text: light house : a trifle light house : a trifle , a 2000 satirical novel by american screenwriter william monahan . originally serialized in the amherst literary magazine old crow review from 1993 to 1995 , monahan sold light house to riverhead books , a penguin group imprint , in 1998 . warner bros. optioned the film rights while the novel was in manuscript and hired monahan to write the screenplay adaptation . the novel was delayed for two years , with plans to release it alongside the upcoming film ; however , the film was never produced . in 2000 , light house : a trifle was finally published and garnered critical acclaim : the new york times proclaimed " monahan 's cocksure prose gallops along " , and fiction called monahan " a worthy successor to kingsley amis " . the story follows an artist named tim picasso who runs afoul of a drug lord and seeks refuge at a new england inn in the middle of a nor 'easter . it is a work intentionally referential to the satirical novels of the early 19th - century british author thomas love peacock , such as headlong hall and nightmare abbey . plot summary the story begins with a painter named tim picasso who suffers critical rejection from his peers and decides to take a break in the caribbean , where he ends up crewing on a drug smuggling sailboat . when the captain gets drunk and falls overboard , picasso takes the boat to florida , and meets up with jesus castro , the lead drug smuggler . castro intimidates picasso into running the drugs from miami to boston , however after picasso collects the $ 1 . 5 million payment from the irish republican army , he escapes by train to the new england town of tyburn , where a winter storm is picking up force . he decides to lodge at the seaside admiral benbow inn for the weekend , until he can depart for italy . meanwhile , mr. glowery , a bitter new york journalist and writer who believes that a rival author is sabotaging his literary career , arrives in tyburn where he is to speak at a fiction workshop being held at the admiral benbow inn . he is immediately tasered by one of castro 's detectives , who mistakenly confuses him for picasso . back at the admiral benbow inn , the innkeeper , george hawthorne , worries about mr. briscoe , a cross - dressing contract worker who is stranded in the abandoned lighthouse just off the coast because of the raging nor 'easter , while his unhappy wife , magdalene hawthorne , threatens to leave him . the next morning , mr. glowery is stuck in a restaurant where he is being coerced by a psychotic cook to peddle his novel in order to pay off a debt he incurred during the night . when professor eggman , the director of the fiction workshop , comes across mr. glowery , he rescues him and brings him back to the inn . however , few people show up for the fiction workshop because of the storm . hawthorne 's wife returns from a spa with picasso ; mr. hawthorne informs her that he is trying to procure a prostitute for his new arrival , jesus castro , who has registered under the false name of mr. wassermann . mr. hawthorne asks picasso if he has had sex with his wife and picasso meekly admits to it . at the lighthouse , mr. briscoe decides to brave the storm in a landing craft , but is immediately swamped with water and carried by the tide towards the mainland . after castro avails himself of the services of a prostitute , he rampages around the property searching for picasso . the storm crashes through the inn . a guest is killed by a billiards table that falls on top of him and is dragged off into the sea . mr. glowery is also dragged off into the sea by the storm . castro and his assistant round up the guests and interrogate them about the location of the $ 1 . 5 million picasso stole . in another part of the inn a fire starts . finally , mr. briscoe shows up and kills castro 's assistant before knocking castro unconscious . while hawthorne learns his wife is leaving him for the prostitute , the inn becomes completely engulfed in flames . picasso , hawthorne , and briscoe motor a lobster boat over to the lighthouse , and dump castro 's dead assistant into the sea along with castro himself , weighed down with two cinder blocks chained to his ankles . when they land on the island , briscoe runs into the lighthouse and blows himself up . amongst the rubble of the lighthouse , picasso notices the inscription " d " painted on one of the surrounding rocks and says to the innkeeper " he 's been thinking about this for some time , george . " publication history monahan wrote the novel while studying elizabethan and jacobean drama at the university of massachusetts amherst . monahan completed a draft of light house on may 18 , 