Dear Reader,
Join me for a close reading of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. The Waves is a work that will reaffirm your faith in life. It is what I reach for in moments of darkness to get lost in the ecstasy of language and turn over those questions from time immemorial of what it means to be alive.
Over the course of three weeks we will read The Waves together. It was Woolf’s most daring and experimental novel, and I hazard, her most triumphant. Capturing existence itself in modernity, she sets aside traditional narrative form and plot to draw us into being-in-language, cutting through the skin of appearances. A classic example of high-modernist fiction, Woolf wanted to capture through language “the exact shapes” the brain holds. Here, for her, there is no quarrel between the poets and the philosophers. Through soliloquies and lyrical passages, The Waves follows the lives and friendships of Bernard, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda, Louis, and Neville from childhood through adulthood, exploring consciousness itself in voice. And there is Percival who appears through perception alone, the one who has been lost. How are we to understand these “characters?” What makes this a work of high modernism? Can Woolf’s poetic reveries help us understand our world now? (For me the answer is yes.)
What You Get
Three
Live classes
Playbacks for those enrolled
Handouts
Access to private discussion board
Course Schedule
Sundays, 12pm - 1:30pm EST
May 3 — May 17, 2026
3 weeks
$225.00
Enroll here.
(If you’re a member no need to enroll. You will be sent the class information and playbacks automatically. Syllabus will be sent one week before we begin.)
