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.
Join us as we delve into Coetzee’s rich, complex exploration of story and authorship in this novel that presents an origin story of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Coetzee writes about Susan Barton, a castaway at sea who discovers an island inhabited by two men, Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Once rescued, she seeks the renowned author Daniel Defoe to help tell her story, but struggles to communicate her experiences.
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Phi Fic #17 “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino
“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it…”
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Phi Fic #13 “The House of the Dead” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
This time, the group discusses The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky’s semi-autobiographical novel about life in a labor camp.
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Phi Fic #11 “The Body Artist” by Don DeLillo
Our book this time is The Body Artist by Don Delillo, an absorbing look at Lauren, a performance artist, and her experience of loss at her husband’s death.
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Phi Fic #10 “The Fall” by Albert Camus
We discuss the novel about what you do when you’re “called” and how you live afterward. You can listen along while Cezary, Daniel, Laura, Mary, and Nathan discuss The Fall by Albert Camus, which Sartre claimed was “perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood” of Camus’s books.
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Phi Fic #5 “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov
So, you think Lolita was Nabokov’s best? We humbly submit a solid contender. Structured as a 999-line poem followed by an extensive afterword and index, Pale Fire has been described by the critic Harold Bloom as “the surest demonstration of [Nabokov’s] genius…”
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Listen to Philosophical Fiction #16, “The Fall” by Albert Camus
PEL’s Not School Philosophical Fiction group talked about The Fall by Albert Camus. All are welcome to listen to the highlight, and Citizens can listen to the full conversation.
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 Continue Reading …
Fiction Conversation on ‘The Map and the Territory’
Discussing Michel Houellebecq’s novel about being an artist in the modern age, along with thoughts from Zizek and others.