726 England vs France - A Literary Battle Royale (with Mike Palindrome) - RECLAIMED

Summary

The History of Literature – Episode 726

England vs France: A Literary Battle Royale (with Mike Palindrome) – RECLAIMED

Date: August 18, 2025
Host: Jacke Wilson
Guest: Mike Palindrome

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Overview

In this lively, imaginative episode, host Jacke Wilson and his returning guest, the ever-enthusiastic Mike Palindrome, pit two literary juggernauts—England and France—against each other in an old-fashioned "battle royale," picking five authors apiece to field their nation's greatest literary army. The tone is witty, sometimes irreverent, and rooted in the pair’s deep bibliophilia and affection for intellectual gamesmanship. Along the way, they explore both nations’ literary traditions, personal biases, and the cultural nuances that make the rivalry so enduring.

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Key Discussion Points & Structure

The Rivalry: History and Setup

• The England/France Rivalry:
  Jacke opens by referencing the thousand-year "love-hate" relationship between the English and the French (07:48):

  “These are close neighbors we're talking about. Very close. Like unfriendly relatives sharing a flat...”
  He points out their proximity yet cultural distinction, touching on historical wars and mutual fascination, with music, cuisine, and especially literature flowing both ways.

• Format and Rules:
  Jacke explains the premise ([25:01]):

  “We're each going to pick an army of five great authors, and I'm going to put my five up against yours, and we will see whose literature is the strongest. If the battle were not soldiers and generals, but novelists and poets, who would carry the day?”
  Jacke fights for England (England only, no Ireland or Scotland), while Mike, a self-professed "first love" Francophile, fights for France.

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Picking Literary Champions

France:

1. Marcel Proust (27:49) (Mike)
   • The ultimate literary marathoner, whose "Remembrance of Things Past" rewards readers’ patience.
   • Quote:

     “If I can be a little spiritual, the book starts to love you back.” (28:37)

2. Gustave Flaubert (34:40) (Mike)
   • Master of “le mot juste,” father of modern literary realism.
   • Quote:

     “Madame Bovary, possibly the greatest novel under, I don't know, 500 pages...line by line, it's just a beautiful, beautiful novel.” (35:25)

3. Albert Camus (40:08)
   • Existential wild card, the “fearlessness in which he wrote” is praised.
4. Charles Baudelaire (45:49)
   • Paragon of poetic innovation and bohemian Parisian energy, lauded as perhaps the “greatest poet ever”.
   • Quote:

     “I just feel like he raised poetry to a level of just the highest art. I mean, dispense with fiction, dispense with painting, everyone should return to poetry.” (46:10)

5. Stendhal (50:54)
   • Chosen over Balzac; his novels are seen as embodying French history, philosophy, and a unique sense of “being French”.
   • Quote:

     “For me, [Stendhal] is really just the axis, the touch point of so many different things going on in French philosophy and Napoleon…” (51:37)

England:

1. William Shakespeare (32:30) (Jacke)
   • The “nuclear weapon” of English letters, exceeding any national or linguistic boundary.
   • Quote:

     “Shakespeare is as good as anyone the world has produced at doing anything. He's Einstein or Newton.” (32:30)

2. Jane Austen (with backup from the 19th-century English novelists) (38:03)
   • Austen as “general,” Dickens, the Brontës, George Eliot in support.
   • Quote:

     “Jane doesn't really need to take a backseat to anyone. She's so sharp, so observant, so witty.” (38:58)

3. Virginia Woolf (with 20th-century Modernists) (43:39)
   • General Woolf is supported by Orwell, Auden or Eliot, Larkin, Graham Greene, Iris Murdoch, and others.
   • Quote:

     “This is where the novel grew up...Virginia Woolf is on the case. She was as sharp a critic as she was as glorious a novelist.” (44:13)

4. The Romantic Poets (General: Wordsworth) (48:29)
   • Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Blake, plus honorary Mary Shelley.
   • Quote:

     “They really brought in this...that poets need to feel something… Live and love and open up your vein and bleed onto the page.” (49:17)

5. Zadie Smith (and contemporary heavyweights) (53:06)
   • Smith leads a diverse squad: Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan.
   • Quote:

     “There's a bit of...let's catch our breath here, I think, as the industry kind of declines. But what they do in this new landscape is...ideas are bubbling over even as the novel shrinks.” (53:21)

Notable Benchwarmers & Honorable Mentions:

• France: Hugo, Dumas, Sartre, Beauvoir, Jules Verne, Balzac, Rimbaud, Racine, Verlaine, Rabelais, Voltaire, Maupassant, Molière, Houellebecq (56:11).
• England: Pope, Dryden, Dr. Johnson, Defoe, Fielding, Smollett, supporting Douglas (53:40).

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Spirited Exchanges & Literary Commentary

• Cultural Comparison and Literary Superiority
  • France’s “Blood” vs. England’s “Customs” (52:53):

    “France, we're talking about the basic rights of men.”
    “[For England] ...they feel being English in their customs. [For France] ...they feel being French in their blood.”

• On Proust:
  • “The difficulty of this book is...part of the reward is that you couldn't write a book that was tightly plotted, that was as just world encompassing the way Proust did.” (29:34)
• On Jane Austen:
  • “She’s the one sitting quietly in the corner while the blowhards who can’t stop talking take up all the oxygen...If you wander over, you think: my god, she’s the smartest one here.” (39:00)
• On Flaubert’s Influence:
  • “Possibly the most influential writer ever...He lay the groundwork for the way you could structure the novel and the way he wrote.” (36:13)
• On Camus:
  • “There was nobody like him. And the fearlessness in which he wrote...It was maybe my first French literary love.” (40:55)
• On the English Moderns:
  • “This is the thing. George Orwell, you know that if he was French, you would have him in your five. He's in my list...just hanging around...overqualified.” (45:14)
• On the Romantic Poets:
  • “Poets need to feel something...these coughing, drug-addled wretches were gazing out at the landscape and writing like bandits. And it’s them that we can thank for hundreds of years of poetry.” (49:24)

