655 Guilty Pleasures (with Mike Palindrome and Laurie Frankel) | My Last Book with Mary Flannery

Summary

The History of Literature Podcast - Episode 655: "Guilty Pleasures (with Mike Palindrome and Laurie Frankel) | My Last Book with Mary Flannery"

Release Date: November 27, 2024

In Episode 655 of The History of Literature hosted by Jack Wilson from The Podglomerate, the discussion centers around the intriguing and often taboo topic of "Guilty Pleasures." Joined by esteemed guests Laurie Frankel, a celebrated novelist, and Mike Palindrome, president of the Literature Supporters Club, the episode delves deep into what constitutes a guilty pleasure in literature, television, movies, and everyday life. The conversation is punctuated with insightful reflections, personal anecdotes, and humorous exchanges, making it both engaging and relatable for literature enthusiasts and casual listeners alike.

Introduction to Guilty Pleasures

Jack Wilson opens the episode reflecting on the listener's suggestion to explore guilty pleasures, admitting his initial hesitation. He contemplates whether feeling guilty about one’s reading choices is justified, especially when compared to highbrow literary works often highlighted on resumes or in academic circles. This introspection sets the stage for a candid exploration of what truly defines a guilty pleasure.

Jack Wilson [01:01]: "Maybe you find some guilty pleasure somewhere in all of this. Or maybe you find some guilty pleasures that help you get through all of this."

Defining Literary Guilty Pleasures

The discussion begins with the concept of literary guilty pleasures. Jack admits his struggle to identify his own, feeling that his reading preferences might appear too "highfalutin" to qualify as guilty pleasures. In contrast, Mike and Laurie offer their takes, leading to a rich dialogue about the subjectivity of what one considers a guilty pleasure.

Laurie Frankel emphasizes that the very idea of a guilty pleasure in reading is, in her view, unnecessary. She argues that any book picked up for enjoyment deserves celebration rather than guilt.

Laurie Frankel [15:15]: "There is no such thing as a literary guilty pleasure. If we're picking up a book and reading it, that's something to celebrate, no matter what other people might think."

Mike Palindrome shares his method of juggling multiple books simultaneously, which Jack humorously interprets as hiding his true guilty pleasures.

Mike Palindrome [19:03]: "I think I've refined my reading habits. I read 13 books now at a time, and I'm able to... it's like a little horse race between all 13 books."

Guest Guilty Pleasures in Literature

Laurie and Mike each present their literary guilty pleasures after Jack outlines the ground rules for the discussion. Laurie candidly shares her tendency to purchase new books even when she hasn't finished existing ones, grappling with the guilt of letting unread books accumulate.

Laurie Frankel [17:13]: "All of the new books that I buy when I haven't read all of the old books yet... I feel guilty about all of the old books I haven't read yet. But buying new books is such a pleasure."

Mike categorizes his guilty pleasures into genres, highlighting his love for fantasy novels like the Dragonlance Chronicles and his admiration for authors like P.G. Wodehouse and Georges Simenon. He also touches on his penchant for reading non-fiction true crime and sports stories, albeit with a humorous confession about his guilty indulgence in watching sports, which he feels somewhat guilty about due to his wife's disdain for the genre.

Mike Palindrome [21:11]: "It's so entertaining. I love films where the main protagonists lose or die or are wounded."

Exploring Guilty Pleasures in Television and Movies

Transitioning to visual media, Laurie admits that her guilty pleasures in TV and movies often involve watching poorly written shows like Lost solely to uncover their mysteries, despite feeling frustrated by their unresolved endings.

Laurie Frankel [42:58]: "I watched every last minute of Lost and I regret it... I feel guilty about it because of the time that I'm choosing to spend on that instead of something else."

Mike shares his guilty pleasure for military action films, appreciating the strategic and heroic elements despite their often repetitive plots.

Mike Palindrome [51:27]: "I love the films of Cedric Klepich... and the French military action film My Sex Life or How I Got into an Argument."

Other Guilty Pleasures in Life

The conversation broadens as the hosts and guests discuss non-literary guilty pleasures. Laurie mentions environmental indulgences like taking long showers or turning up the heat, juxtaposing them against her literary choices. Mike adds to this by talking about his love for saxophone solos and nostalgic 80s music as his musical guilty pleasures.

Laurie Frankel [52:24]: "Stuff like long showers and turning the heat up in my house... lovely things along that line."

Mike Palindrome [55:18]: "As someone who loves music... my guilty pleasures are saxophone solos."

Conclusion and Personal Reflections

As the episode wraps up, Jack shares his own list of guilty pleasures, blending literary preferences with personal habits like watching football under a blanket and indulging in junk food. The conversation culminates with a guest appearance by Mary Flannery, who discusses her ideal last book to read—P.G. Wodehouse's Code of the Worcesters—highlighting the profound yet humorous impact of Wodehouse's work.

Mary Flannery [65:03]: "Each joke, each line just gets the maximum amount of laughter out of it. There's a lot to be enjoyed there."

Flannery further elaborates on the enduring charm and satirical brilliance of Wodehouse, drawing parallels to Chaucer's humor and praising the author's ability to create a comforting, farcical universe.

Mary Flannery [68:29]: "It's all about perspective. It's the foibles of humans, and isn't it all just a little bit absurd how seriously we take ourselves?"

Final Thoughts

Episode 655 offers a nuanced exploration of guilty pleasures, challenging conventional notions and encouraging listeners to embrace what brings them joy without the burden of guilt. Through heartfelt discussions, humorous banter, and thoughtful insights, Jack, Laurie, and Mike create an engaging narrative that resonates with anyone who has ever indulged in something they might secretly deem a guilty pleasure.

Notable Quotes:

• Jack Wilson [01:01]: "Maybe yours is junk food or reality TV or playing 80s music really loud in your car."
• Laurie Frankel [15:15]: "There is no such thing as a literary guilty pleasure."
• Mike Palindrome [21:11]: "It's so entertaining. I love films where the main protagonists lose or die or are wounded."
• Mary Flannery [65:03]: "Each joke, each line just gets the maximum amount of laughter out of it. There's a lot to be enjoyed there."

Timestamp Highlights:

• 00:01-01:01: Introduction and setting the theme of guilty pleasures.
• 09:04-09:54: Laurie talks about her Thanksgiving plans, setting a personal and festive tone.
• 17:13-19:03: Definition and discussion of literary guilty pleasures.
• 21:11-29:38: Guests share their specific guilty pleasures in literature.
• 37:04-54:43: Exploration of guilty pleasures in television and movies.
• 55:18-68:34: Discussing other guilty pleasures and the special guest Mary Flannery's insights on last books.
• 70:13-71:32: Wrap-up and final reflections.

Conclusion:

This episode serves as a reflective and entertaining examination of the often unspoken indulgences in our literary and entertainment choices. By debunking the stigma around guilty pleasures, The History of Literature encourages listeners to celebrate their preferences and find joy in the diverse spectrum of literature and media.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and LitHub Radio.

