162 Carlo Rotella's Books in Dark Times (JP)

Summary

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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.

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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.

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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])

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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])

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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

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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.”

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Transcript

[Marshall Poe]

Hello everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to the New Books Network, I imagine you like to read and I'm wondering if you have a goal to read more this year. How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread Podcast is here to help. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They feature 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. You'll get a brief synopsis, fun and witty commentary, no spoilers, and no sponsored reviews. It's just what Casey and Tyler think. Life's too short to read a bad book. So subscribe to the Proofread Podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming. Thanks very much.

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[John Plotz]

All?

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[Marshall Poe]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Carla Rotella]

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Ferri. Welcome to another rebroadcast from the RTB archives.

[John Plotz]

From Brandeis University. Welcome to Recall this book where we assemble scholars and writers from different disciplines to make sense of contemporary issues, problems and events. I'm John Plotz flying solo today and my guest is the brilliant author and professor Carla Rotella of Boston College, author of at least six books that I know of Is it six?

[Carla Rotella]

Is that right? Do I have that right? I think so.

[John Plotz]

Six. Okay. At least six.

[Carla Rotella]

It depends how you count. I co authored a couple.

[John Plotz]

Okay, that's fair enough. Yeah. I didn't count those among them. The Amazing. And Carl, this is how I came to know your work. Good With Their Hands, Boxers, Blues, Men and other characters from the rust belt from 2002. And most recently. I haven't read this, but I'm really looking forward to it. The world is always coming to an end. Pulling together and apart in a Chicago neighborhood. University of Chicago 2019. Is that right?

[Carla Rotella]

Yeah.

[John Plotz]

So, Carlo, welcome.

[Carla Rotella]

Thank you.

[John Plotz]

So this is another installment in our fast moving books in Dark Times series because the dark moves quickly. So we try to move quickly too. Which, as you probably know by now, explicitly takes its inspiration from Hannah Arendt's Men in Dark Times, which proposes that quot even in the darkest of times, we have the right to expect some illumination. And such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women in their lives and their works will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth. So, okay, at a moment like this, we really want to know what brings people like you, Carlo, and also like you, dear listener, comfort or joy. So draw up a chair and listen and then maybe consider sending us your own thoughts about the books you're reading by Twitter or email or any other way you'd like to reach us. So, Carlo, the only preparation I gave you was just to send you a couple of questions which are more or less along the lines of what are you reading that gives you comfort these days? What are you reading that gives you joy? And so can we just start there?

[Carla Rotella]

Sure. I mean, the first thing to say is the idea is we're all supposed to have all this time to read, but I for one, haven't. Those of us learning to teach online have had a taste of what, like the post industrial job market actually looks like, you know, which is you're on your email 27 hours a day and figuring stuff out. And so I've been reading a little. I've been listening a lot.

[John Plotz]

Yeah. Books.

[Carla Rotella]

Because I've been out running every day. You can still run.

[John Plotz]

So for now.

[Carla Rotella]

Yeah. Right. So although I saw the California rules explicitly allow running.

[John Plotz]

Oh, really?

[Carla Rotella]

So I've been listening a lot and I was thinking about your question and sort of where my instincts take me. Times like this and in a couple directions. One is I noticed that I like to listen to. I like to read old things like the Germania of Tacitus and Icelandic sagas.

[John Plotz]

Oh, wow.

[Carla Rotella]

I mean, one of the reasons I think that it's. It's. I guess it's comforting in a way, is that, you know, a lot of bad stuff has happened to a lot of people for a really long time.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

And it used to be worse in many ways. So I find myself going back to that stuff in all kinds of ways and just not so much seeking out the travails of people in the past, but rather just reminding myself that, you know, like cockroaches, we've been around for a long time, and we take a.

[John Plotz]

Licking and we keep on ticking.

[Carla Rotella]

Exactly. The Germani in particular, I really like is Tacitus is just kind of throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. And it's like. Well, I think this is what's going on in this place that you don't really go to very much.

[John Plotz]

Right. Okay. So, Carla, I'm. Because I would love to talk about Icelandic sagas because I have read them and love them, but I've never read the Germania. So can you just. Can you give a lapidary account?

[Carla Rotella]

It's just a kind of a quick survey of this place that Romans didn't know much about. But we're in. You know, were fascinated by. Because, you know, they. They had enemies there and allies to some extent. And it's just a kind of a poetic survey, you know, what's going on on the other side of those rivers.