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Memorable Moments & Banter

• The Collective Noun for Wars:
  Jacke humorously proposes calling a group of wars a “monger of wars.” (15:23)
• Proust’s Ego:
  The tidbit about Proust paying for positive reviews, delighting Mike in its “very French” scheming. (32:05)
• Parisian Cafe vs English Pub:
  Comparing scenes of literary culture: “What’s really coming across here is the Parisian Cafe with Camus and Baudelaire versus...a cottage or the pubs in England.” (47:41)
• Battlefield Visuals:
  From Jane Austen “manning a cannon and opening fire” (40:00) to the Romantic poets in “scarves and aviator goggles...all aviators...standing by the fireplace and threatening to put a dagger in their hearts.” (49:14)
• Shakespeare, the “Nuclear Option”:
  Jacke: “The problem is, Shakespeare is like a nuclear weapon. He's like a Gatling gun on a field of horses and cavalry with sabers.” (57:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Contextual Banter & Rivalry Intro: 07:48 – 12:01
• Rules of the Game Explained: 25:01 – 26:29
• Mike's Picks (Proust, Flaubert): 27:49 – 37:47
• Jacke's Picks (Shakespeare, Austen, Modernists): 32:30 – 53:21
• Baudelaire Discussion & Poetry: 45:49 – 48:12
• Romantics & “Feeling” in Poetry: 48:29 – 50:54
• Final Picks, National Identity, Self-confidence: 52:17 – 56:11
• Benchwarmers and Honorable Mentions: 56:11 – 57:31
• Humorous Deconstruction, Who Won?: 57:31 – 60:18

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Notable Quotes

• “When it comes to literature, Shakespeare is as good as anyone the world has produced, and he's as good as anyone the world has produced at doing anything. It's—he's Einstein or Newton.” – Jacke (32:30)
• “If I can be a little spiritual, the book [Proust’s] starts to love you back.” – Mike (28:37)
• “I picked Stendhal because I just think the substance of his novels represents the real history of France, that maybe it's the greatest nation on earth. I'll just throw that out there.” – Mike (51:10)
• On Camus: “There was nobody like him. And the fearlessness in which he wrote…It was maybe my first French literary love.” – Mike (40:55)
• “Jane doesn't really need to take a backseat to anyone. She's so sharp, so observant, so witty. Her plots are so good, they move forward so well.” – Jacke (38:58)
• “Possibly the most influential writer ever...he lay the groundwork for the way you could structure the novel and the way he wrote.” – Mike on Flaubert (36:24)
• “Shakespeare is like a nuclear weapon. He's like a Gatling gun on a field of horses and cavalry at sabers.” – Jacke (57:31)

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Tone and Takeaways

• The episode is rich with literary insight, banter, and good-natured one-upmanship.
• Both hosts indulge in playful stereotypes and affectionate digs at each nation’s literary “personality”—the flamboyant French, the reserved yet relentless English.
• The author-drafting game leads to a lively discussion of literary influence, technical innovation, and the role of cultural identity in shaping the canon.
• The final score? Even as Jacke claims Shakespeare as a trump card, Mike’s impassioned defense of individual French greatness keeps things honest. The “battle” ultimately affirms that both nations have transformed world literature—but in fascinatingly distinct ways.

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Suggested Listen For…

• Readers interested in big-picture literary history with a playful twist
• Fans of literary “drafts” and canon-building debates
• Francophiles, Anglophiles, and “literary sports fans” of all types

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To hear the full depth, range, and laughter, listen to the episode at History of Literature or your favorite podcast platform.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello everyone. The History of Literature Podcast is going.

[Mike Palindrome]

On tour next spring.

[Jack Wilson]

I'll be going with a small group.

[Mike Palindrome]

Of travelers to London, Oxford and Bath where we will visit the land of Dickens, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and more. A Trip to Remember if you're interested.

[Jack Wilson]

In learning more about how you can join.

[Mike Palindrome]

You can check out the [e-mail] or by visiting our partner at John Shores Travel.

[Jack Wilson]

That's Shores without an E. Or just send me an email@jack wilsonauthormail.com that's J.

[Mike Palindrome]

A, C K E. Wilson Wilson, author, gmail.com let's give ourselves something to look forward to in 2026. We would love to see you there.

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[Mike Palindrome]

Hello. Today on the podcast we reclaim an episode that's been lost for years. England versus France, a literary battle royale with Mike Palindrome. And it's coming up today on the History of Literature.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, here we go.

[Mike Palindrome]

Welcome to the podcast.

[Jack Wilson]

It's an exciting day here at the.

[Mike Palindrome]

Podcast as we start our project to reclaim episodes that have fallen out of our archive. I'll tell you why this one fell out and then we'll hear the episode which is now today Falling back in. How lovely. But first, I'm Jack Wilson, your host, and I would love to be your host in England, one of our battling countries today. I'd love to host you not for a battle, but for a round of love loving literature, that is. We'll be touring to the sites of Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Dickens and others with some special guests. We're keeping open the signups at least through September, but act now because space is limited, don't have room for everyone people. Contact me at jackwilsonauthormail.com or go to historyofliterature.com where we have links to the itinerary. You can also contact our travel partner John Shores Travel email Masahiko, our tour coordinator at Masahiko at John Shores Travel. We'll have those addresses and links in the show Notes. Come one and come all Bring a friend. It'll be a magical mystery tour of sorts, a magical literary tour with food and drink and nice accommodations and the very best company that literary podcasting has to offer. And it's just a one stop shopping for you. John Shore's travel takes care of all of the arrangements. They pick you up and drop you off and we will all have fun together. It takes place in May of 2026, but please do sign up now so we can make sure that we have room for you. Okay, here we go. So Mike Palindrome, noted Francophile, joined me back in May of 2020 for a battle royale. England versus France. Pick your five best authors. Who wins? I have to say, I'm much more France inclined today than I was five years ago, but I'm still nowhere near Mike's level. Mike's the kind of guy who talks French with other native English speakers just for fun and to stay in shape. But Paris is so wonderful. I loved it when I was there last spring and the books are incredible. On the other hand, England is no slouch. How will the five match up? We do it draft style and you will hear. Now this is one we recorded in 2020, but we had to take it down from the archive due to some copyright questions. And let me tell you what you will not hear that you did hear if you listened in May 2020. I had some intro music playing in and out of our conversation, as I usually do, and I thought, well, this will be good. France and England. I' the closeness of the two countries. They're like Holmes and Moriarty going over the falls or going down, falling over Reichenbach Falls in a death clinch. Aren't they destined to be linked by that little separated channel of water? And all those centuries of history and cross fertilization and comparison and integration and. And fighting, cultural fighting, as well as sometimes on the battlefield and all of that. So I used for my little musical breaks, an example of a famous English song being sung in French and a famous French song being sung in English, Michel, by the Beatles, where they were singing in French and La Vie en Rose as it was being sung in English, if I recall correctly. Instead of hearing those songs, you'll just hear our friend Gabriel playing the piano, which is kind of appropriate too. Gabriel is from Spain. Maybe we need a third European country to serve as a neutral party, kind of broker the peace during the breaks in case things get heated. So here we go from May 2020, the entire episode almost, of France versus England, a literary battle royale. I hope you Enjoy it.

