You'd think that I'd know The Waves pretty well - I did, after all, do the Penguin edition of it. But I swear it's shifted around a lot since I last read it ... What I found fascinating (not that I'd expect anyone in the class to find it fascinating) was comparing my notes, on this re-reading, with my marked up copy from when I was preparing the edition. I marked, I noticed, so many of the same things. Does this mean that my critical attention hasn't shifted all that much? Does it mean that I was remembering, at some not-consciously-recognized level, the things that interested me before? What's strange is that I had the definite sense, this time, that this was not a novel I could have understood so well if I'd been much younger. But maybe that's a big fat illusion - perhaps, when one's younger, a novel like The Waves makes one feel old? I was intrigued by the fact that the (young graduate) students in the class claimed to find it much easier than To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway - surely not? On the other hand, quite a number of them are poets, so maybe that makes sense ...
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