[Laurie Frankel]

This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. With the Gemini app you can talk live and have a real time conversation with an AI assistant. It's great for all kinds of things, like if you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or brainstorm creative ideas. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today. Must be 18 to use Gemini Live.

[Jack Wilson]

This episode is brought to you by Disney's Mufasa the Lion King get tickets.

[Laurie Frankel]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Laurie Frankel]

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[Jack Wilson]

Hello. The idea came from a listener Literary Guilty Pleasures Laurie Frankel and Mike Palindrome are here to help me figure this out today on the History of Literature. Foreign Thanksgiving here in the States and we are celebrating family and food and the harvest and the general sense that America is going to go through some tough times as it often has, and it will emerge from those tough times as it has up until now. We embrace the day to day, the small things like community and moments of wonder. I woke up today. I'm breathing. The sunlight slants through the window. I have another day to live and a day when I can give. I can prepare a feast and give to my loved ones, make them feel at home. Do what I can. The younger ones should not have to feel the burdens that I feel and I try to insulate them from the darkest depths of my soul. Maybe you're doing the same. And maybe you find some guilty pleasure somewhere in all of this. Or maybe you find some guilty pleasures that help you get through all of this. Maybe yours is junk food or reality TV or playing 80s music really loud in your car. Maybe it's spy novels or romance novels or Harry Potter or tmz. You enjoy it even though you know you shouldn't. It's beneath you. It's not something you'd brag about on your resume. On your resume you might say, oh, the works of William Faulkner or cooking or Kant. Those are nothing to feel guilty about. But are they really the true you? Can you claim that your additional interests are learning foreign languages. When what you really do, when the stuff hits the fan Is crawl under your covers and watch videos of people falling down? Isn't your truest self the one that goes for the ice cream and eats the whole pint and lies down on the couch for another episode of something mindless? A listener asked me, jack, why not a show about literary guilty pleasures? And I thought, sure, why not? We've done everything else under the sun. Why not that? Until I realized I have no idea what to say. I don't really believe in feeling guilty about reading, and I anyway, don't really indulge in reading. That isn't somehow good for me in some way. What's to feel guilty about that? Even if I did read something, like a cheap paperback book, let's just leave it at that, I'd still think, well, it's entertaining. And. And what's wrong with that? There's language here that's good for my brain. And what's wrong with that? I think of the show I watch about the Parisian real estate agency, that family with that wonderful grandmother they all love so much. And I gobbled up those episodes. And I did feel a little guilty about it, but not really. It was diverting. I learned a lot about contemporary Paris. I felt myself enjoying their triumphs and laughing along with the show and marveling at the beauty of Paris, envying the lifestyles, the clothes, the architecture, the apartments. Is that really so different from reading Jane Austen or Balzac or Dickens? And so I had a new problem on my hands. I had this commitment to my listener. Sure, an episode about guilty pleasures. Thanks for the idea. Coming soon. But how could I talk about literary guilty pleasures when I didn't have any myself? And do you see what else is going on here? Have you spotted this? Are you ahead of me? You might be tempted to think, oh, that Jack, he has no guilty pleasures. He's incapable of guilt. But no, no, no, no. Look at what's happening. I feel guilty about not having any guilty pleasures or not having the right guilty pleasures. The problem isn't that I don't feel any guilt. I think the problem is I feel too much guilt. Maybe guilt is such a common part of my fabric that guilty literary pleasures don't stand out. They're just more threads in the blanket. I had this moment with a friend. We were at a beer garden, commiserating about the general nature of the world, where things get so bleak in the conversation they turn almost giddy. And I said, everything I do is governed by either fear or guilt. Don't you understand that yet? And he said, well, what are you afraid of? And I thought about it for a moment and then I said, I guess doing something that will make me feel guilty later. So yes, there's guilt all the way down. Like the famous turtles, only turtles seem better than what I have. I wouldn't feel guilty about having turtles. Or would I? You can see what happens when left to my own devices, I spiral out of control. So I thought, I know. I'll invite some guests on to help Laurie Frankel and Mike Palindrome and guilty pleasures in books, in television, in movies, and in life. And I will give you a top 10 list of my own guilty pleasures after I talk to Mike and Laurie and ask them about theirs. And then we'll have a guest return. Mary Flannery will come back where she will talk about her choice for the last book she will ever read. All that after this Foreign this episode is brought to you by Dutch Bros. Get stoked for all the holly jolly vibes this season at Dutch Bros. Stay cozy with returning winter faves. Hazelnut truffle mocha and candy cane mocha. Plus the new winter Shimmer Rebel energy drink blends up sweet cream and blue razz flavor with soft top and shimmer sprinkles to keep those spirits energized all winter long. Download the Dutch Bros. App to find your nearest shop.

[Laurie Frankel]

Order ahead and start earning rewards. This is what you do when you've just found that statement handbag on ebay and you want to build an entire wardrobe around it. You start selling to keep buying. Yep. On ebay. Over that all black everything phase. List it and buy all the color, feeling more vintage than ever. It's out with the new and in with the pre loved. Next thing you know, you've refreshed your wardrobe basically without spending a dime. Yeah, ebay the place to buy and sell new pre loved vintage and rare fashion.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, joining me now are two of our favorite guests who will be helping me think through the concept of literary guilty pleasures, a topic suggested by a listener. First up in our holiday tradition, novelist Laurie Frankel, author of several books including family, family, 1, 2, 3, this is how it Always Is and goodbye for now. Laurie, hello and welcome.

[Laurie Frankel]

Hi Jack. Thank you so much for having me. I love doing this every year.

[Jack Wilson]

And our old friend Mike Palindrome, the president of the Literature Supporters Club, whose guilty pleasures in 1990 included Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and midnight trips to the White Castle on 79th and South Chicago Avenue. We'll see if either of those make his list today. Mike, welcome back to the history of literature.

[Mike Palindrome]

Hey, Jack. Very high standards. Thank you.

[Jack Wilson]

So I mentioned that this is a holiday tradition. Lori, you've been on the program, I think, four or five years in a row, where it's gotten to where I think of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I think of you and I think of you making soup. Are you hosting Thanksgiving this year?

[Laurie Frankel]

Yes, I am. I think I'm having 20.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, wow. Wow. All family members or friends or none?

[Laurie Frankel]

No family members. Well, except my kid, my husband.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Laurie Frankel]

No, all friends. Yeah. It's gonna be big. We'll see. And yeah, I'm starting with soup.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Laurie Frankel]

I mean, the nice thing about soup is it feeds a crowd.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Now do you. I mean, I couldn't even. We, let's see. I think last year we might have had 16 or 17, and it was. We were all around a table, but it really was stretching the limits of my dining room table. Do you have to break it into two when you have 20? Or do you have an enormous table where you can load it up with everything and people can sit around it?

[Laurie Frankel]

Yeah. This is a good question, and it's time for me to figure out the answer to it. I think we're going to need a second table this year. And the question is end to end or like parallel, like train tracks? And then what happens to the people who are back to back? It's not that large of a house and I have a big table, but I don't. I do not think it can seat. It can seat the number of people we're going to need it to seat. We'll see.

[Jack Wilson]

Nor.