1991 , but then " stuck it in a drawer " . it remained unpublished until 1993 when he gave it to the literary magazine old crow review to serialize to benefit a food charity . in 1995 , a short review from an editor at factsheet five described the serial run of light house as a " gritty screwball comedy set in a massachusetts coastal hotel during a raging winter storm " that is " very , very funny " . after the original serialization of light house , monahan reluctantly rewrote the novel several times at the urging of his agent in new york city . in 1998 light house was sold to riverhead books , an imprint of penguin putnam , and warner bros. immediately optioned the film rights while the novel was still in manuscript . penguin putnam wanted to delay publishing the novel in order to release it concurrent with the anticipated film release . warner bros. hired monahan to write the screenplay adaptation of light house . in 2000 , light house : a trifle was finally published in hardcover , and then , the following year , in paperback . monahan and bruno maddox , a fellow former spy editor , went on a joint book tour billed as the " minor novelists tour " that was interrupted by the 9 / 11 attacks . less than four years after the novel 's publication , monahan bought back the film rights to light house " i didn 't like how the book was published . they wanted to wait for the movie to be made . i got a little hostile . when i was in spain on kingdom , i realized i could buy it back . it was an empty , damaging gesture . " in an interview with collider.com he stated that , " it was demoralizing to write a really good book and to realize how little the rewards were , even though the book did quite well , as far as first novels are concerned . " light house was available in a german edition , translated by ulrike . original serialization — ( january 1993 ) . " venus and the rain ( part 1 ) " . old crow review ( fkb press ) ( 1 ) . — ( june 1993 ) . " venus and the rain ( part 2 ) " . old crow review ( fkb press ) ( 2 ) . — ( january 1994 ) . " venus and the rain ( part 3 ) " . old crow review ( fkb press ) ( 3 ) . — ( june 1994 ) . " venus and the rain / light house " . old crow review ( fkb press ) ( 4 ) . — ( january 1995 ) . " light house " . old crow review ( fkb press ) ( 5 ) . english and german editions — ( june 2000 ) . light house : a trifle . new york : riverhead books . isbn 978 - 1 - - 158 - 0 . — ( 2001 ) . light house : roman . berlin : aufbau - taschenbuch - verl ( translated by ulrike ) . isbn 978 - 3 - - 1722 - 0 . literary significance and reception light house intentionally references the satirical novels of the early 19th - century british author and satirist thomas love peacock , such as headlong hall and nightmare abbey . peacock 's novels have little plot and are best known for parodying the intellectual modes and pretenses of his contemporaries ; his characters normally assemble in characteristic english country houses and predominantly engage in conversation . nightmare abbey satirized the english romantic movement and included characters based on samuel taylor coleridge , lord byron , and percy bysshe shelley . when light house was published in 2000 it was critically acclaimed , however , it had lackluster sales . william georgiades , in a review for the new york times , called it " a sort of old english farce that allows monahan [ … ] to skewer whatever comes to mind : modern art , magazine writing , education , the young " . the chicago sun - times construed the storyline as one that " allows monahan to indulge in wisecracks , lampoons and slurs of seemingly infinite variety " with " literary and artistic pretenders [ taking ] heavy fire " . mark of the los angeles times praised monahan 's " refreshing disregard for believability , making light house — which contains asides on freud , emerson , race and fiction itself — a seriously adult cartoon " . fiction 's bruce tierney called monahan " a worthy successor to kingsley amis " and alfred alcorn of the boston herald detected " delightful echoes of vladimir nabokov , kingsley amis , evelyn waugh , flann o 'brien and other modern masters of drollery " in the novel , concluding that " [ i ] n the end , the girl gets the girl , the bad guys lose , and an old yankee blows himself up with the eponymous lighthouse and a few chunks of the virginia woolf legacy " . after describing the women in light house as " mainly vehicles for sex " and the men as " mostly hapless " , the boston globe 's jules generalized that the entire cast of characters appeared to be created " simply so that [ monahan ] can skewer them " , allowing that " it makes for a pretty good spectator sport " .