Good Scribes Only #44 - Orlando by Virginia Woolf 💁♂️💁♀️
In this 5th episode, you have now entered the 1920s. Well, sorta.
For this decade we read Virginia Woolf's Orlando which has been called 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature.' Orlando is the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, except Orlando (the character) lives for three hundred years, so kinda relevant to this season eh? We meet characters like the Queen of England, James I, and ultimately our main character awakes in Constantinople to find that he is now a woman. The novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of gender in the 18th and 19th centuries and the novel ends in 1928, the year when women’s suffrage became reality.
Woolf is the type of literary master we want to read more of and we loved the way she stepped out of her comfort zone with this book, as Dan does every time he attempts to pronounce a name on this show.
Please enjoy this window into Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
About the Show
Hosted by novelists and entrepreneurs Daniel Breyer & Jeremy Streich, Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 4 we’re traveling through the 20th century, decade by decade, because Dan really wanted to see what the world was like before plumbing was a common thing.
Episode Notes
0-5 min — Introduction and main themes
5-10 min — On Virginia Woolf and genre
10-15 min — Casting the movie
15-20 min — Gender in a modern context
20-30 min — Plot summary
30-35 min — On Criticism
35-45 min — The gap between fact and fiction
45-50 min — Chasing fame and notoriety
50-55 min — Conclusion
55-60 min — Ratings