[Laurie Frankel]

I don't think I have enough. I mean, I certainly don't have china service for that many. So it'll be some combination of my grandmother's china and my everyday, I think.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right. You know, we were hosting a Thanksgiving one year right after we had moved, and we went over and asked our neighbors if they had any chairs, thinking they might have some folding chairs or something they could give us because we weren't going to have enough chairs for the number of people we had. And the guy said, oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And then later on that night, his wife came over and rang our doorbell and she said, I am so sorry, my husband, we don't have any extra chairs. He was offering you our dining room table chairs. And I just. Here, I've printed out a list of chairs of places that you could rent chairs from and churches that you might ask them if you could borrow chairs. It's like she didn't want to leave us in the lurch, but she didn't want us to take her, you know, and he was thinking, like, well, we've, you know, it's only the. The four of us, and we've got six chairs here. We could bring a couple over.

[Laurie Frankel]

I mean, I also was thinking, what if we cleared them all out and everybody kind of. We picnic, we sit on the floor.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. And if you have kids, I always feel like the kids are so flexible with the way they eat. They could, you know, but it's nice to have everybody around the table. So, Mike, what are your Thanksgiving plans? Are you staying in Manhattan?

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, we always host. And this year it's five. So very manageable. It allows me to cook and have lots of leftovers. I make my famous apple baguette, bacon stuffing, and then I can watch the Cowboys game in peace because it's such a small group.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

I'll just disclose I'm a Cowboys fan. I keep it to myself because other Cowboys fans are so annoying.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, the Cowboys, I mean, that is. Then I am, as a fan of the packers, often will have a game that day with playing Detroit or something. And this year they're actually hosting a Thanksgiving night game. So that's going to be something I have to navigate with the family to see. Although all the games I record, I guess I could watch them later if I have to. But it is a big. It's becoming more and more a tradition for me, I think, to include football as part of the Thanksgiving Day.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, I mean, I'll get to my guilty pleasures. One of them is when I cook. I watch movies I've seen over and over again. So I always look forward to watching about three or four movies on Thanksgiving as I cook.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, well, that's a good transition. The topic today is guilty pleasures, and I thought through a few. A listener asked me to do a whole show on this, and I was thinking, oh, that's an interesting idea. Maybe I can pass along some literary guilty pleasures. But as I was thinking through it, I felt like I was being a little bit snobby, that my guilty pleasures sounded a little too highfalutin, and I was a little embarrassed that people would think I was bragging or something. I didn't have a Stephen King or a John Grisham or something, that I could feel good, that it was a guilty pleasure. It was going to be something that would be too rarefied, and it didn't seem quite right. So although I'm open to the idea, and I'm always looking for recommendations. Mike, was this a hard list for you to compile, or did you have things jumping out at you as obvious literary guilty pleasures?

[Mike Palindrome]

I just. I cheated a little bit. I used the entirety of my life, and these are not guilty pleasures. In the last year.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Yeah. Laurie, what do you think of the idea? I mean, part of me thinks. Wonders whether we should even feel guilty about reading at all. There is no such thing as a literary guilty pleasure. If we're picking up a book and reading it, that's something to celebrate, no matter what other people might think.

[Laurie Frankel]

Yeah, that's exactly what I think. In fact, my first instinct when you said this to me was not only do I have no guilty pleasures, but no one should.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right.

[Laurie Frankel]

Is hard. And for exactly the reason that you said, if you've picked up a book and you're reading, I'm a happy camper. I think we, as society, we've won at that point, and I don't care what it is. So, yes, my. I think that's a. It's a really interesting question. And this was a. I also cheated, although I think in a really different way. So it will be interesting to see how that goes.

[Jack Wilson]

So let's. Yeah. Let's set a couple of ground rules then, that, on the one hand, we do kind of wonder whether anybody should ever feel guilty about reading a book because, you know, there's not enough readers in the world. And if you like a book, that's great. And along with that, please don't be offended if we call something a guilty pleasure and you think it's, you know, the greatest thing that you've ever read. That that's fine. We're just trying to. In the spirit of, I think the spirit of, like, beach reading or, you know, there's other ways to characterize it. Page turners, pot boilers. You know, everybody likes books like that when they hit you at the right time. And we're. We're looking to see if we can identify some things and celebrate things that other people might think other people might.

[Mike Palindrome]

Be looking down their nose at the guilty pleasure buildings. Roman.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so we're going to do this as a draft, and I asked each of you to select three literary guilty pleasures. I suggested it could be a book, an author, or a genre. And then I thought we would do a TV or a movie. And finally, a wild card where you can choose any guilty pleasure you want. So Laurie will let you go first. What is your first literary guilty pleasure?

[Laurie Frankel]

Okay, I'm going to tell you, but I want to Say it's not a title, an author, or genre. I really think, like, for exactly the reason you just said, I don't. I don't want to offend. I mean, I do think I have really good taste in literature and that everyone should read what I tell them to read. But I also think I don't want to. You know, I don't want. I want to hurt people's feelings about what they read.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Laurie Frankel]

And I also don't. I cannot think of anything that at first I thought there's nothing I read that I feel guilty about, but then I thought, no, no, there's tons I feel guilty about. I just don't take pleasure in it. So the answer that I have for you to start off with is all of the new books that I buy when I haven't read all of the old books yet, all of the books that are in piles all over my floor, double stacked on my bookshelf. And then I go to the bookstore and buy new books, and then I feel guilty about all of the old books I haven't read yet. But buying new books is such a pleasure. I would never deny my.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, okay, that is a very interesting take on the question. So literary guilty pleasure would be to buy a new book even when you haven't finished books that are on your shelf and have been begging you to read them. But the pleasure of getting that new book, acquiring a book and bringing it home in your hand, that is definitely something that I am guilty of. So to speak.

[Laurie Frankel]

So to speak.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

I'm guessing you do the same, Mike.

[Mike Palindrome]

Buying books, making piles in every room of my house that everyone read. Yes.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Although you're a big one for saying, well, I'm reading nine books at a time, so it's not like you're privileging the new books as much as just adding them to the list, the long list of books that you claim that you're in the middle of reading.

[Mike Palindrome]

I think I've refined my. My reading habits. I read 13 books now at a time, and I'm able to. It's like a little horse race between all 13 books, which one will capture my attention most. And then I'll end up reading probably about four of them intensely and finish them. And so.

[Laurie Frankel]

Okay, wait, I have so many questions. Can I. Am I allowed to ask questions?

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, of course.

[Laurie Frankel]

Okay, you are. Is it. Is it up to 13 or is it always 13?

[Mike Palindrome]

It's roughly 13 these days, I think, you know, if I finish something, I'll just start a new book. Because I remember how much. How wonderful it is to start a new book. That feeling of opening to the first page and be like, I'm going to start reading this book. It's such a great feeling. So I was like, why should I wait to finish all 13? I'll just add to the rotation.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Laurie Frankel]

Wow. And are they. Do you make sure that they're varied, or is it. Yeah. Okay.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah. There's always, like, two poetry, and probably, like, four are nonfiction. I can't have 13 novels going up.

