📘 Virginia Woolf, Orlando
He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it — was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando's father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.
Now, i know this book is hailed as a queer classic, but personally, i found it to be more of an affirmation of the bisexuality — i.e., the co-existence of masculinity and femininity in a given subject, as theorised in 19th century psychoanalytic literature, rather our use of the word as a form of sexuality — notably expressed by the suffragette wave of feminism. And like the white English and American suffragettes, this book unapologetically racist and imperialist. About a third of the way into the text, i found myself underlining every instance of racism, and ended up expending three entire lengths of 0.5mm mechanical pencil lead for my efforts.
Of course, the book is not entirely devoid of queerness, its dedication and the conditions of its production attest to this fact, but i found that aspect of the text to be rather understated, and quite often omitted entirely. Not to mention, its logic of transition is so utterly fantastical that it completely obviates any relation to the actual process of transition which, to this day, is fraught with medical and legal obstacles, to say nothing of the fact that transition is a continuous process that cannot be accomplished in one night. To transition is to live, the two are inseparable.
This is not to say i completely despised the book, i did find it interesting and funny for being such a complete send-up of the biographical form, and i appreciated Woolf's style and her erudition in the realm of English literature. I also rather enjoyed Orlando's method of time travel, which was clearly modelled on what i like to call the Rip Van Winkle School of Time Travel, which saw broad use before H.G. Wells invented the time machine.