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Were you in town for the 4th of July?

[John Cleese]

When was that?

[Advertisement/Announcer]

Let's see, we celebrated it Monday.

[John Cleese]

Monday. Monday. Oh, that's what it was. Yeah. I thought there was a lot of gunplay, you know, for New York on a Monday night.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

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Even for New York, A lot of California.

[John Cleese]

Yeah.

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Now that holiday, I guess means nothing to you, does it?

[John Cleese]

No, we don't, we don't celebrate Independence Day, mind you. We, we celebrate the day before. Yeah, we celebrate Dependence Day.

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I see.

[John Cleese]

We have these muddles of Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock, you know, in effigy. And we, we jeer them. We say, isn't it about time you came a little bit more independent? That kind of thing.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I see.

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Do you do. Are there actually people living over there.

[Jack Wilson]

Who, who from generation to generation have.

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Had a grudge passed down to them and are still walking around holding it against the Americans for.

[John Cleese]

Oh, I think so.

[Jack Wilson]

Really?

[John Cleese]

Yes. Not as much as against the French, who are our natural enemies. You know, we've been fighting them for a thousand years. The two events of the this century being mere aberration in this pattern. Now we hate the French, basically. And if we have to fight anyone, I'd say let's fight the French.

[Jack Wilson]

All right, good.

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Let's do it.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Let's do it.

[Jack Wilson]

That's John Cleese talking to David Letterman in 1988, talking about the long standing rivalry between the English and the French. That rivalry has spilled over a few times into conflict. They are 20 miles apart at their closest point, separated by nothing but a thin strip of water that engineers can tunnel under and elite swimmers can swim across. 20 miles, that's a walkable distance. On dry land you can walk that in a single day. You could bike it in an hour. You could make the crossing from England to France 10 times and still not travel as much distance as a person going from New York City to Boston. These are close neighbors we're talking about. Very close. Like unfriendly relatives sharing a flat too. Strong headed, proud, willful relatives forced to share an apartment, running a strip of tape down the middle to preserve some autonomy. Not everyone honors that little strip of tape. 50,000 people use the Chunnel every day to cross between England and France. Almost as many take the ferries. 30 million or so every year make the crossing, not counting those who fly. French school children grow up learning English and vice versa. Parisians go to London on holiday and vice versa. Music crosses the channel easily and so does fashion and so does cuisine. But what about literature? Authors like the English writer Julian Barnes are proud Francophiles. The French writer Jose Alain Fralon called England our most dear enemies. So how do we make this into a show? England versus France? Well, wait, why don't we explain what our show is first? I'm Jack Wilson. This is the history of literature. Okay, we got that out of the way. We are slaves to tradition here, aren't we? Maybe that's appropriate for our topic today, since there could hardly be two countries more in love with their own traditions than England and France. And this might play its part in the animosity between the two nations. They fought many wars. As John Cleese said, the 20th century alliances are the aberrations, not the norm. Speaking of norm, it was the Norman invasion. Oh, jeez. Who writes this stuff?

[Mike Palindrome]

You know it's not me, right? It's an intern.

[Jack Wilson]

Speaking of norm, it was the Norman invasion. What is. It's like a television show. That's what this script sounds like. A bad television show when the writers are just phoning it in. Or a bad op ed piece written to fill up words. Like the guy who was New York Times guy recently, he was writing about the coronavirus in New York and he said New York has a neighborhood called Corona, which ironically was one of the worst hit neighborhoods in the city. How offensive is that? Like that has anything to do with anything. The middle of a tragedy and you're coming up with little puns and insightful word coincidences. So what?

[Mike Palindrome]

So you made a little connection.

[Jack Wilson]

Just filling up. Word. Paid by the word. I'm not paid by the word, but here's what I have to work with. Speaking of norm, it was the Norman invade. You know, this would be interesting if it were norms that invaded. Not Normans, the people, but an invasion of norms. Social. Or maybe guys named Norm. How about that? An army full of norms. Normans. An invasion of norms. Social norms. That would be interesting. A sneaky invasion of cultural norms.

[Mike Palindrome]

Ideas influence art.

[Jack Wilson]

That's a lot closer to what we're talking about today, actually. But we'll get there. Here we go. Speaking of norms, it was the Norman Conquest that kicked things off in 1066. Wars continued apace. There was the Hundred Years War, a series of wars that stretched out over 116 years. And then the second Hundred Years War, which was another collection of wars. Let me stop there. It's gonna make the point that they couldn't be contained with just a hundred years. They had hundred years wars that lasted longer than 100 years. But now I have something interesting on my mind. Something More interesting, a collection of wars. Have you heard that expression before? Series of wars. Collection of wars. That's what I said. Are those the right words for a group of wars? Is that the right collective noun? A bunch of wars. What is the right word? I looked it up. It turns out that there is no collective noun for wars. You know what collective nouns are, right? A herd of elephants, A pride of lions, a. A flock of seagulls, A murder of crows.

[Mike Palindrome]

An exaltation of larks, A coven of.

[Jack Wilson]

Witches, A murmuration of starlings. These are all good to know. Some of them are quite impressive.

[Mike Palindrome]

Very inventive.