[Jack Wilson]

You also are often doing those. I don't know if you still call them Twitter together projects. But you're reading as part of groups, and you've got books where you're slow reading them on purpose. So you're kind of 10 pages a day for several different ones at once.

[Mike Palindrome]

Right. So I'm reading with a group on X. Well, I just left X. Actually. I'm on Blue sky now, where we read seven to ten pages a day. So we're reading A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Pol, and we're on volume five of 12. So.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay.

[Mike Palindrome]

That's a way to do it, to read your 13 books at a time.

[Laurie Frankel]

All right. That's really amazing. I aspire to this.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I hope we didn't take away one of your choices. Mike. Why don't you give us your first literary guilty pleasure?

[Mike Palindrome]

So it's a genre. It's fantasy. I was a pretty big Dungeons and Dragons fan, so the creators of Dungeons and Dragons, TSR Inc. Made many attempts to create novels, but I think the. My favorite is a trilogy called Dragon Lance Chronicles. I really recommend it. It's by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, and there are three volumes about the age of Dragons. And so, I mean, and I read that as a teenager, but a few years ago, I read the Hunger Games, and I was thinking, you know, the reason that appealed to me is the same thing that appeals. That appealed to me playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading Dragonlance is, you know, just the plot twists, that you're turning the page almost faster than you can read because you can visualize it. And I think it's. As someone who reads a lot of books like Panaus Guard, where nothing happens. It's such a treat to read. It was such a treat to read Hunger Games. I read it in, like, a month, but I know some people have read it in, like, four days.

[Jack Wilson]

It does make me think that there is something about this being something you're guilty about, because for all of the conversations we've had, I Did not know that. You ever read a work of fantasy? I would have thought that you had never picked one up.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, yeah. Oh. I mean it all. I was a big Conan the Barbarian fan.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh. Schwarzenegger.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

The gateway drug.

[Mike Palindrome]

And Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the original, which are super violent. Each of the assassins is named after an Italian Renaissance painter, and they have these vicious weapons and. Yeah. So it's one of these things that if I'm in a bookstore and I see a graphic novel that's fantasy, I'll just pick it up and see how the setup, how it begins.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay. Well, we're off to a good start. Laurie, what is your second literary guilty pleasure?

[Laurie Frankel]

All right. My second literary guilty pleasure is something that you and I have talked about before, which is choose your own adventure books. And it's not reading them that is a guilty pleasure. It's that the whole conceit behind those. Those books is guilt. Like, whatever happens, it's your fault because you chose badly. And I felt, when I was a child reading those books, all of that weight of responsibility, which, of course, is ridiculous, because.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right, right.

[Laurie Frankel]

Those. You know, the plot has to happen. Plot is a good thing. It's interesting. I feel like when I'm writing, I feel bad if I don't have enough plot, if I'm not making sure that readers are turning pages, if I haven't kept the stakes high. But. And as a reader, of course, if anything else, you know, I'm in an author's hands. But with those books in particular, those choose your own adventure books, I think the whole idea, like, their subtitle could have been colon. It's your fault.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And. Right.

[Laurie Frankel]

And I. And so I think they're all. They're. They're really based on guilt, which is a really interesting idea in general, but because they're aimed at children, I feel is. Well, I was. I was glad you brought up this question, because I hadn't thought of it that way, and. And now I'm blowing my own mind, basically.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, and because it is, like, one of the most vivid memories I have of those choose your own adventure books is when there would be an ending where, like, you would wind up adrift in a boat in the middle of the ocean with no hope for. You know, it's like, well, now you're just waiting, you know, but you're waiting for help to arrive, you know, which may never come or something. And you just. And I would think, I can't believe they had a book end like this, you know, because you like, they would never have a book end with the character in, you know, a children's book end like that. It's such a mysterious and existential ending. But in the spirit of the. Choose your own adventures, I would think, well, that was really fun. How did I wind up there? And you're right. It is like I blamed myself rather than the people who wrote the book.

[Laurie Frankel]

Yes, because it was your fault. And if you had made some other choice, you wouldn't have ended up on a boat by yourself in the middle of an ocean waiting for the sharks or whatever. And that's. I mean, among other things, that's a really remarkable emotion to provoke in a. In a reader. I can't think of anything else I read that I feel like that is my fault. Yeah, but you really do with those books.

[Jack Wilson]

And what I liked about it is they weren't trying to educate you. It was like you'd. Maybe you'd have a choice that would be reckless and a choice that would be safe, but it wasn't necessarily the safe choice that was going to bring you the happy ending. It might be the reckless one and vice versa, you know, so you'd sort of. It wasn't that they were playing morality police and saying, this is going to teach kids to make good decisions. You know, it was all like, oh, yeah, this is how life sometimes goes. You know, you take a risk and you wind up wealthy, or you. You play it safe and you wind up, you know, with the. The hammer blow falling on you.

[Laurie Frankel]

Yeah. I mean, which in many ways is a really good lesson.

[Mike Palindrome]

I don't know.

[Laurie Frankel]

Maybe it says something about me that I took that so personally, but I absolutely did.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. That's a good one. Okay, Mike, we're up to your second literary guilty pleasure.

[Mike Palindrome]

Oh, wait, but before I get to that, let me, you know the story behind the two creators of. Oh, yeah, yeah. There was a great profile in the New Yorker recently, and one of the creators, he used to tell bedtime stories to his two daughters, and he was such a bad storyteller that his daughters would say, well, what about this? What if this happened? What if the cave was a time machine? And then he'd be like, okay. And then the other daughter felt left out, so she would say, like, no, the cave is actually, like, underwater. You can breathe underwater. That he said it was really due to his inability to tell stories that he came up with the concept and.

[Laurie Frankel]

Blamed me for it. So interesting. So interesting.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay.

[Mike Palindrome]

All right. So my second pick was reading nonfiction, specifically true crime and sports. So I'll basically read anything that's a sports human interest story.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

And I'll usually read it while drinking beer or wine and just kind of. It's one of the few times I don't reread sentences. I love when I read. I love rereading sentences to see how it's structured and see how paragraphs flow. But when I read Sports or True Crime, I'm just. It's pure adrenaline, just seeing what happens next.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Now, you could seek out, like, there's. There's very good sports writing, which you could be talking about, that kind of thing. But are you talking about, like, the sports page?

[Mike Palindrome]

I don't think there's very good sports writing. Personally, having read a lot of sports, I think the best sports writing is usually statistics based. And to me, that's not. It's not really writing. But, I mean, I like Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. I mean, he's a novelist and he wrote a memoir about how unhappy and make someone to be into sports. And also about his love of Arsenal and how it saved his relationship with his father after his divorce.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, well, and there's the Frederick Exley. If you count that as a sports book. I know you're a fan of fan's notes. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so let's take a quick break. Oh, sorry, Laurie.

[Laurie Frankel]

Well, Mike, what I was wondering was, and maybe you're going to get to this later in the conversation, but do you also feel guilty about watching sports or just about reading about watching sports?