[John Plotz]

Right. Oh, wow. So that's not. It's not a war. It's not an expedition.

[Carla Rotella]

No, it's like, this is what these people are like. Here's how they roll. Here's how they wear their hair. You know, things like that. Right.

[John Plotz]

So it has. It's more. It has Herodotus behind it. Not Thucydides.

[Carla Rotella]

Exactly. So it's much more like, this is what we know. And. But the Icelandic sagas are great for all kinds of reasons, too, in that way. So that's one thing, is that I find myself reading old things and. And just reminders of sort of what life was like.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

In another time. The other thing. And this is just like my pure comfort thing. And I've been. This has been true since I was a teenager, which is in times like this, I find myself reading PG Wodehouse.

[John Plotz]

Oh, my God.

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[Carla Rotella]

And the remind. And there you go. There's yours.

[John Plotz]

Let the record show that John has a giant PG Wodehouse by his bed. Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

And I think the reason for that is not only the sort of harmlessness of the world in which he operates, but also is that actually I think when I look for comfort and joy, I actually look for voice, not plot. I don't really care about plot. 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. What I want to hear is voice, literary voice. And I'm utterly uninterested in plot. So actually watching movies, you know, everybody's supposed to be like sitting on their couch watching movies and TV shows. It really doesn't work for me because it's like I don't want to see people with guns running back and forth. Right, right.

[John Plotz]

That's interesting. Do you feel like movies don't have a voice? Because I send in the filmmakers I really like. Like, I just taught. It happened one night last night. And I thought, oh yeah, this isn't. Absolutely has a voice, you know.

[Carla Rotella]

Yeah.

[John Plotz]

So.

[Carla Rotella]

Right. I agree with that. And I think it's not so much directors as it is genres. Right. So I would like want to watch a swashbuckler or noir or a musical, you know, but what I don't want is like the so called golden age of cable tv. You know, it's sort of mostly this golden age of TV we're having, which is like a lot of people with guns running around, which I'm not so interested in. And I guess the other, the last thing I'll just say as like a general thing is what I'm not interested in.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

I have no craving for, is critique, you know, I have no craving for like astute takes on what's wrong. You know, you can get that at the office, you know.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

And I guess I just feel like, you know, the newspapers around for that. And you know, so a lot of people say at a moment like this in our business, a lot of people say, I go, I go to my favorite critic, you know, or I go to whatever and I just, I have no interest in that.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, I think I'm with you on that one. But wait, okay, so can we start pulling some threads and comments and just to start. Okay, so Germania, I love what you're saying about it, but I don't, I don't know enough to respond to it. But the sagas, what I hear you saying, are you thinking about like Niall Saga? Would that be a good example?

[Carla Rotella]

Because that's Eagle saga or the, or the, I like The. You know, I just re. Listen to the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. Yeah. You know, all that. All that stuff, including the Grimm stuff, you know, like an axe time, a sword time, you know, like Lucia Wieder for three years and all that. Right.

[John Plotz]

Well, what I was gonna say about that. What I remember about the Icelandic ones is that there's this unbelievable sense of humor in the grimness. You know, so somebody will say to somebody else, like, well, how is my brother doing? And the other person will say, well, you know, not that well, considering I left an axe in the back of his head the last time I saw him.

[Carla Rotella]

And then. And then. And then drop a few lines of satiric verse. Yeah. You know, because like, one of the best ways to score points is to.

[John Plotz]

Have some verses ready to roll. I like that.

[Carla Rotella]

I like how legalistic they are. You know, after you split the guy's skull, then you immediately declare, I have split this guy's skull. And here's how, like, I built a loophole to get out of paying the full price that I have to. And all that. I like all that stuff and I just love the way that. That it always begins with, like, there was a woman named this or there was a man named that. This is who their parents were, and this is where they lived, and this is the farm they were on. And this is how many animals were on the farm. And just kind of everybody gets laid out and then they go from there. And so as much as they're fantastic tales, they're also just sort of hard boiled social realism. Right. About a very hard boiled time.