[Jack Wilson]

You don't have a batch of parrots. You have a prattle of parrots. Butterflies don't arrive in a. A group. They arrive in a rainbow. Some of these collective nouns clearly come from our view of the thing itself, rather than what the group looks like. A memory of elephants, for example. An invention of machines. But no one has given war a collective noun. We're adrift when it comes to multiple wars. Well, we need them for the English and the French because they had so many. Time to change our paucity of collective nouns. We've come up with the answer here at the History of Literature podcast. I know, I know. Why not just use a squadron of wars? A battalion of wars? It works fine for airplanes and military troops, after all. Or how about a snatch of wars, which is used for pickpockets. I thought about using a mess of wars, which is currently working just fine for officers, grits and iguanas. A litter of wars is not bad, and a gang of wars is pretty good. And I thought about getting very creative. A Hitler of wars. A Caesar of wars. An Attila of wars. A Napoleon of wars. Now we're getting somewhere. Maybe we can frame wars in a certain way here. A Washington of wars. A Churchill of wars. Or maybe we should go cutesy. A fun of wars. Fun is already used for fish when you're not using school. A gaggle of wars. Or we can borrow from Chihuahuas and.

[Mike Palindrome]

Call it a yap of wars.

[Jack Wilson]

Or borrow from lasers and call it a zap of wars.

[Mike Palindrome]

Borrow from gorillas and call it a whoop of wars.

[Jack Wilson]

That's not bad, but no, I don't think those are quite right. I think I've found the answer. From now on, we go. Wait, do we have some music for this? There we go. From now on, a group or collective of wars will be called collectively a monger of wars. You're welcome, English language. Back to our story. England and France have sought. Have sought feverel. I blew it. The big run up to our big use of the phrase England and France have not sought feveral. They've fought several mongers of wars throughout the past thousand years. Wars for territory and religion and rule. What does it mean for one side to be victorious? They impose their will, they impose their culture, they impose their language. And that's where things get interesting from a literary perspective. What would it have meant for Gustave Flaubert had things gone differently and he was living under Queen Victoria and speaking.

[Mike Palindrome]

English rather than living in the French.

[Jack Wilson]

Second Republic and the second House of Bonaparte? What if Shakespeare, instead of living under Elizabeth, newly triumphant against the Spanish Armada, where Shakespeare is proud to be English and making little jokes about France and the French language, what if he was instead living under a French king and making his little cracks about English? Would he have ever risen to the heights he rose to had he been not speaking the language of Chaucer and Spencer and Sidney? If he did not have the pride of Elizabethan England on the rise to be the wind at his sails? And what if we turned things around a bit? What if literature didn't follow leadership? But what if it was leadership that followed literature? What if the battleground was not fought with the sword, but the pen? What if these issues were decided by the great authors that each country or each culture could produce? That's what we're exploring today. A battalion of authors suiting up in their armor, getting ready to fight for their heritage. France and England on the eve of the battle, sending forth their greatest literary minds to fight for cultural and linguistic supremacy, to fight on the battlefield of literature. A battle royale with Mike Palindrome after this. Hey folks, it's Jack. If you're like me, you don't need fancy clothes. But you do need some solid basics that give you a lot of good options. I work every day with the same people. I can't wear the same thing all the time. That's where Quince comes in. Quince has closet staples I reach for over and over. Mixing and matching cashmere sweaters with jackets, button down shirts and polos. These clothes take me from the office to a dinner party or sometimes just for a weekend hang. The best part, everything with quints is half the cost of similar brands. Quince works directly with top artisans and by cutting out the middlemen, they give you luxury pieces without the markup. Why drop a fortune on basic clothes.

[Mike Palindrome]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Mike Palindrome]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Mike Palindrome]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Jack Wilson]

Okay, joining me now for what I'm sure will be a highly unusual conversation is our highly unusual. No, our our highly usual conversationalist, our old friend Mike Palindrome, the president of the Literature Supporters Club, who's here to help us fight an imaginary cultural battle, England versus France.

[Mike Palindrome]

Mike, welcome back to the history of Literature.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Hey Jack.

[Jack Wilson]

So before we begin, I wanted to ask you about something that I noticed on Twitter. You are reading War and Peace with an online group. 12 pages a day or something like that. And I noticed that this exchange with one of your fellow Tolstoyans, a person who wrote every day I read my assigned pages of War and Peace for Tolstoy. Tolstoy. Together I read one Emily Dickinson poem and I read about 20 pages of Don Quixote for my book club with two other writers. And you replied, love it. My reading schedule is. And then you go through what you read. Mike, you are on the record as saying that Don Quixote is the most overrated Work in literature. Your animosity toward that work has been legendary here on the History of Literature podcast. I've suffered from your attacks on that great Spanish classic. I do all this damage control from the emails I get from outraged Spaniards and others, and here you are in public backing down like a coward. Love it. Why didn't you. Why did you take on Don Quixote in public?

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

What was the time of that tweet? That could have been after many bottles of Win.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so it wasn't a general softening. It was the. You're going to blame it on the grape.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I got into one argument on Twitter with somebody, and afterwards, I really regretted it because I just think that it makes people courageous to hide behind their Twitter account.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, I agree.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I mean, until the day where people know each other and.

[Jack Wilson]

And it's so everything.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

There's like an inner inside Twitter that they can set up.

[Jack Wilson]

And it'd be kind of like. Like if when people are attacking each other for misspellings or. Or punctuation stuff, and you kind of think, you know, like, that's the problem with attacking people on Twitter is it's so hard to get your meaning across. And everything lacks context, and everything lacks the exception that would prove the rule, you know, and it's sort of like it just as a form. You just think the form is so limited. You're not attacking people at their best. You're just shooting fish in a barrel, one after the other.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah. I mean, here's what I was thinking when I wrote Love it. I'm just so glad to see people tackling long works, Even the ones that I think are, you know, not so great. But, I mean, better. Better Don Quixote. Maybe this is my new mantra. Better Don Quixote than the Voice and Breaking Bad.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So let me describe what I think we're doing here today. We're taking a look at two longtime rivals, England and France. These countries have fought wars against each other, and the idea is, well, England wanted to impose its system and culture on France and vice versa. So we have two ideas, I think. One is, well, what if that had happened? What if England ruled France or France ruled England? Would literature be better off? It's kind of like saying, if Germany had won World War II, we'd all be speaking German. Would that be better? Would our food be better? Would our books be better? And all of that. And there's a second way to look at this, which is to say if the battle was carried out by literary culture instead of by Soldiers who would win. So we're each going to pick an army of five great authors, and I'm going to put my five up against yours, and we will see whose literature is the strongest. If the battle were, were not soldiers and generals, but novelists and poets who would carry the day. So I'm taking England and you're taking France. I'm probably a bit of an Anglophile. But you are definitely a Francophile, wouldn't you say?