[Mike Palindrome]

Very good question. I do feel guilty about watching sports, but luckily. So what happened was, growing up, I loved every sport, including, like, the Winter Olympics and the Summer Olympics and track and field. I would just watch anything I was on, anything that had a winner and a loser. But then when I got to college, I met my future wife and she hates sports. So I just stopped watching because of her. And it made me realize how much free time I had now because I'd just been spending. Sometimes I would. I would watch 12 hours of sports a day. I mean, it was. And I don't really need to sleep, so I could. I could binge on sports every day and still hold a job or do my coursework. So.

[Laurie Frankel]

But, well, you can read your 13 books while you're watching sport. It does require undivided attention.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, some sports especially, I used to.

[Mike Palindrome]

Mute the commercials and read during commercials of games. That's not fair to the writer.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll come back with our Final three for each of you. Guilty Pleasure this episode is brought to you by Allstate. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate First. Like, you know to check the date of the big game first before you accidentally buy tickets on your 20th wedding anniversary and have to spend the next 20 years of your marriage making up for it. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate Savings. Vary terms apply.

[Mike Palindrome]

Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois.

[Laurie Frankel]

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[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we're back. So, Laurie, we're up to your last literary guilty pleasure, which is number three overall. What do you have on your list?

[Laurie Frankel]

Okay, my third one is a little bit strange. And it is reading books that I don't like or that I don't think are good because I learn so much from them, which I do all the time, in fact, so much so that I have students. I have students do it. I assign it as homework. I think it's so useful when you are trying to write. I mean, when you are trying to write well and you are only reading books that are good, you learn all sorts of things, but they are not things that are necessarily helping you because you're like, well, I can't do that because that, that person's a genius and I'm not a genius. Whereas if I read books where I'm like, all right, well, this is really terrible, or even like, okay, this worked some, but it didn't, it didn't quite land. And here's exactly why. You know, the chapters were too long. I couldn't follow the characters. I got bored in the middle. I figured out who did it on page 12. You know, that kind of thing is really, really super useful. But I feel really guilty about reading a book that I hated, like, hate reading, where I'm like, this is terrible and this author is a moron and everyone is stup. And that makes me feel bad for not leading with love in my heart, and yet I'm getting so much out of it. And so it's not so much a guilty pleasure as it's simultaneous. I am simultaneously feeling guilty and receiving pleasure because I'm learning something, but it's not a guilty pleasure. I'm not feeling them together. Do you know what I mean?

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And it's kind of. I mean, I knew a woman who was. She wrote literary fiction, but she spent a summer reading westerns. And she was just. Because she thought she needed to get better at plot and at specifically openings. And so she would just read these books and then. And then she would say, you know, they would. They would immediately like, dissolve into cliche for her. But she really wanted to see, you know, how the first page or the first two pages, how are they getting the characters going, how are they starting the action? And, and what can I learn from this? But I don't know if you should feel too guilty about this. Is you learning your craft, right?

[Laurie Frankel]

Thank you, Jen. I appreciate that. Thank you. You know, and you're not going to love everything, right? Like, no books are for everybody. But I certainly, you know, I try to be generous of spirit, especially when I'm reading. And also, I'm perfectly happy to put books down if I don't like them. And so if I'm sticking with a book that I really don't like because I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is so awful. I love it. That makes.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, one way of thinking of this is if you were out in public and you were reading one of these books, and, well, first of all, would you even let yourself be seen reading one of these books? And secondly, if you were and someone said to you, oh, what are you reading? Would you feel like you needed to explain? Like, well, look, I'm reading this, but it's not what you think.

[Laurie Frankel]

I mean, I'm not going to name names, but I will tell you that frequently, these are books that, that lots and lots of people think are really good. I just think those people are wrong. You know, I'm not necessarily reading books like, like, I'm like, oh, I'm learning so much from this that everyone would agree is trash, but rather that people would be like, oh, yes, I. I love that book. Won an important prize or that book was on the bestseller list, and I'm like. And I'm sitting in my heart thinking, no, no, this book is really, really terrible.

[Jack Wilson]

Right, right. Okay, I get it. Okay. So, Mike, number three for you of your literary guilty pleasures.

[Mike Palindrome]

So I feel like almost every book, you know, I'm working on my novel, almost every book I read or poetry collection I read, I get something out of it, but I'm not sure I get anything out of in terms of learning about writing from P.G. wodehouse or George Simonone. But I read them because they have such good plot twists. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I'm just so. I'm like, I'm not especially good with plot, and so I just admire the two of them, and I'll pretty much just read one of their stories in a single sitting and just escape into their worlds and just. It's so entertaining.

[Jack Wilson]

It's so funny you say that, because that was my reaction when the listener asked me about my guilty pleasures is I thought, I can't say, Simenon. That's what I take on vacation. I'm always taking Maghre books. And if I think, oh, I'm going to need something, I know I'm going to be really tired. I'm going to need something that I can just kind of fall into. And then I thought, that just can't be a guilty pleasure. It's too good to be a guilty pleasure. But maybe we all think that about our guilty pleasures. Guilty pleasures are what other people have, but what we read is actually, this is just a good, entertaining book, and.

[Mike Palindrome]

It'S hard to do. I don't know if you know the story about Paul Oster. When he was struggling to publish his first novel, he loved. He grew up reading detective fiction, loving thrillers. So he tried to write a thriller, I think, for three years. And everyone's just like, you're terrible at this. Like, stop it. Like, why do you think it's easier to do this than what you want to write about? It's like, oh, yeah. I just. I feel like they're. They're like, cliched. They're like easy symbols.

[Jack Wilson]

They're tricks. Formulaic. Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

And he couldn't do it.

[Jack Wilson]

But didn't he then include that attempt in the middle of one of his other books?

[Mike Palindrome]

Oh, did he? I know he writes about it in his memoir, Hand to Mouth.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. I think he includes, like, his Aborted attempt in one of his books and kind of tries to weave it in. I don't remember which book that was, but in any case. And then P.J. wodehouse's just a comic relief for you.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah. Jeeves is always. And everyone exclaims like, good God. Why on earth did you do this? It's like, it's kind of innocent, but then you really get into it. Like, there's a gold watch that's missing. Somebody forgot an umbrella at a party and had to return it. And then when they returned it, they found out that this person loved them. It's like, oh, it's. It's great.

[Jack Wilson]

You know, I've done. I've asked a lot of people about their choice for the last book they will ever read, and I think PJ Wodehouse has come up a couple of times.

[Mike Palindrome]

Oh, yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

You know, people just want to spend time in that world. It's like this, Will, this is comforting to me. It makes me happy. I laugh. It's. I like the kind of low stakes, you know, aspects of it.

[Mike Palindrome]

Nobody's reaching for Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian is the final book.

[Jack Wilson]

I don't think so.

[Mike Palindrome]

Does he close in on the judge?

[Laurie Frankel]

You don't want to read anything that's really plot driven because what if you die before you find out who did it?

