New Books Network: "Books in Dark Times" with Carlo Rotella (Episode 162)

Date: December 18, 2025
Host: John Plotz
Guest: Carlo Rotella, Boston College professor and author
Episode Theme: How reading habits change in unsettling times—what brings comfort, joy, or perspective through literature and why.

Episode Overview

This episode, part of the "Books in Dark Times" series, explores how readers find solace, inspiration, or a sense of continuity by turning to books during turbulent periods. John Plotz welcomes author and academic Carlo Rotella for a candid, deeply personal conversation about the kinds of books—old and new—that offer comfort or insight when times are challenging. Rotella discusses the role of "voice" over plot, the pleasures of revisiting childhood favorites, and the emotional quirks of reading about historical hardship and literary unreasonableness.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Reading in Difficult Times: Instincts and Strategies

• Time for reading isn't a given. Both Rotella and Plotz acknowledge that while people expect more time for reading during crises, life's demands (especially adapting to online teaching and work) often have the opposite effect ([04:16]).
• Listening as a lifeline. Rotella shares that he’s been "listening a lot" to audiobooks while running daily:

  "I've been reading a little. I've been listening a lot... because I've been out running every day. You can still run." — Carlo Rotella ([04:36])

• Comfort in the old. Rotella returns to ancient texts—Tacitus’ Germania, the Icelandic sagas—drawn by the continuity of human struggle:

  "A lot of bad stuff has happened to a lot of people for a really long time. And it used to be worse in many ways." — Carlo Rotella ([05:04])

2. The Allure of Older Texts and the Icelandic Sagas

• Rotella uses these works less for their misery and more as a reminder of endurance and social realism.
• Discussion of Germania:

  "It's just a kind of a quick survey of this place that Romans didn't know much about... poetic survey... here's how they roll. Here's how they wear their hair." — Carlo Rotella ([05:56])

• On the Icelandic sagas’ voice and humor:

  "After you split the guy's skull, then you immediately declare, I have split this guy's skull. Here's how, like, I built a loophole to get out of paying the full price." — Carlo Rotella ([09:35]) "There's this unbelievable sense of humor in the grimness." — John Plotz ([09:05])

3. Fiction as Comfort: A Preference for Voice Over Plot

• Rotella prefers books with a distinctive literary voice (PG Wodehouse, Charles Portis, Jack Vance) over strong plots:

  "When I look for comfort and joy, I actually look for voice, not plot. I don't really care about plot." — Carlo Rotella ([07:00])

• Wodehouse emerges as a particular comfort, especially in stressful times:

  "In times like this, I find myself reading PG Wodehouse." — Carlo Rotella ([06:50]) "Let the record show that John has a giant PG Wodehouse by his bed." — John Plotz ([06:57])

4. Avoiding Critique and the Current "Golden Age"

• Rotella feels contemporary critique-heavy readings and media are less appealing:

  "I have no craving for, is critique, you know, I have no craving for like astute takes on what's wrong." — Carlo Rotella ([08:14])

• Discussion about movie preferences: genre films (noir, musicals) vs. "people with guns running back and forth" ([07:48]).

5. The Dark Satisfaction of Reading About Awful People

• Rotella finds a peculiar liberation in reading stories about "really terrible people" behaving unreasonably—whether true crime or fiction:

  "I take some...satisfaction from reading about really terrible people, just fictional or not, you know, just behaving awfully." — Carlo Rotella ([13:10])

• Example: Broken Faith (Jane Whaley and the Word of Faith ministry), Going Clear (Scientology).
• Why? Because "we’re all having to be so reasonable"—there’s catharsis in literary unreason ([14:40]).

6. The Value of Unreasonable Characters and Worlds

• Authors discussed: Charles Portis (True Grit), Thomas Berger (Neighbors), Jack Vance (science fiction/fantasy with "unmotivated nastiness").

  "He’s fantastically good at hostile encounters between strangers where there’s no obvious reason for the hostility... absolutely unmotivated nastiness for no reason. I do like that." — Carlo Rotella ([17:59])

• Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster books are "a world created entirely by the narrating voice"—simple, recognizable, and emotionally grounding ([19:12]).

7. Revisiting Childhood Reads: World-Building and Comfort

• Returning to childhood reads isn't about nostalgia or sentiment but about familiarity and the "feng shui" of well-known worlds:

  "It's the familiarity of the world thinking, the voice...like Jack Vance has a character who travels with a portable hole with him...It's a comfort, but it's not an absolute comfort." — Carlo Rotella ([21:40]) "You need to know there’s other rooms...the universe we're living in is more spatially expansive because there's all this other world thinking...also more expansive in time." — Carlo Rotella ([23:03], [23:06])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Comfort Through Endurance and Context

“Like cockroaches, we've been around for a long time, and we take a licking and we keep on ticking.”
— Carlo Rotella ([05:15])

On Literary Voice

“What I'm interested in is voice. So I want to read, you know, Charles Portis or the fantasy and science fiction writer Jack Vance...I'm utterly uninterested in plot.”
— Carlo Rotella ([07:00])

On Humor Amid Grimness (the Icelandic Sagas)

“Well, how is my brother doing?—Well, you know, not that well, considering I left an axe in the back of his head the last time I saw him.”
— John Plotz ([09:05])

On the Value of Unreasonableness

“There's something...emotionally liberating about...just reading about a truly awful, selfish person when you're trying to get along with your neighbors and not be a jerk.”
— Carlo Rotella ([14:07])

On the Familiarity of Imagined Worlds

“It's like a city you travel to frequently. It's like, I love walking down that street in the way it opens with that square.”
— Carlo Rotella ([21:11])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:15 – John Plotz introduces the episode and the "Books in Dark Times" concept
• 04:16 – Rotella describes reading and listening habits in dark times
• 05:04 – Discussion of reading old texts: Tacitus, Icelandic sagas (Germania explained at [05:56])
• 06:50 – Turning to PG Wodehouse for comfort; discussion of preference for "voice"
• 09:05 – Humor and matter-of-fact violence in the Icelandic sagas
• 13:10 – The odd comfort of stories about truly unreasonable/awful people
• 17:58 – The literary merits of hostility and strangeness (Charles Portis, Jack Vance)
• 19:05 – Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster novels: voice and world-building as comfort
• 21:11 – The enduring appeal of well-built fictional worlds; “childhood completeness”
• 23:06 – Revisiting old books to make the present feel less constrictive

Conclusion

This conversation offers a unique window into how seasoned readers and writers cope with uncertainty through literature. Carlo Rotella draws a distinction between escapism and meaningful engagement, finding comfort in enduring "voices," familiar worlds, and even the catharsis offered by stories of unreason. The episode is at once personal, scholarly, and warmly humorous—a celebration of the power of books to illuminate, distract, and stabilize in “dark times.”