Tonight, Tim and I drove to Berkeley, presumably to drop a mess of cardboard off at a recycling plant, but since it was closed we ended up going to some print shops instead. Tim got a lovely print of women on horses and another of Virginia Woolf to hang in his office. We went by Sun to drop them off under the watchful eyes of several security guards.

Virginia Woolf? Tim must have been going through his feminist phase. All I remember about his attempt to read MRS, DALLOWAY was him coming to me completely baffled and upset by the first paragraph. Tim was one of the most brilliant people I knew but he was a man, and he’s not the only guy I’ve encountered who couldn’t make head or tail of the passage. There seems to be something female encoded in that wonderful first paragraph that makes it clear to women but incomprehensible to many male readers.