[Mike Palindrome]

Right.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Laurie Frankel]

So you need things that, like, the beauty of the Jeeves is they're funny at the sentence level and fairly formulaic and fairly short. So you probably can make it to the end of the. End of the next.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay, I just confirmed. Nobody has yet chosen Cormac McCarthy. And the list is now. You know, it's something like 200 people long, so I'm not sure anyone ever will. Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit now. We're going to do a TV or movie or similar, and I think this might be a little bit easier to. For us to feel like we're actually feeling guilty because there's so much bad television and stuff out there, but sometimes it hits the right spot. So, Laurie, what do you have as the first thing on your list for your television or movie? Guilty pleasure?

[Laurie Frankel]

Well, it's funny that you say that, because I thought this was actually harder.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, harder.

[Laurie Frankel]

But for the same reason, which is that it's so bad that I just turn it off immediately. If I've. If I've watched more than 10 minutes of it, it's like it's already. Because it's better than a significant percentage of what it is. And I thought, you know, that if I'm. If I'm finishing it, if I finish a thing, it's got to have been Pretty good. And so my answer to this is the exception to that, which is that sometimes I will finish a series or season that. That I am not enjoying and that I think is really bad, like badly written and badly acted, simply because I want to know who did it, even though I know that the answer to that question is not going to be satisfying or the resolution of whatever mysteries have been floated and. And I feel really guilty about that simply because of the time that I'm choosing to spend on that instead of something else. I wouldn't say it's pleasurable quite, though. So I feel like that's kind of a fudged answer.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Right. Okay. Do you have an example of one?

[Laurie Frankel]

I do, but I can't tell you because I don't want to be mean. Oh, actually, okay, I'm going to tell you one. This is going to piss people off, but we're all friends here. It'll be okay. I watched every last minute of Lost and I regret. I mean, so did I. And I knew. I mean, I knew from episode one they are never going to tell us the answers to these questions. I know they're not going to tell us the answers to these questions. And like, somehow I watched the whole thing anyway and then got to the end and was irritated about how they both didn't answer the questions and like fudged what they. What they did answer. That just made me feel really angry and upset. And I mean, it was so many hours, you know, it was back when television had, whatever it was, 22 episodes in a season and I didn't, I mean, and watch it while I was on. Like, I didn't watch the commercials or anything. But still, that's a lot of hours of my life during which I wasn't reading a book that I'm never going to get back. And. And I feel guilty about it and I feel angry about it. But. But there must have been some. Some pleasure in it because. Because I just wanted to know, even though I knew I was never going to know.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And wasn't that one where like, the. The producers, I think, weren't expecting to do more episodes or something or it. It kind of became clear, right. That they hadn't really thought through the whole series. I mean, these days they probably would like, these days it would probably be, you know, people figure out, the producers go into it with the ending already figured out. But I think that one. They were just kind of wanted to make some good tv and then they got people hooked on it and then it became clear to A lot of people that, oh, no, they're just winging it now. And this is. This is not going to all resolve neatly. It's going to be a big mess at the end.

[Laurie Frankel]

Well, and I think that it's sort of an interesting question generally with narrative. If, however, in whatever medium that if during the, during, if while you are reading it or watching it or engaging with it in whatever way you're happy and you're entertained, then is it fair at the end to say that whole thing was bad because I'm dissatisfied on the last page? That's an interesting question to me. And it's something that I think about a lot when I read because it happens to me sometimes to a much lesser extent when I'm reading. And I think, like, I'm just not being fair. Just because you can't stick the landing doesn't mean. Doesn't invalidate how happy I was during those. Those 10 hours I was turning pages. But I also become very frustrated with, how will I put this nicely? Like, lack of editing, like, okay, so your season got renewed and you didn't think you were going to have another season, and so you hadn't written into the mysteries, like, super, sit down and edit. And then you will figure it out. Don't just throw stuff at the wall because it makes you really mad.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. Or I mean, you feel sometimes like whether the author got tired or was responding to some kind of feedback of, no, we have to know what happens to so and so, or we need a happy ending for so and so. And then things start to get all resolved very quickly on the last page or two, and it can feel a little bit forced or not true to the rest of the book. Maybe that's what people are upset about, but a lot of times I think people just read it and think, well, this was the character I really liked, and I was hoping that she was going to find true love at the end, and she didn't. And so I'm mad at the book that that never happened.

[Laurie Frankel]

Right. Yes. And that strikes me as a different and less fair complaint. But I think my complaint might not be fair either. You know, it was a good television program that kept my attention for hours and hours and hours on end. That should be enough. I want to count that as an extraordinary success. And I could make that argument. They did an amazing job of keeping me and many, many, many people entertained for many, many, many hours. It's just not fair for me to say. Yeah, but I wanted an explanation to the mystery, especially because you Never get an explanation for any of the mysteries. That's how life works.

[Jack Wilson]

And isn't that, like, what we do when we watch the super bowl and we're watching if our team didn't make it, which is most of the time, most of us aren't lucky enough to have a team that makes it. And then you say, well, what I'm rooting for is a good game. I just want it to. I want it to be close. I just don't want it to be a blowout. I want to watch three hours of good football and feel like that wasn't a waste of time. And so who cares what the ending is? If you get that three hours, you should be grateful that you, you know, got to watch a really exciting game rather than a dud.

[Laurie Frankel]

Yeah, right. And to keep raising questions, you know, so that you don't feel like everything has been answered already. That's why we engage with narrative. You know, in some ways, that, too, is an extraordinary success, is to be able to spend that many hours drawing out additional questions and making you continue to ask not just the same question over and over, like, what is going on? But, like, okay, you've explained this thing, and now I have questions about this. Other things that. That has raised. All of that is extremely, extremely good and impressive work. So maybe what I feel guilty about is being so cranky myself. I should think, like, oh, this was the most remarkable television program. They did such a good and fantastic job. And the fact that I have lingering questions is actually a tremendous success. You know, when I used. When I was teaching college, I would always say to my students, I'm not trying to give you answers. I don't want. I don't, nor do I want any from you. We're asking questions. We're having conversations. So maybe that's what I should have wanted from Lost. And it's just immaturity on my part.

[Jack Wilson]

To have been maybe. Okay, Mike, what is your guilty pleasure related to the world of entertainment?

[Mike Palindrome]

It's watching military action films. I really study them. Just the way soldiers care for the wounded. There's a bureaucrat. Is the bureaucrat put in place. Who are the heroes? Who are the cowards? And I'm reminded when I was a kid, I used to go throughout the apartment and pretend that there was a sniper shooting at me. And he would wound me, but I would crawl and manage to confront him and shoot him. This is a game I used to play by myself. Probably my sister or my mom came in once and saw me crawling on the floor with a water gun and wanted to know what the hell was happening.

[Jack Wilson]

So you were like dragging yourself across the floor because you were bleeding out. Maybe you lost the use of your legs or something.

[Mike Palindrome]

So usually when I, as I mentioned, I watch movies when I cook, I usually watch either military action films or French films. Practice my French. And so depending on what I'm watching, my daughter will come in and when she was younger, I would have to mute the film, pause the film. It was a military action film. And then she started studying French and so she would like it. When I was playing French films, every once in a while there would be a French military action film.

