Philosophical Fiction Reading: Woolf’s To The Lighthouse

We are going to read To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf for our conversation this March in Philosophical Fiction. A few regulars and I chose a book from our List of Suggestions to read before our conversation where we’ll go over the plot, discuss the characters, recall apt passages, and try to get at what everything is all about anyway.

To The Lighthouse will be my first Virginia Woolf story and while I’m expecting sadness to come through her novel because her own life seems tragic, I know there’s much more to her fiction. The novel was published in 1927 placing it outside of public domain yet, for free, you can see this film adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh.

We just finished our conversation on the short story by Flannery O’Connor, ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find’, which is truly terrific. I likened the Misfit to Chigurh in No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy and Arnold Friend in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, because these characters are devilish and real.

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.”

Our past conversations on novels like Ulysses by James Joyce, Wittgenstein’s Nephew by Thomas Bernhard and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, are available to PEL Citizens in ‘Free Stuff’ where you can hear us spoil these stories.

Please, recommend a book or author, or give us a quote, we’re always looking for guests to join the conversation-just visit Philosophical Fiction in the Partially Examined Life’s Not School. Happy reading.