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I was going to say, before I became an Anglophile and an Arsenal fan and Ishuid, you know, Evelyn Waugh devotee, I was a Francophile. So France is definitely my first love. My first inferiority complex, my first.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, yeah, your first inferiority complex.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

That's interesting because it's like the only place that Manhattan might feel like it could take a backseat to.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Right.

[Jack Wilson]

It looks down at Los Angeles or San Francisco or. Or Chicago or New Orleans or anything else looks down its nose, even at London. But Paris.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

No, you can't. Yeah. And all the cliches about drinking wine and eating cheese and being a film connoisseur, it's all true.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Okay.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I. I have to say I came into this as I was preparing, thinking that it would be a complete route. And I kind of still think that I'm trying to. I'm trying to handicap things a little bit because I'm a native English speaker. So I. I realize I might be a little biased here, but even so, I think I have the. The stronger side. And to make things a little harder, I didn't include Scotland or Ireland. This is England only. So I'll let you pick first. Who is heading up your army? Which Frenchman or French woman is your number one pick?

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

It's just funny to think of these guys as part of an army. Especially Bedridden Proofs.

[Jack Wilson]

It's like a Monty Python sketch.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah, they have that great sketch. The German philosophers versus the Greek philosophers. And the. All of them are walking really slowly, ignoring the ball. Yeah, it's. No. So I go with Priest. And I wanted to read a little bit from the last volume because I think, you know, I'll be the first to admit that it's just very intimidating reading remembrance of Things Past. And it does try your patience the way any long book does. And there's kind of really no reason to keep on reading. And then that's like the strangest recommendation other than you start to love the book. And if I can be a little spiritual, the book starts to love you back. I think it starts to Pay off.

[Jack Wilson]

It does. And you start to. It feels like a lot of the things at the end were earned that unexpectedly. Earned where? I'm kind of. I was reading the final volume and thinking, oh my God. I didn't think it was all going to tie in together like this. It didn't feel, it didn't have that feel. It wasn't like strands of plot that were all going to come together and you were going to see who was going to live happily ever after and that kind of thing, like a Dickens serial novel or something. But I remember reading the final volume and thinking, I can't believe I would have ever thought of not getting to this because it is so rewarding to read the final volume.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah. I mean, in the last volume you have lines like, was she not? Are not indeed the majority of human beings like one of those star shaped crossroads in a forest where roads converge that have come in the forest, as in our lives from the most diverse quarters. I mean, it's just, you know, all the characters just coming together and the feeling that, you know, the time has been well spent reading this work, like sentence by sentence. You know, you can almost pick sentences at random. And you know, the difficulty of this book is, I think like David Foster Wallace, the kind of part of the reward is that you couldn't write a book that was tightly plotted, that was as just world encompassing the way Proust did. I mean, no, no. You know, every plot would just seem, you know, a book this long with that much plot would seem so gimmicky.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. And it, it feels like you learn a lot from Proust as you're reading that. He's, he's thought through issues like time and memory and he's got interesting theories about all those things and about art and about, you know, you know, music. And you just feel like he's not only giving you character studies, but he's also giving you these. It's like philosophical essays.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Oh yeah. I mean, it's. You know, you almost forget where you are when you're reading some of these passages. And then when he takes you back to his world, it's like a breath of fresh air. Yeah. It's so well done. When I was rereading it in preparation, I was thinking like, you could just kind of just reread Proust. If I had to pick one book. I know I've always touted Magic Mountain, but I mean, maybe depending on how long I was stranded, I should be reading Proust.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, well, that's a great number one. And I Will say, I hate to concede this right from the start, but I did see, say that looking. Looking over as I was doing my scouting of your army, I. I did think there were two that could probably make it into my five, and Proust was one of them. So that's a good pick. So he will be. You know, I'm picturing him in his bed being wheeled onto the battlefield.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Did you. Did you know this? That he paid. I. I was reading a little. A little tidbit that apparently he paid for reviews praising his work to go into the newspapers, and it's been revealed in correspondence that he deliberately wanted it phrased certain ways so that no one could tie it back to him. That just seemed very French to me.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, well, it's very little, Marcel. It's very. It feels like him. You know, he tries hard. That's the other thing is when you read it as it goes on, you also start to admire him just for the project of it. It's like, oh, this guy, he's killing himself to write this thing. He's devoting his life to this book. Okay, so for my number one, I'm going to take William Shakespeare. Mike. I could probably win this just on Shakespeare alone. I could take five Shakespeare plays and beat most countries, including France, I think. I don't think this is just because I'm an English speaker. I don't pretend that England or America has the best composers or painters. But when it comes to literature, Shakespeare is as good as anyone the world has produced, and he's as good as anyone the world has produced at doing anything. It's. He's Einstein or Newton. There's no. There's no French equivalent, and maybe there's no equivalent in any language except maybe Dante. I just think he's maybe Tolstoy. Although when we do our Cold War episode, I'm sure I'll have some thoughts on Tolstoy. But, you know, you have French playwrights. I don't know if you're going to take any of them, but they have a couple of masterpieces at the most, and Shakespeare has 15 or 20. So I would keep going here, but I think it would be piling on a little bit. Everybody knows Shakespeare. He's associated with. With writing and the notion of a writer. And I also, as I was doing this, I decided that I would choose, you know, sort of five generals to lead the divisions of my army. But I'll have people backing him up in the field from his era. I won't take two from any one era. So backing him up in the field, I've got John Dunn and John Milton. I'm reaching back for Chaucer. I've got Spencer and Sidney, Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe. This is a battalion ready to follow their leader into battle. He's not lying down in bed. He's up. He's active. He's got a sword at his side.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

All right, so against that army, I bring you the. The individual assassin, Flaubert.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh. You have now named the two that I thought might make it into my file.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I mean, you know, compared to Flaubert, it's perfectionism. You could say, you know, a number of Brits are garrulous and wordy and kind of waste your time. I mean, I'm thinking of Dickens.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