[Jack Wilson]

Best of both worlds. Now, if someone said, okay, I'd like to get started with military action films, and you had to come up with one that you thought was most likely to be well received by that person, what would you recommend?

[Mike Palindrome]

I would say Hurt Locker.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Catherine Bigelow's movie.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, I've seen it like 20 times. I pretty much have it memorized.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Well, that's a great film.

[Mike Palindrome]

It's a great film and I love films where the main protagonists lose or die or are wounded. Another one is Lone Survivor.

[Jack Wilson]

That one I'm not familiar with.

[Mike Palindrome]

Yeah, it's pretty good.

[Jack Wilson]

And what about for a French film? If someone has said, what's your favorite French film? Or what French film do you think I would like? What would you recommend?

[Mike Palindrome]

I love the films of Cedric Klepich. He made a film called Paris and also Back to Burgundy. But if you're in a philosophical mood, there's a guy, Arnold d'esplachen, who made a film, it's like a four and a half hour film called My Sex Life or How I Got into an Argument. I recommend that. I've cooked many times to that.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we are coming up on the final choice. And this is from any walk of life. So, Laurie, how did you address this question? A guilty pleasure from. From some area. The topic is up to you.

[Laurie Frankel]

All right, this one was the easy one I could have, which is interesting, especially given how hard the other it was to think of them as books or as film or movies. Tv. That was all very hard. This one was easy, though my answers are all vaguely environmental. My immediate reaction was out of Season produce. And then I thought of a lot of things along those lines, like long showers and turning the heat up in my house. You know, like, I want it to be 71 instead of 69. Lots and lots of things along this line.

[Jack Wilson]

Or like cranking up the air conditioning in the summer and then crawling under a big, heavy quilt.

[Laurie Frankel]

Oh, gosh, yes. I mean, listen, in Seattle, we don't have air conditioning, so I don't have to have that particular one, but. Yeah, but when I lived back East. Yes, absolutely. And I mean, that is endless. Although I think that falls into the category I was saying before. I feel guilt and I feel pleasure, but I don't feel them together. For some reason, I. I feel like that is, you know, never would I say, like, oh, I'm. I'm eating these blueberries in January because it's my guilty pleasure, though, you know, I suppose it is, but. Whereas it was very difficult to think of books that fell into that category. It was very, very easy to think of fruits that fel.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. When you put in the environmental impact of it, suddenly my list could get very, very long because.

[Mike Palindrome]

Very, very long.

[Laurie Frankel]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

You know, I remember reading something. They were doing a study of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, I think it was. And they were sort of saying, you know, well, they use. They use this to minimize the environmental impact, and they do this. And they were kind of. Somebody was doing, you know, an economist or somebody was doing a study of that. And then he kind of said, well, look, you know, eating gourmet ice cream is always going to be a negative for the environment. There's no real reason why you have to do that. But if you're going to have a pleasure like this, you know, then this is why this would be less impactful than other types or something. But that kind of stuck with me that he was kind of saying, you can get a car that uses less gasoline, but if you walk to where you're going, you're not going to use any gasoline, you know?

[Laurie Frankel]

Yeah, right. Exactly. Yes. I mean, an ice cream has to be the kind of. Or guilty pleasure. Like, that's, I think, what people think of when they think of guilty pleasure. So as long as you're doing it, you might as well. You know, it's like in for a penny. If you're going to eat ice cream anyway, you should eat gourmet ice cream. And once you've decided. Once you've decided to eat it, you might as well eat the whole thing.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And you might as well not feel guilty about it, because what are you helping with that also true, for sure. Okay, Mike, what's your final guilty pleasure?

[Mike Palindrome]

As someone who loves music and has kind of taken pride in keeping track of the best new music across decades, my guilty pleasures are saxophone solos. I was Rewatching Stealing Home, a pretty bad 80s film with Jodie Foster. And there's quite a sax solo in that. And then I was thinking of Better off Dead, another 80s film I like, and that also has a very poignant sax solo, as does a lot of Phil Collins songs. I mean, I was almost gonna say Phil Collins as my gophy pleasure.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I could probably say the. The SiriusXM 80s on 8 channel is a nice guilty pleasure for me, which you get your fill of Phil Collins on there or also some of those other stations like the Bridge or some of the easy listening kind of things. So, yeah, I would put Phil Collins on my guilty pleasure list. I don't really seek him out, but when he's there, I'll turn it up. Okay, well, those are good lists. Let me summarize here what we have. And I think I missed one from Laurie. You can help me fill it in. Laurie, which was your second literary choice. So I've got. For Laurie, I've got buying books that are new even when you haven't finished all the books that you already own. Then I missed the second one.

[Laurie Frankel]

The second one was choose your own adventures.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, yeah, of course. Choose your own adventures. And then third, I had reading books that you don't like to learn things from them. And your television movie was bad shows that you just finished because you want to know what happened, like Lost. And your final one was things that are fruit out of season or things that maybe have an impact on the environment. We know we probably shouldn't be over indulging in those, but we like to indulge in them anyways. And I had junk food as one of my things, you know, Popeye's chicken and jalapeno chips and stuff like that. I do feel kind of guilty when I've. After I finish them off, but, boy, while I'm eating them, the pleasure is guilt free. Then, Mike, for you, I've got fantasy books, sports books, P.J. wodehouse and George Simenon, military action films like the Hurt Locker and Lone Survivor, French films like Paris Back to Burgundy and My sex Life. And what was your last thing?

[Mike Palindrome]

Saxophone solos.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, saxophone solos. Is Careless Whisper up there for you?

[Mike Palindrome]

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.

[Jack Wilson]

There were a lot of saxophone solos in that music from the 70s and 80s. And some of them are really. The Baker street one is just indelible. Okay, so what did we miss?

[Laurie Frankel]

Did you play the saxophone?

[Mike Palindrome]

No, I didn't. But I wanted to play it growing up. My parents asked me when I was nine. You have to play a musical instrument. What do you want to play? And I said, a saxophone. And he said, no, you're going to play the violin. Because he. If you play the saxophone, you might end up in a jazz club. And I was like, if. If I'm lucky enough, I might end up in a jazz club.

[Laurie Frankel]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay, so what did we miss? Was there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to add in here before we go?

[Mike Palindrome]

I mean, food, definitely.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome]

Different foods. Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Laurie Frankel]

Which is probably good for a Thanksgiving episode to mention. Like, part of the beauty of it is you can eat anything you want at Thanksgiving and people don't feel guilty about it. That's really the pleasure of the holiday. I also think there's so many holidays where the idea is guilt, and that is less true for Thanksgiving and arguably should be much, much more true for Thanksgiving. Like, there's a lot to feel guilty about, frankly, in the whole notion of celebrating Thanksgiving, you know? And yet the practice of the holiday is you don't have to feel guilty about doing nothing but sitting around and stuffing your face and watching football all day long, which is like the opposite of guilt.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. You know, it is funny because with Thanksgiving, when I think about it, I want everyone around me to be eating, and I want them. I want to be feeding everyone. I love that that we host and that everybody is getting their fill, but I have found that I feel better when I don't overeat, and so I'll kind of watch myself and limit my portions. But I enjoy seeing the other people at the table if they're loading up with three different kinds of pie.

