When Laurel was a child, in this room and in this bed where she lay now, she closed her eyes like this and the rhythmic, nighttime sound of the two beloved reading voices came rising in turn up the stairs every night to reach her. She could hardly fall asleep, she tried to keep awake, […]
Filed under: 1969, 20th-century, United States, fiction on September 14th, 2007 | No Comments »
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
The jacmanna was bright violent; the wall staring white. She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was, since Mr. Paunceforte’s visit, to see everything pale, elegant, semitransparent. Then beneath the colour there […]
Filed under: 1927, 20th-century, Britain, Virginia Woolf, fiction on July 16th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
This is what my father told me when I was five: a key signature is a king’s court in miniature. It is ruled by a king (the first step) and his two right-hand men (steps five and four). They have four other dignitaries at their command, each of whom has his own special relation to […]
Filed under: 20th-century, fiction on June 11th, 2007 | No Comments »
Hallucinating Foucault
by Patricia Duncker
selections
the narrator is discussing his studies at Cambridge University:
The tine, white stone city on the edge of the Fens had seemed intensely romantic when I first came up as an undergarduate. It was like Gawain’s castle, a shimmering mass of pinnacles, an intimate world of friendships on staircases. I loved […]
Filed under: 20th-century, Britain, fiction on December 27th, 2006 | No Comments »
Voyage Out
by Virginia Woolf
selections
Why was it that relations between different people were so unsatisfying, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous that the instinct to sympathise with another human being was an instinct to be examined carefully and probably crushed?
He shouted out a line of poetry, but the words escaped him, and he stumbled […]
Filed under: 20th-century, Britain, fiction on December 20th, 2006 | No Comments »
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
selections
Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man’s place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the […]
Filed under: 20th-century, Italy, fiction on December 20th, 2006 | No Comments »
If on a winter’s night a traveler
by Italo Calvino
selections
I’m producing too many stories at once because what I want is for you to feel, around the story, a saturation of other stories that I could tell and maybe will tell or who know may already have told on some other occasion, a space full of […]
Filed under: 20th-century, Italy, fiction on December 20th, 2006 | No Comments »
The Beautiful and Damned
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
selections
Anthony musing on his tendency toward apathy:
It seemed a tragedy to want nothing — and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashes what it was — some path of hope to lead him toward what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.
Anthony and Gloria are […]
Filed under: 20th-century, United States, fiction on December 20th, 2006 | No Comments »
The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
selections
from the first few pages, as the narrator prepares to tell us his story:
This is a story about books…about accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal […]
Filed under: 20th-century, Spain, fiction on December 20th, 2006 | No Comments »
The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
selections
Claire speaking to a friend regarding her unusual relationship with Henry:
I love him. He’s my life. I’ve been waiting for him, my whole life, and now, he’s here. With Henry, I can see everything laid out, like a map, past and future, everything at once, like an angel…I can reach […]
Filed under: 20th-century, United States, fiction on December 20th, 2006 | No Comments »