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Article: Conversations with Iris Murdoch.(From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction)(The Public Square: A Continuing Survey of Religion, Culture, and Public Life)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- December 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"I feel like somebody who's living in a great big house and just occupies a tiny corner of it," Iris Murdoch wrote to a friend. But what great things she did in that tiny comer. A noted philosopher, her real work was the novel, although the two are hard to separate, even if she did object, as she did vehemently object, to the idea that she wrote "philosophical novels." I had quite forgotten how many of her twenty-six novels I had read over the years: The Sandcastle, The Bell, A Severed Head, The Italian Girl, The Nice and the Good, The Black Prince, The Philosopher's Pupil (maybe my favorite), The Green Knight, and more. In part because she wrote so many, I may have read ...