You know, and I think, you know, Flaubert, of course, known for the sol Mo, just searching for the right word for weeks.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, he changed the game.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Basically. The father of realism, literary realism. Madame Bovary, possibly the greatest novel under, I don't know, 500 pages. I mean, I know, like the heavy weights, like Portrait of a Lady and Brothers Karamazov, but I mean, Madame Bovary, just line by line. It's just a beautiful, beautiful novel. I mean, it's. It's incredible that it was. I didn't know this, but he was put on trial for obscenity. Yeah, right.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, it's pretty racy for its time. I mean, it was. It was anti bourgeois, you know.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

That it could disturb. It could. I guess the fear was that it would cause all of these unhappily married women to run out and have affairs.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

And here's my. You know, the thing with Flaubert is that possibly the most influential writer ever.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I mean, he lay the groundwork for the way you could. For the way you could structure the novel and the way he wrote. I mean, you couldn't read. You can't read Flaubert quickly. Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

But, you know, it's a little bit. You could. You could see a backlash coming to that, too. It's a little like those albums, you know, when bands go through this thing and then they go in the studio and they spend a year making an album, and then they say, you know what? Let's just record one really fast. We gotta record one in a week because we're making it too precious. We're overworking it. We're spending, you know, a whole week just to get the cowbell right on this one song or something, and. And they lose some of the spontaneity, some of the freshness, some of the excitement, some of the energy. There's a little bit of that post Flaubert, too, that I think it stymied a lot of writers to think I've got to have every. Every description has got to be perfect, every word has to be in place. And for a whole novel, sometimes you can lose some of the. You know, you picture some writers just writing, revising, revising, revising, and losing some of the freshness that they would have if they had used Dickens as their.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Well, luckily, a French writer later on re. Energizes the Lyrie landscape.

[Jack Wilson]

Is that going to be one of your. Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

And teaches them to be individualistic.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so I better jump to my number two. I figured you'd be going with Flaubert, so I am going to meet strength with strength and go with a whole troupe of 19th century novelists led by my general, Jane Austen. And behind her, I've got Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot, Thackeray, Trollope, Lewis Carroll, some others. I think these hold up pretty well, even against Flaubert. Jane doesn't really need to take a backseat to anyone. She's so sharp, so observant, so witty. Her plots are so good, they move forward so well. She's the one sitting quietly in the corner while the blowhards who can't stop talking take up all the oxygen in the center of the room. The ones that you're, you know, the garrulous ones that you've criticized already. The Dickens is. If you wander over to that corner, you'll hear her remarks and you think.

[Mike Palindrome]

My God, she's the smartest one here.

[Jack Wilson]

So Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility. The world would be greatly impoverished without these books. And she's got a whole century's worth of pretty good novelists backing her up. These are people this swarming with characters and psychological insights and big descriptions of big places. This is. Make a pot of tea and collapse into the sofa writing.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah. I mean, Austin's kind of my kryptonite. The first. The first time I read Emma, I think I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how good this was.

[Jack Wilson]

And how funny she is. I feel like she could be on this podcast and just chiming right in. Not that we're spectacular or anything, but it wouldn't feel dated if she had a podcast. I would listen to it and I wouldn't be like, oh, yeah, that old fuddy duddy Jane. I'd be like, oh, she's so fun, funny and.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Sharp. I have this image of her manning a cannon and opening fire. Yep.

[Jack Wilson]

She's. Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

So maybe I need, like, you know, I need superpowers, which is why, with my third pick, I'll go with Albert Camus, which is kind of my wild card.

[Jack Wilson]

I underrated him, but I just did an episode on Camus. It's gonna run a couple weeks before this one.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I mean, you know, very good. The novel of ideas, the urgency of a book like the Stranger and the Pest. I just, you know, there was nobody like him. And the fearlessness in which he wrote. I mean, it was maybe my first French literary love. Reading the Stranger.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

And I think the question of not only Brits, but American authors, you know, trying to tackle difficult questions and bringing them to life.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

It's so hard to do. And Camus did it with every work he makes.

[Jack Wilson]

Some of the writers we've been talking about look like they're kind of bogged down with characters and plots and the conventions of fiction, you know, to. To get ideas out there, to make people think about something in a different way, but to use some of the trappings of fiction. So it's not like it's, you know, dry and. And like a systematic philosophy. He. He was. He was great at that. And it was.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

It's.

[Jack Wilson]

He's a great pick.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah. Have him swoop him from down from the sky. Just annihilating your army. It.

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[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

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[Jack Wilson]

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[Jack Wilson]

