Sad Novelists Can Helps Us, by Ilana Simons:

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You can probably name a few novelists or artists whom you call smart confidantes or friends. You draw on their writing for guidance at difficult crossroads--for sympathy or advice. After all, literature isn't only valuable because it's entertainment, but because it delivers memorable insight about life outside the book. We know more about love because of Shakespeare, about jealousy because of Tolstoy, about self-esteem because of Charlotte Bronte. Literature moves us for what it says about events outside of their plots.

My book, A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf, finds everyday wisdom in a novelist who tends to intimidate a lot of people (some call Woolf terribly obscure; some say she's too brooding, too heady). But Woolf was a genius in her ability to record the human heart. In her novels and diaries, she described what it's like to ride through the highs and lows of a mood--or to have a conversation, to feel longing as another person speaks. My book describes the insight she delivered about friendships, ambitions, and careers.

Ever since I pitched this book, I've been faced with the Big Question: "How can we learn about ‘the good life' from a woman who killed herself?" Virginia Woolf did commit suicide in 1941, partly as a response to World War Two, and partly because of biology. Hitler had started bombing London, and so Woolf grew increasingly pessimistic about humanity; she also suffered from what we retroactively diagnose as bipolar disorder. (The diagnosis wasn't defined during her lifetime.)

But that question about her suicide has never struck me as deep or meaningful. In my mind, it's obvious that we can learn from someone who suffered and who left original observations about life. I see Virginia Woolf as a scout: a genius of psychology who left deliciously readable data. (She's actually the reason that I started a doctorate in psychology the same year I finished one in literature: I wanted to see if anyone on Earth mapped the mind as well as she did. I don't think anyone has.) In her novel To the Lighthouse (my favorite book of hers) Woolf describes what it feels like to sit inside the human head as we try to connect with other people in our lives.

And, to be a fully realized, accomplished human being never means "just being happy." Being fully human means feeling an often-painful empathy and working for a community we have not yet built. I love something the Oxford philosopher Roger Crisp once wrote: If you had the chance to live the life of some brilliant and often-frustrated artist or to survive like an "oyster, [with] mild sensual pleasure [as if] floating very drunk in a warm bath," then you'd probably choose to be the artist. At its peak, human life is a knotty contradiction: both dark and light, free and frustrated.

During the course of my week blogging here at Penguin, I'll explain some of the things Woolf told us. Here's a sampler: One thing she told us is that we've got to accept solitude in a world that doesn't value a loner's lifestyle much. Another is that a black-and-white policy of honesty is overrated: Sometimes, lying to friends is a loving thing to do for them. Another tip she gives us is about ego: In conversations, everyone's got a strong impulse to think "I'm right"; but to learn from others, we need to try to muzzle our first thoughts.

For anyone willing to write into this blog, I'd love to hear what you think about what I've argued so far: Is the best life the happiest life, or something different than that?

View more information on Ilana Simons' A Life of One's Own

Ilana Simons, A Life of One's Own, Virginia Woolf, guide, biography, 20th century literature, human nature, personal growth, fulfillment, women, psychology, Penguin Books, books