[John Plotz]

About a very hard boiled time. I mean. Cause I was gonna. That's the thing I was gonna ask is whether. Cause I wanna get back to Woodhouse. Cause I'm actually reading Brideshead Revis, which is so Waugh is kind of sits next to Wodehouse. Not exactly the same. But that's not a very grim time. That's like a rather jolly time. And I wonder about the connection between, like, books that can be very jolly about, you know, the gay jazz age are one kind of comfort. And then books that can be funny about utter misery. The way that Icelandic sagas are like, that's a different kind of.

[Carla Rotella]

Absolutely. I'd say when I'm up for facing things, Icelandic sagas, when I just need to, you know, decompress. When I just need, you know, essentially to like, you know, read. Read a Kalman and Hobbes collection, you know, whatever it is. Right. Then that's. That's the role of the Woodhouse.

[John Plotz]

Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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[Carla Rotella]

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[John Plotz]

1-800-Contacts but. So, speaking of the way that the sagas work and that kind of matter of fact laying out the world, I have to ask you about this book, Iceland's Bell. Do you know it by Haldor Locksness? No. He also wrote that one called. I think it's called Ordinary People or something. Does that ring a bell? He's like, he won the Nobel prize, but he's. I don't know. I love it. It's an attempt to do a modern. I'm trying to look up the name of his other big novel because I bet you will have heard of it. The other one is just about a sheep farm in the 1920s, I think it's called.

[Carla Rotella]

I think it's fair to say that I am at least a thousand years out of date on my Olympic literature.

[John Plotz]

All right, well, so we're gonna forget about the other, which I don't even like, but Iceland's bell, it's like set in maybe 13th century Iceland when it's just completely ruled by Denmark and there's no, you know, there's, there's. It's. It's a totally abject place. And it's like there's only one thing of value in the entire country, which is this bell that was in the cathedral. And it's the saga of the recovery of the bell. But it's. I love it because it's a 20th century reimagining of the saga.

[Carla Rotella]

I'm a big fan of 20th century writers who try to Appropriate some of that rhythm. But here's one that might come as a bit of a curveball, which is. I find that I really. I take some. So I don't know what the word is. It's neither comfort nor joy, but it's related to both. I take some sort of satisfaction from reading about really terrible people, just fictional or not, you know, just behaving awfully. I just. I was listening to this. Investigative reporters. These pair of investigative reporters wrote a book about. It's called Broken Faith, and it's about the word of faith ministry in North Carolina. And the woman who ran it, Jane Whaley, was just the worst person you could ever imagine. You know, it's just awful.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

And there's something. I don't know what the word is. Not joyful, not comforting, but there's something like. You're sort of like, ah, homo sapiens. They still got it. You know, there's something about just reading about a truly awful, selfish person when you're trying to get along with your neighbors and not be a jerk and, you know, and sort of count to 10 and, you know.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

That.

[John Plotz]

It just.

[Carla Rotella]

In a way, there's something sort of emotionally liberating about. About that. But this woman, Jane Whaley, would do things like she. She would do things like when two parishioners got married, she would not let them have sex, and they would have to call and get permission, but they did have to go home and go to bed together. And then she'd be like, but don't have sex. You know, you're not allowed to. And. And she would. And she was.

[John Plotz]

She.

[Carla Rotella]

She just, like, got into people's business, you know, at a level of un. I guess it's what.

[John Plotz]

What.

[Carla Rotella]

The principle. The thing that is satisfying is unreasonable.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

You know, because we're all having to be so reasonable, you know, like, don't hoard groceries.

[John Plotz]

Right, right, right, right, right.

[Carla Rotella]

Don't be hurt with your neighbors and, you know, all that kind of thing. And it's like.

[John Plotz]

I just. There's.

[Carla Rotella]

There's something that just like. It's like. It's like taking a tremendous guitar solo, you know, to just be awful, you know?

[John Plotz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you read that Scientology book, Going Clear, which I love. Yeah. And some of the same weeks. I actually don't usually like reading about people's suffering. And it was PA to read about those basements and, like, the ways that people got into these abject, you know, credit, financial indebtedness to the church, which then could only be paid off by, like, being locked into a basement. But, yeah, I mean, there's something. There's something about that notion of the quiet desperation that's going on all around you or the loud desperation. And now we're in a moment where we were. We are all genuinely desperate. You know, like, this is a desperate time for the entire world. So maybe there's something about being able to look at those moments when, oh, look, it's so cute. There were only, like, 30 people who were locked in a basement, not the entire fucking world being locked into that.

