Wow, this is a biggie. Virginia Woolf "bridged the gap" between character-reading in literature and character-reading in everyday life -- an important survival skill.
I had not heard of "character-reading" until re-reading Merve Emre's introduction to The Annotated Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, c. 2021.
From The New Yorker, August 28, 2021 -- aha -- written by none other than ... drum roll ... wait for it .. Ms Merve Emre. Wow, wow, wow. At wiki, Merve Emre.
So stimulated, the reader learns how to be the writer’s accomplice in what Woolf called the art of “character-reading”: a practice of observing, of speculating about, people, both in life and in fiction.
The adept character-reader was one who fixed people with a powerful, sympathetic, and searching gaze; who seized on their unobtrusive moments—their small habits, their humble memories, their incessant chatter—to grasp the full force of their being.
Character-reading was an everyday talent, eminently useful and even necessary.
“Indeed it would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practised character-reading and had some skill in the art,” Woolf wrote. “Our marriages, our friendships depend on it; our business largely depends on it; every day questions arise which can only be solved by its help.”
Though character-reading could smooth the social tribulations of adult life, Woolf held it to be, first and foremost, the art of the young. They drew on it for “friendships and other adventures and experiments” that were less frequently embarked on in middle or old age, when character-reading retreated from its inventiveness, its candid curiosity, and became a dutiful, pragmatic exercise, a way to avoid misunderstandings and arguments.
I've often stated that military brats (children of active military personnel) become very, very good at character-reading. I'm certainly no Virginia Woolf but ... wow ... how unexpected.
Merve Emre's publication of The Annotated Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf in 1921, followed closely on the heels of a most unusual book on a most interesting personality test, the Myers-Briggs personality test, and the book, The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing.
Immediately on coming across this book, published in 2018, I immediately ordered a copy through Amazon. It arrived January 6, 2025, and I will start reading it shortly.
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