Quarantine Reads: “The Waves”

In his personal essay for The Paris Review’s inaugural “Quarantine Reads” series, Matt Levin, a writer living in Uganda, explores the parallels between self-quarantine and religious retreats, highlighting the withdrawal from social life and the heightened awareness of physical and emotional reflexes. Levin explains how this state of interiority allows for a deepening of one’ inner thoughts and a louder, more assertive inner monologue. He suggests that Virginia Woolf’s 1931 experimental novel, The Waves, is an ideal read during this period, as it demands complete absorption into its world of soliloquies, magnifying the intensity of everyday experiences. In the context of the pandemic’s distortion of time and space, Levin emphasizes the significance of finding wonder and novelty in the isolation of quarantine.