Well, I will. I'm gonna jump over my number three, because again, I'm gonna take. I'm gonna match strength with strength. So I'm gonna move to 20th century modernists and their progeny. So this is going to be kind of 1920 or so to 1980. So my general here is Virginia Woolf, but I've got. Backing her up. I've got George Orwell, I've got either Elliot or Auden. You know the famous thing that Auden said, or where they asked him if, you know, he was. He grew up in England and then he moved to America, and T.S. eliot had done the opposite. And they asked Auden if he was American or English, and he said, well, whatever T.S. elliot is, I guess I'm the opposite. So I get one of those two. I get Philip Larkin, I get Graham Green, I get Henry Green, I get Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amos, Agatha Christie. I'm throwing in for a little popularity. Roald Dahl, I was going to throw in, but you just told me he was anti Semitic. In our last episode. C.S. lewis, Harold Pinter, Tolkien A. Milne, Lennon McCartney, if you count their lyrics. So this is where the novel grew up. This is where we started to look at the world and say, holy hell, this place is a nightmare, isn't it? We're very far from Eden. We've got mechanized war and poison gas and nuclear weapons. We've got philosophers killing God out of control, bureaucracy, identities being smashed and thwarted by institutions. Corporate life run amok. All of this is in the air. And novels need to match it. The forms of novels need to match it, too. And Virginia Woolf is on the case. She was as sharp a critic as she was as glorious a novelist. And she's backed by some of these other true heavyweights. This is the thing. George Orwell, you know that if he was French, you would have him in your five. He's in my list. He's just hanging around. He's not even. He's not even one of the generals. He's just in the tent working the radio, overqualified. So he's, He's, He's. It's like my army is swooping in on the wings of avenging angels.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I guess your army, though, is too similar to each other. And my next pick is Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, the king of individuality, Charles Baudelaire.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, you're reaching. You're reaching. Okay, promote him if you want.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Probably the greatest poet ever. And I mean, of course, I could read from Flowers of Evil or Paris Spleen, but I think his prose poems are amazing, and his descriptions of the different classes, the underclass in Paris and capturing city life. I mean, in his poem Crowds, he writes, it is not given to everyone to take a bath in the multitude, to enjoy the crowd is an art. I just feel like he raised poetry to a level of just the highest art. I mean, dispense with fiction, dispense with painting, everyone should return to poetry. The life he lived is just set the benchmark for many of the people who flocked to Paris and made Paris the center of culture, you know, in 1910 and 1920s. I just think, you know, he lived the. He lived the life of an artist in a way that, you know, a lot of artists shy away from, you know, being in the public eye. And he. I mean, he was just. He embraced life in a way that I think exemplified the French attitude toward art that I would argue is superior to the British English attitude.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, when you. I mean, Shakespeare is a bit of a different thing because of the theater. But what's really coming across here, I think, is the Parisian Cafe with Camus and Baudelaire versus England. I guess it would be a cottage.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Or the pubs.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, I guess, or the pubs. But, yeah, I guess that's a good meeting space. But I don't picture the literary life being as active in the pubs as it is in the Parisian Cafe.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah, I mean, like Bartz talks about, you have your home, you have your work, and the cafe is your third space that is as equally as important as your home and your work, which is just an incredible idea of thinking of, like, this space.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay, so we are halfway through. Let's take a quick break and come back with the rest of our England versus France. Okay, so it's interesting that you have Baudelaire and you made a lot of claims for him. Greatest poet ever. I think you said that he sort of put the focus on poetry. Because I am going to match strength with strength here. I'm going to the Romantic poets led by my general, William Wordsworth. But look who's behind him. Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Blake. I'm going to throw in Mary Shelley, too, as an honorary Romantic poet for Frankenstein. I could have chosen any of those to be my general of this battalion. What an amazing time. What a transformative time. It's. The move to Romanticism is really one of the great shifts in the history of poetry to take in nature and to view it as sublime and to move away from the stately prose, like poems of, you know, celebrating a mayor or an event, that the Romantics make everything else that came before look so workmanlike and cerebral. And they really brought in this. I think they changed the way we look at poets of, you know, that poets need to feel something that we we ask that of poetry now. And poets don't just think about something, but feel it. Live and love and open up your vein and bleed onto the page. Be willing to die for your art. These coughing, drug addled wretches were gazing out at the landscape and writing like bandits. And it's them that we can thank for hundreds of years of poetry. And poets as they traipse onto the battlefield wearing their scarves and aviator goggles. I don't know, I don't know why I'm imagining them wearing that. Maybe they're all aviators in my view, standing by the fireplace and threatening to put a dagger in their hearts.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

My one knock against the Romantics is that they, they, they kind of overdo it with the beauty. You know, life is not beautiful.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

You know, but I, I, I'll be the first to admit that Mont Blanc is a, is, is one of the greatest poems.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I mean, I, I can go poem by poem and, you know, I respect your army.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Okay, good. All right.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

For my last pick, I, I, I picked Stendahl. It was hard to pick between Balzac, but Stendhal, to me, you know, I picked him because I just think that the substance of his novels represents the real history of France, that maybe it's the greatest nation on earth. I'll just throw that out there. And France's history is more important than English history. And I mean, the position on continental Europe meant that it was the site of so many important historical events, the French Revolution, the religious struggles and so many wars. And I think Stendhal for me is really just the axis, the touch point of so many different things going on in French philosophy and Napoleon. Yeah. I mean, you have French nationalism, which is fascinating. You know, normally we associate nationalism, now we, nowadays we do with something negative. But there really was a sense of, you know, what it meant to be French. And I'm not sure there is, you know, a real notion of what it means to be British.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. George Orwell, he wrote about it.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah. But there's a whole colonial. I think England's colonial guilt is far greater than.

[Jack Wilson]

It doesn't feel as deep. I mean, when Orwell talked about what it was like to be English, it kind of feels like they talk about the pub and they talk about playing darts and they talk about, they talk about a stiff upper lip. And it doesn't feel like they're talking about blood.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah. France, we're talking about the basic rights of men.

[Jack Wilson]

And they feel being French in their blood, English, it feels like they feel being English in their customs.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

And you have these aphorisms. You have the pretension. I haven't even touched upon the pretension, the French pretension that I love. Stendhal's the Red and the Black. Each chapter, I forgot, has an aphorism. The aphorism at the start of part two, which I love, it says, a writer, Saint Beuve, says, she is not pretty. She wears no rouge.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, the other thing is sometimes England can have kind of a bit of an inferiority complex. You know, English writers will love French writers, but sometimes they'll also say, you know, we're not as. We're not as great as the American writers are. Or, you know, they'll look to Ireland and Scotland or, I don't know. There is something a little bit. I have a feeling that my army could be in trouble, even though we might outnumber yours because, you know, just the confidence, the self confidence, I think would serve you well in this battle. However, that said, I think I've already won, but I'm gonna pile on here and give you my fifth general. So this battalion is my contemporary heavyweights battalion, led by my general, Zadie Smith. It's got. Salman Rushdie is in here. Martin Amos, Julian Barnes, Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwen. This is where we see the strength of diversity arriving, diversity of individuals as well as thought. There's a bit of. Let's catch our breath here, I think, as the industry kind of declines. I think contemporary literature now, it's got a bit of a feeling of, you know, it's no longer as prominent as it once was. But what they do in this new landscape is they give us a kind of quiet repose, keen insight. Ideas are bubbling over even as the novel shrinks. So they kind of suit our times. This is the crouch of children under desks terrified by nuclear holocaust in the Cold War, giving way to the relative peace. And then the crouching of the children under desks for school shootings. And they have taken us through terrorism. And, you know, the whole Salman Rushdie affair was of its time. And now we're in the age of coronavirus. And they apply good sense, wisdom, humor, and enough flawed humanity to make those ideas go down easy. So. Wow. I know you probably had some honorable mentions. I had a whole division that I didn't even use, my 18th century division with Pope and Dryden and Dr. Johnson and Defoe and Richardson and Fielding and Smollett, where they kind of invented the novel there. I left them at home just to boost Morale to write pamphlets and take charge of the effort on the home front. So, I don't know, Mike, how do you feel? Do you feel like your picks were good? You didn't take Hugo. I thought you might choose.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I feel like you did a classic British thing of cheating by bringing out everyone all at once. I kept a true bench. I had Dumas and Victor Hugo and Sartre and Beauvoir on the bench.