[Carla Rotella]

Also, like. And also, like, you could make it better by just expunging the awful person.

[Marshall Poe]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

You know, like, they're sort of a target, you know? And let me just point out that Jane Whaley is sort of like, picture someone who said, you know, Scientology. The problem with Scientology is those people are too understanding, too reasonable, and too friendly. You know, you have to read this book. Their main technique was called blasting. And so what blasting is, is when they decide you are sinful in some way, which is anything. You know, anything at all, they. They all stand one inch away from you and scream as loud as they can, drive the devils out of you for hours. But then they had this wrinkle. They were like, well, that's okay, but that's not really blasting. So they would just beat the hell out of you. They would just, you know, punch you in the face and knock you down. It was just like. It's like insulting a mobster in a bar, and they all stomp you. And it's not unrelated. I mentioned Charles Portis, the guy who wrote True Grit Gringos. It's not unrelated to that. That he has great unreasonable characters, and I value unreasonableness in a literary character. You know, I'm not much for, like, learning and growing and art and all that stuff and hugging it out, but I really like just unselfish unreasonableness.

[John Plotz]

Yeah. Do you like that in Cormac McCarthy where it kind of gets taken to an extreme? I mean, there's a kind of mannered, baroque unreasonableness and.

[Carla Rotella]

Yeah, well, so mannered, baroque, and reasonable as I like, complete, utter, surgical. Lack of a sense of humor is less satisfying. I mean, I think a writer needs a little bit of a sense of.

[John Plotz]

Humor, and he's got nothing.

[Carla Rotella]

Not. Well, I mean, at the Blood Meridian, might have a little bit.

[John Plotz]

It's hard to tell. It's hard to tell.

[Carla Rotella]

Yeah. So, like, I have no craving to read Cormac McCarthy. So. Thomas Berger. I've never read him. Huh.

[Marshall Poe]

Okay.

[Carla Rotella]

Yeah. Specializes in completely Selfish, unreasonable characters, which is what Neighbors is. Neighbors is a story of, like, the neighbors just sort of move in on these people's life, you know? And it got made into a fairly strange movie by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. So there are other writers who have that quality. And then the one who really has that quality, this fantasy and science fiction writer named Jack Vance, who I sort of. I've written about and I'm a big fan of.

[John Plotz]

He's just.

[Carla Rotella]

He's fantastically good at hostile encounters between strangers where there's no obvious reason for the hostility. You know, you come into the. You know, you're staying in an inn. It's, you know, some fantasy novel. He doesn't care about the fantasy at all. He's not interested. He just likes to have his characters travel around and run into works. Right. So you come into the. You come into the hotel, let's say, and there's a scene like this. A guy comes into an office and the clerk ignores him. And then the next guy comes into the office, and the clerk immediately serves the other guy. And the first guy says, like, how come you didn't. You know, why didn't you serve me first? I was here first. And the clerk is like, well, that scheme has a certain naive simplicity, and it's just absolutely unmotivated nastiness for no reason. I do like that. And in keeping with our theme, for whatever the reason, I want that more now. I am so much more interested in world thinking than I am in plot. I'm in ideology. And I mean, that's why PG Wodehouse. That's why the Bertie Wooster series, which I am, I think I seem to have started at the beginning, and I'm just going to do the whole thing.

[John Plotz]

Oh, good.

[Carla Rotella]

Yeah. Which takes you, like, the whole middle chunk of the 20th century.

[John Plotz]

Right.

[Carla Rotella]

Even though it always feels like it's 1926.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

You know, it's a pretty simple world. Doesn't have a lot of moving parts, and it's a world created entirely by the narrating voice. That's the whole thing.

[John Plotz]

Right. I'm just. I'm looking at publication dates as you say that, because now I'm interested in whether. Oh, yeah. So it's. It's like Brideshead, because a lot of them are 1940s books written. Yeah. Like Joy in the Mornings, 1947.

[Carla Rotella]

But the first one is like, 1919. Right.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

Right.

[John Plotz]

But they.

[Carla Rotella]

So I like to remind myself, it's.

[John Plotz]

Like the Hardy boys. They're always 17 years old.

[Carla Rotella]

But I like to remind myself that, that. So that first one, he was writing during the flu pandemic.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

Right. So, you know, this thing I'm going to for shelter from her current one, he was writing while people were dropping all around him, you know.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

And. And so. But that. You know what, it's sort of the same pleasure a little bit as a.

