Phi Fic means Philosophical Fiction. Each episode, we have a candid dicussion on a heady work of of fiction, full of SPOILERS. Join host Nathan Hanks and readers Cezary Baraniecki, Daniel St. Pierre, Laura Davis, and Mary Claire, plus the occasional guest.
Podcast (phi-fi-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:07 — 40.6MB)
NEW CHAPTER IN PHI FIC!
We are adding shorter discussions in between our more expansive literary discussions.
These more abbreviated talks will cover short stories, essays, articles and whatever else lights out fancy!
Life’s what you see in people’s eyes…”
-An Unwritten Novel
Today we discuss Virginia Woolf’s short story An Unwritten Novel. There has always been active discussion about Woolf’s short stories—specifically, the role of the imagination. An Unwritten Novel is one of the prime examples of Woolf’s struggle over how the imagination succeeds or fails.
“Characteristic of all [her] stories…is that the imaginative quest for the “true” personality of the character is at the end of the story checked--and reverse[d]--by the “facts” of reality. The stories all end with an alternative scene which may--or may not--be more accurate than the first one. In all [these] stories, in other words, the imagination comes up against its own limits.”
-"The role of the imagination in Virginia Woolf's short fiction"
Elke D’hoker
On a train from London to Surry, the narrator starts digging her sights into an older woman sitting next to a window. She peers into her eyesnd follows through the entire trip—after all the other passengers disembark—on what is this woman’s story and what is going on inside her mind, her heart, her soul.
“She saw me. A smile of infinite irony, infinite sorrow, flitted and faded from her face. But she had communicated, shared her secret, passed her poison; she would speak no more. Leaning back in my corner, shielding my eyes from her eyes, seeing only the slopes and hollows, greys and purples, of the winter’s landscape, I read her message, deciphered her secret, reading it beneath her gaze.”
-An Unwritten Novel
Join Jennifer, Daniel and Laura as we have a spirited discussion about what is really going on in this story. Nathan and Cezary will be back for our next lively talk!
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