[Jack Wilson]

Jules Verne and Balzac and Rimbaud, Racine, Verlaine. Your bench gets pretty thin, pretty quick.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

But Rabelais and Voltaire and Guy de Maupassant, Moliere.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, I think.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Don't forget Michel Hulebeck, you know, and that's.

[Jack Wilson]

That's where I wanted to get. That's where I wanted to give you a little bit of credit because I. Since I don't read in French, I figured, you know, a lot of the. Some of the more minor characters I'd probably be more familiar with if I. If I was French. But it does seem like I do the one area. Let's see. So I feel like Flaubert and Proust were the two that I would have wanted in mine. I give Jane Austen. That's at least a tie, I'd say, with Flaubert, But Flaubert is awfully good. But the problem is Shakespeare is like a nuclear weapon. He's like a Gatling gun on a field of horses and cavalry at sabers.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah, but maybe Shakespeare, the cottage industry and not Shakespeare, you know, the person you reach for, you know?

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Well, wait, what do you mean that people don't read? I mean, how many people read Shakespeare compared to, you know, Camus? Yeah, well, you know, or Stendahl.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, I think a lot more people read Shakespeare than Stendahl.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Really? Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, I think so. I don't think I'll give you Camus because I think that's. He's read a lot in high schools. But a lot of that is because the prose is readable, I think.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Shakespeare, I mean, come on.

[Jack Wilson]

Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

There's multiple hacks. They were there.

[Jack Wilson]

You know, I did feel like, you know, here's the thing that I thought I didn't take Ireland and Scotland. Right. But we don't know. They might have joined your side.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jack Wilson]

Imagine, I mean, if they're fighting with us, you're in trouble. But if you get James Joyce and Yates and Samuel Beckett and J.K. rowling and Oscar Wilde and I mean, that could have been.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

But hand to hand combat, I mean, I kept Ballsack on my bench. But I think, you know, people hand to hand combat Balzac over Jane Austen. I mean, as much as I love Jane Austen, I mean, you know, you read Balzac's Pure Hero. I mean, it's.

[Jack Wilson]

Well, you know, you'd have Verlaine, when didn't he stab somebody? Or Rimbo, you'd have. I mean, Baudelaire. He was a kind of a tough character, wasn't he?

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

I mean, I was just reading that, you know, pnv, the couple that translate all the Russians. Larissa was saying that when she met her husband, she couldn't believe he had never read the Three Musketeers. And she made him read it immediately because she said there was no way I was marrying someone who had not read Three Musketeers.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

And there you didn't even need them. Yep. Well, I kept them on my bench. Okay.

[Jack Wilson]

Not bad. Well, we're going to try this with some others. I think we'll try the Cold War, might be one. Maybe we should do the Civil War. American north versus American South. We will save that for another day. Mike, as always, thank you for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Mike Palindrome (alternate or continuation)]

Thanks, Jack.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, that's gonna do it for this episode of the History of Literature. A Battle Royale. Or maybe we should call it a royal battle now, don't you think? Although Battle Royale isn't actually French. That comes from English. Some old English boxers made it up anyway. I think English kind of transferred. Trounced France, sadly. But my thanks to Mike Palindrome, El Presidente himself, for joining us and giving it his best shot. You can learn more about the [e-mail] and join us on Facebook. And I think facebook.com history of literature. I think that's where it is. Support the show at patreon.com literature or historyofliterature.com shop where you can buy virtual coffee. I hope everyone is doing well, staying safe and taking care. We'll be back with some James Baldwin and some William Faulkner coming up soon. So make sure you tell all your friends and loved ones, maybe your deepest loved ones. Loved ones, those long lost loves you always kind of loved in secret. But now that you're getting older, it's time to tell them what you really think. Finally.

[Mike Palindrome]

I love you.

[Jack Wilson]

I've always loved you. It's you, you, you. You're the one who stolen my heart. It's you. But you can't say that, can you? That might shock the relationship you currently have with them. Which is to like one of their posts on Facebook every six months or so. So you do this. Go to their house at night and break in. You find their phone. You log in. If you need to use their thumbprint, you do this while they're sleeping, but be very careful, very gentle as you pull their hand and place it on their phone. ID circle. Must be careful. This isn't going to work.

[Mike Palindrome]

If they wake up, it might fire.

[Jack Wilson]

A gun at you and kill you. We don't want that. That's counterproductive. So you log into the phone. You find that maybe you guessed their password. Maybe it's their birthday. Maybe it's your birthday. Isn't that interesting? You find the podcasting app. You subscribe to the History of Literature podcast. Well, who are we kidding? They've probably already subscribed. They've probably already joined the millions of people who have downloaded the show. Chances are they are subscribed already. But let's say they haven't. On the off chance, you subscribe for them and then you say nothing. You sneak away. It's an act of love. Years from now, you'll get your chance. You'll hear that they've become addicted to the show and their life has changed for the better. That's when you strike. Drop them a note and say, hey, that show, that has made you a better person. Me too. Are we too good for everyone else now?

[Mike Palindrome]

And of course, the answer will be yes.

[Jack Wilson]

And the two of you will find.

[Mike Palindrome]

Each other at last and you'll ride.

[Jack Wilson]

Off into the sunset together.

[Mike Palindrome]

And I'm telling you, I get it.

[Jack Wilson]

You're using me and my show for this. But I don't mind. I'm glad to be used when it's for causes like this one.

[Mike Palindrome]

For causes like love.

[Jack Wilson]

True love at last. Go ahead, use me. What could be better? Use away, young Romeo. Chew me up and spit me out. Dear Juliet, the show is here for you. As always. As ever, we do have at least one marriage under our belts here at the History of. Wait, we've run out of music, haven't we? Can we get a second helping? Orchestra. The Jack Wilson. Oh, man, I'm having trouble talking today. Jack Wilson Orchestra, can you help us out here? There we go. Thank you, Orchestra. We do have at least one marriage under our belts. That was a while ago. I'd like to up that to one a year, if I could. That would make me happy. Maybe even one a month. So get cracking, people. Time to connect. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening. And we'll see you next time.

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[Jack Wilson]

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