fruit.
Works Cited and Related Readings
Alison, Dorothy. “Reading from New Books” Berea College. Berea, KY
December 1, 2011.
Bryant, Mike. Peer interview. November 19, 2011.
Redroom.com Accessed November 8, 2011.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age
of Show Business. Penguin Group, 1985. Audiobook.
Walker, Frank X. "Frank X. Walker" Berea College. Berea, KY. November
4, 2011. Poetry Reading.
Woolf, Virginia. A Writers Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of
Virginia Woolf. Harcourt Inc. San Diego: 1954.
This is a paper I wrote in 2012 or thereabouts for Berea College for my major in English. Thought I would air it out for steemit since steemit provides writing community.