If there is one theme, which runs throughout my adolescence, and then my college years, it is this: I am afraid of Virginia Woolf.
You, dear reader, may be wondering how this New Yorker, who was born well after Virginia Woolf had died, could be afraid of her spirit and her writing. After all, Miss Woolf was an author, not someone who established a military empire, which would threaten me. She did not write anything like Mien Kampf.
Well, it is long story, and it started like this: When I was an adolescent, I wrote a play titled Groucho Marx and John Lennon - A Marxist-Lennonist Plot To Corrupt Our Youth.
Everyone I showed it to had the same reaction: Virginia Woolf was better. And it was not just the criticism. With each passing day, the voices got louder and more insistent. And after a while it was just not about my desire to become a playwright. Everything I turned in from high school to college was met with the same critique - "It's not as good as Virginia Woolf."
I took up photography. It was met with the exact same criticism: Virginia Woolf would have taken a better picture. Virginia Woolf would have had better composition. Virginia Woolf would have cropped it better. Virginia Woolf would have made a better exposure. You have your own darkroom, but Virginia Woolf would have made a better print. I felt as if the spirit, or ghost, of Virginia Woolf was following me. It was as if she knew in advance what I was going to do, and cause it to become a work of literature or a photograph below her standards. I was beside myself. How could I get the ghost of Virginia Woolf to stop following me? How could I prevent her from learning in advance, of what I was going to do?
I thought about it for days, and then months.
Then came the moment: eureka! I finally realized how to exorcise her ghost.
I had turned in a paper to one of my college professors. Several days later, he was returning them to my classmates and me. He called my name, and asked me to come up to his desk. I walked to the front of the classroom with trepidation. He started to say, "I just want to tell you..." I cut him off before he could finish. I screamed at the top of my lungs, "I KNOW - IT'S NOT AS GOOD AS VIRGINIA WOOLF COULD HAVE DONE!!"
I knew I had done what was necessary to exorcise her ghost. My professor recoiled from me. And then he said, "No. Actually, I was going to tell you this is quite good."
