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Thanks to 鈥淎dmission,鈥� a new film comedy starring Tina Fey as Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton, Virginia Woolf is getting a renewed profile 鈥撀� although not necessarily the kind of attention that promises to win Woolf new readers.

Among the comic elements in the story is a love triangle involving Portia, her English professor boyfriend (Michael Sheen),聽聽and a Virginia Woolf scholar played for laughs by Sonya Walger.

鈥淭hat the phrase 鈥榁irginia Woolf scholar鈥� is used several times as an epithet and a punch line is evidence of the film鈥檚 unusually acute interest in academic life and, also, its ambivalence about feminism,鈥� New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote in his review.

Woolf is a favorite among many feminist literary scholars, and 鈥淎dmission鈥� seems to reinforce the notion of Woolf as a writer of interest only to women.

That was a widespread misconception before 鈥淎dmission鈥� ever hit the screen, but one I鈥檇 like to dispel. I鈥檝e enjoyed Woolf鈥檚 writing for years, and I wince a little each time she鈥檚 pigeonholed as a 鈥渨omen鈥檚 writer.鈥�

Woolf, a giant of English letters who lived between 1882 to 1941, certainly never aspired to that kind of narrow appeal. In the title essay of her famous collection of essays, 鈥淭he Common Reader,鈥� Woolf celebrated the universal ideal of the person who 鈥渞eads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole 鈥� a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing.鈥�

Pleasure is an abiding gift of Woolf鈥檚 writing, and that quality doesn鈥檛 always seem evident when she鈥檚 promoted as a 鈥渨omen鈥檚 writer.鈥� The term tends to reduce her work to a political gesture, something to be tolerated out of civic obligation rather than embraced for its promise of joy.

Woolf dealt with serious topics, to be sure, but I鈥檇 like newcomers to her work to know just how聽fun聽she can be on the page. She had a sublime gift for metaphor, a genius for rendering abstraction into lively, concrete language. Here, in an essay on the great French essayist Michel de Montaigne, Woolf discusses the difficulty of trying to write about a thought as it moves through one鈥檚 head: 鈥淭he phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light.鈥�

That鈥檚 just like Woolf 鈥� turning an act of intellect into something tangible, sensual, full of color. She鈥檚 invariably a delight to read, whether she鈥檚 drafting a letter, writing an essay or book review, or penning a novel.

While novels such as 鈥淢rs. Dalloway鈥� and 鈥淭he Waves鈥� have secured Woolf鈥檚 place in posterity, I鈥檓 partial to her nonfiction, including her correspondence. She鈥檚 a great gossip about other writers, and I laughed out loud while reading a letter in which Woolf described some of Henry James鈥� writing as聽鈥渢he laborious striking of whole boxfuls of damp matches.鈥�

What I also like about Woolf is that she never forgets the first obligation of a writer 鈥� to shake the reader awake with the gift of surprise. Though I鈥檝e read her for years, Woolf continues to catch me off guard, as when I combed the titles at a recent rummage sale and came across 鈥淔lush,鈥� in which Woolf constructs an entire biography of poet Elizabeth Barret Browning鈥檚 cocker spaniel.

The book is on my nightstand right now, and I can鈥檛 wait to start it. I wish more readers, men and women, knew the Virginia Woolf that I do 鈥� as a writer to read because you want to, not because you have to.

鈥� Danny Heitman, an author and a columnist for The Baton Rouge Advocate, is an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University鈥檚 Manship School of Mass Communication.