To the Lighthouse

FROM THE FOREWORD BY PHILIP DOSSICK


The thrill of reading Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse is the feeling of looking into a whirlpool just as something utterly extraordinary and unexpected materializes for the first time.

The language itself dazzles: vivid, evocative, poetic language, that challenges the best of James Joyce, with Woolf's gift for inner dialogue—the lies her characters relentlessly tell themselves—which in turn reveal them to us. 

Most captivating is the range of development, the sheer technical fluidity on display. However idiosyncratic, it's like looking at that classic hieroglyph of human development—homo sapiens—in slow motion. 

To The Lighthouse has it all: life, death, fantasies of suicide, homoerotic desire, lesbianism, and the evanescence of time. Love, fear, solitude, death—the subjects float by like parasols in the rain. 

Her characters are strikingly real. We live in that troubled old house with them. Nothing much happens; yet in the tragic futility, the absurdity, the divine pathos, the delicate beauty of contemplation, all of life happens. 

To The Lighthouse can be found on countless lists of the finest novels of the 20th century, and is one of Virginia Woolf's major achievements. It is considered her greatest work after Mrs. Dalloway. 

Stick with it and you’ll find this landmark novel a captivating reward well worth the effort.

To The Lighthouse is one of Virginia Woolf’s rare and genuine masterpieces; an enchanting work of artistry deserving of the label in a thousand different ways.


PHILIP DOSSICK




PHILIP DOSSICK is the New York Times critically acclaimed writer and director of the motion picture The P.O.W. He has written for television, including the outstanding drama, Transplant, produced by David Susskind for CBS. His most recent books include Aztecs: Epoch Of Social Revolution, Sex And Dreams, Mark Twain In Seattle, Raymond Chowder And Bob Skloot Must Die, and The Naked Citizen: Notes On Privacy In the Twenty-First Century.