[John Plotz]

Comic strip that you follow.

[Carla Rotella]

You know, I'm a big reader of the newspaper comics. I've always loved paper comics. And. And it's a little bit that same thing. It's like, what are the moving parts that, you know, like, if you read the wizard of it, there's like the balcony where the king gives his speeches. There's the dungeon, there's where the Wizards Workshop. There's not that many places, right.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

And the Bertie Wooster's world. There's like, there's his flat, wherever it is. There's a couple country houses that he goes to. There's a couple music halls, and that's it. And there's something about the economy of a world like that. And just coming off of your point about reading slower, I think there's something about the economy of a world like that that you know it so well that you want to linger. Yeah. And I think that's another reason why reading fantasy and science fiction or going back and reading the original Robert E. Howard Conan short story, I know that world, and I've known that world since I was 12. Right. And Robert E. Howard's Conan stories do not lack for regrettable features, the way he thinks about other human beings, but they swing, the language swings. And I know that world, and I know how it works. And just knowing how it works, it's like, you know, 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.

[John Plotz]

So that was actually. I was going to have. I had kind of a pivot to a last set of questions which are about childhood reading. But maybe we could just jump right in with kind of the big question, which is like, when you go back to childhood reading, is it with a sense that you're going to get back that childhood completeness of the world? Or is it. That would be like the naive reading, or is it more like what the sentimental reading, where you're aware of the gap? Like, oh, I liked it in one way as a kid, but now that I come back as an adult, I like it in a totally different way.

[Carla Rotella]

Well, first of all, I'd like to point out we have been talking about my childhood when the 70s. When the 1970s really got down on me, you know, when I made too many chemical mistakes, PG Wodehouse was there to. So I would say not. I don't think so much. The sentimental one is. I think it's sort of like the feng shui of those worlds. You know, it's the familiarity of the world thinking, the voice that. It's sort of like Jack Vance has a character who travels with a portable hole with him. You know, so then when he's being pursued, he just climbs in the portable hole. And it's a little bit like that. It's like, of course, now what happens to that guy is instructed, which is he's being pursued by a guy named Chun the Unavoidable. And Chun the Unavoidable never actually does anything except to be more avoidable. And so the guy gets in this portable hole, and once he's in his portable hole in, like, no space, this voice at his elbow says, I am Chun the Unavoidable. So it's a comfort, but it's not an absolute comfort. I really do think it's. That the universe is bigger. There's more adjunct pieces of it than the one we're in right now, and that these pieces are to be lingered in.

[John Plotz]

So. I see. So in other words, the universe is bigger.

[Marshall Poe]

The.

[John Plotz]

The universe of any one world does. Of any one book doesn't have to be bigger. It's just like, you need to know that they're out there.

[Carla Rotella]

You need to know that there's other rooms, you know, and to come back.

[John Plotz]

To where we started.

[Carla Rotella]

I think that's also true by going back and reading much older things. Going back and reading passages and reading the Sagas is to say that the. The world that we're living in is more sort of spatially expansive because there's all this other world thinking. And then it's also more expansive in time.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Carla Rotella]

Than we usually keep in the forefront of our mind and say, like, you know, it just. I guess it's a way to make it bigger so that you aren't feeling trapped. And I think people are feeling a little trapped. Yeah.

[John Plotz]

Okay. Recall, this book is hosted by John Plotz and usually Elizabeth Ferry, with music by Eric Chaslow and Barbara Cassidy. Sound editing is by Claire Ogden. Website design and social media by Kaliska Ross. We always want to hear from you with your comments, your criticism, and most of all right now with the reading that you're doing for comfort. Or for joy purposes. Finally, if you enjoyed today's show, please be sure to write a review or rate us on itunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. Check out our other books in Dark Time Conversations, and also conversations with such writers from our previous episodes as Zadie Smith, Shisha Nu, and Samuel Delaney. So, Carla, thank you so much. It was a great pleasure.

[Marshall Poe]

Thank you.

[John Plotz]

And thank you all for listening.

[Carla Rotella]

Sam.

[Marshall Poe]

And Doug, Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[John Plotz]

Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Marshall Poe]

Cut the camera. They see us.

[Carla Rotella]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Savings very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.