[Laurie Frankel]

So you're a pusher, basically.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here it is.

[Laurie Frankel]

And an enabler, for that matter. Yes. Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. Well, this was fun, and I hope we were good company for the people who are cooking today. On this Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Laurie Frankel and Mike Palindrome. Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Laurie Frankel]

Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving to you both and to everyone. This was a pleasure, as always.

[Mike Palindrome]

Thanks, everyone.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, without much further comment, here are my top 10 guilty pleasures. Number 10, watching football in the late autumn under a blanket. Bonus points if the players are playing in snow or if at some point the ball is snapped over the quarterback's head, which Michael sure has convinced me is the most exciting play in all of sports. Number nine, watching the nine to five video and remembering what the world was like in 1980, waiting for that slow camera reveal of Dolly Parton's. Drummer who looks exactly like every high school guy I knew when I was nine years old. Number eight, Italy in the early morning, Italy at dusk, Italy at night. Number seven, reading Humboldt's Gift for the millionth time. Six, pouring myself a cocktail and reading one Chekhov short story. Number five, Home alone for the weekend. That means Costco, pizza, a bottle of beer and a movie no one else wants to watch but me. Last time I did some Hollywood musicals from the old days. Next time, I've got my eye on you. Floating weeds. Who am I kidding? It'll probably be in the mood for love again. Number four, It's a Wonderful Life. Laughing through the movie, weeping at the end. I finally adjusted to the ending, by the way. Now I weep because George Bailey has friends and he's the biggest man in town. I used to weep because he never got out. Number three, the Beatles. Everything, Mark Lewison's biography, any interview, and of course, the music. Number two, anything written by George Eliot that's not Middlemarch. And the number one guilty pleasure is Middlemarch. So there you have it, a top 10 guilty pleasures list. Compliments of your friend Jack. Guilty because I'm always guilty. What's more, drop of guilt when you're swimming in guilt? Ocean swimming or treading water? Hopefully. Hopefully not drowning. And finally today, let's hear from Mary Flannery about her choice for the last book she will ever read. We're going to go out on a higher note. Been a little gloomy today, thanks to world events. We're going to go out on a note of optimism. As you may recall, Mary Flannery was here for episode 640 where we discussed Chaucer, the Merry Bard. After our discussion, I asked her this special question. Okay, we're joined now by Mary Flannery, expert in medieval history and culture and Geoffrey Chaucer in particular. Mary, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Mary Flannery]

Well, even though I am someone who specializes in medieval literature and in fact, in Chaucer and Chaucer's humor in particular, I think I would choose something slightly more recent, but something that makes me laugh and is also very skillfully written. So in my case, I think it would have to be PG Wodehouse's Code of the Worcesters. This is just one of the most hilarious books ever written and it is so skillfully put together. Each Joke. Each line just gets, you know, the maximum amount of laughter out of it. That there's, there's a lot to be enjoyed there. But from my perspective, there was also a tremendous amount to be admired right now.

[Jack Wilson]

When you were here talking about Chaucer, we talked about the different modes of humor and that there could be, you know, fart jokes next to satire, next to, you know, all kinds of things in Chaucer. But Woodhouse seems to have a different. I would say he maybe has a particular vein that he can tap into and he can go to that well over and over and over. So how would you characterize his humor and what makes him so funny?

[Mary Flannery]

I think that one of the charms about him is that he is writing very farcical humor about a kind of universe in which the worst things that happen are that perhaps a very wealthy person's necklace is stolen or a prize pig is at risk of not winning the prize at this year's competition for magical piggery or whatever. So there is this kind of farcical charm to his writing that I think is extremely, extremely attractive and enjoyable. But if you also read a little bit some of what P.G. wodehouse actually wrote about himself and his own writing, it does actually recall to me some of the. Some of the sort of self deprecating stratagems that Chaucer himself used, you know, hundreds of years earlier. So I think one of my favorite examples is when PG Wodehouse is writing a sort of preface to one of his books and saying that some critic recently criticized him for writing another book. And it seems to be about the same kinds of characters, but under different names. And he says something like, you know, ah, but I have outsmarted the man because this time I have written about the same characters with the same names. So, you know, it's a completely different thing that I'm doing now. And there's just something about the way that he writes about his own extremely unserious writing that makes it very easy. Easy to fall in love with it.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. And it does seem like it's a world you can enter into and that, you know, I can imagine at this point in your life there'd be something very comforting about entering into that world where once you accept kind of the rules of the game and the stakes and so on, that, you know, you'll be treated that, you know, he's going to deliver this kind of wit and charm and it's. Could be a great comfort.

[Mary Flannery]

No, absolutely. It's a world you want to get lost in. And I think it's one that is also, in a way, very sympathetic to the tiny problems of humanity. I think that there are several occasions on which he'll be referring to a particular character and saying, you know, look, this character had led a very nice life. Nothing terribly bad had happened to them. So when this ridiculous thing happened, it was essentially like the world was ending. And there's, there's something about the sort of gentleness, the sort of gentle satirical take that you'll see articulated in passages like that. But again, it's just, it's a very beguiling mode to be writing in. But I could get lost in the Blanding's universe just any day.

[Jack Wilson]

And here are the foibles of humans. And isn't it all just a little bit absurd how seriously we take ourselves?

[Mary Flannery]

Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly right. It's all about perspective.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, Mary Flannery, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Mary Flannery]

Thank you for having me.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. For those of you here in America, and I hope if you're not in America that you have some time to set aside to be thankful for the things you have. I'm thankful to Laurie Frankel and Mike Palindrome and Mary Flannery for joining me today. We are going to release an episode from the archives on Friday, all cleaned up and ready to help you get through the weekend. And then we come back with who's on the list? Some W.H. auden, some King Arthur, some James Baldwin, and maybe a special story read by a special guest reader. Fingers are crossed. I'm Jack Wilson, crossing fingers like they're strands of spaghetti heaped on a plate. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

[Laurie Frankel]

From Academy Award winning actor Matthew McConaughey's soulful and humorous picture book to New York Times best selling author Kristin Hannah's, the Women Moms don't have Time to Read Books is an author interview podcast unlike any other. In 30 minutes or less, each episode of this chart topping and Webby award winning show dives deep beneath the COVID fostering friendship and camaraderie, support and curiosity, connection and compassion. Hosted by me, Zibby Owens, author, bookstore owner and head of what the LA Times called the Zibbyverse. Moms don't have Time to Read Books has something for everyone, whether you're a mom like me or simply a busy reader. So don't miss out. Follow Moms don't have time to read books on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. New episodes are released every weekday, bringing books to life. I did consider Barney a friend, and.

[Jack Wilson]

He'S still a friend to this day. The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to.

[Laurie Frankel]

You know I love you, you love me. I call it the Purple Mantra.

[Jack Wilson]

Barney taught me how to be a man.

[Laurie Frankel]

Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.