Episode 259: "Best of" Series - The Literary Life of Thomas Banks (Ep. 78)

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast: Episode 259 - "Best of" Series: The Literary Life of Thomas Banks (Ep. 78)
Release Date: January 14, 2025

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Introduction and Context

In this special "Best of" episode, host Angelina Stanford and co-host Thomas Banks, alongside lifelong reader Cindy Rollins, delve deep into the literary journey of Thomas Banks. Celebrating the podcast's growth since its inception in 2019, the trio revisits listener favorites and highlights older episodes to welcome new audiences into their vibrant literary community.

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Podcast Growth and Announcements

Angelina opens the episode by acknowledging the podcast's significant expansion since 2019 and expresses gratitude to listeners who requested a retrospective look. This episode serves as both a tribute to past discussions and an introduction for newcomers.

Cindy Rollins (00:25) emphasizes the podcast’s mission:

“We explore the skill and art of reading well and delve into the lost intellectual tradition needed to fully engage with the great works of literature.”

The trio discusses their collaborative dynamic, highlighting how their diverse backgrounds enrich conversations about classic literature and the transformative power of storytelling.

Sister Podcast Launch: The Well Read Poem

A major announcement in this episode is the launch of their sister podcast, The Well Read Poem, hosted by Thomas Banks. Scheduled to debut on January 18th, this new venture focuses on poetry recitation and analysis, aiming to deepen listeners' appreciation and understanding of poetic forms.

Cindy Rollins (03:34) shares her excitement:

“Poetry is not meant to be read silently. It's meant to be read aloud and heard. The new podcast will help you understand and enjoy poems better.”

Antonina adds:

“Each episode is under 10 minutes, making it perfect for morning routines or homeschooling activities.”

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Commonplace Quotes Segment

The segment begins with Thomas Banks sharing a profound quote from Catherine May’s Wintering.

Thomas Banks (07:06) reads:

“But I was glad to sing again, too. It had been a greater loss than I realized... We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air and lets our hearts soar with the notes we let out... We sing either way, that's the end of it.”

Cindy Rollins (12:55) reflects on the quote’s significance:

“Singing in hope of better times is a powerful sentiment to begin the new year with.”

Angelina attempts to share a Rudyard Kipling quatrain but humorously misquotes it, leading to light-hearted banter among the hosts.

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The Interview: Thomas Banks' Literary Life

The heart of this episode is an in-depth interview with Thomas Banks, unraveling his rich literary background and reading habits.

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a. Early Life and Upbringing

Thomas reflects on his childhood immersed in literature, thanks to his mother’s and father’s diverse reading habits.

Thomas Banks (22:34) explains:

“My dad’s reading was primarily nonfiction—history and political philosophy—while my mom was captivated by classic novels like Dickens, Flaubert, and Faulkner.”

Caught up in the playful dynamic, Cindy teases Thomas about his mysterious aura, setting the stage for a revealing conversation.

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b. Education and Reading Habits

Thomas recounts his homeschooling experience until fifth grade, emphasizing the robust literary environment fostered by his parents.

Thomas Banks (35:16) shares:

“Growing up in a home where learning and reading were normal things was an inexpressibly huge advantage.”

Angelina adds:

“We had a wide variety of books, from political biographies to classic novels, which ignited my lifelong passion for reading.”

He discusses pivotal moments in his education, including mastering Latin and his initial struggles with philosophy, ultimately switching his major to classical studies.

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c. Teaching Career

Thomas narrates his teaching journey, highlighting both rewarding and challenging experiences.

Thomas Banks (65:38) reflects:

“I found out that philosophy is not for me. My mind does not move easily in the realm of abstraction.”

He shares anecdotes about teaching logic and his love for Victorian literature, influenced by inspiring professors who shaped his approach to teaching by analogy and comparison.

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d. Reading Strategies and Commonplacing

A significant portion of the interview delves into Thomas's disciplined reading habits and his practice of commonplace books—a method of noting down quotes and insights from his readings.

Cindy Rollins (75:22) praises his meticulous approach:

“He reads down quotes he likes and even those he doesn’t, maintaining a comprehensive commonplace book.”

Thomas Banks (85:13) elaborates:

“I began commonplace not out of choice, but because it was assigned in high school. Now, it helps me keep track of a wide variety of readings.”

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e. Balancing High and Low Culture

The discussion transitions to Thomas’s unique blend of high and low culture interests, illustrating his well-rounded literary palate.

Cindy Rollins (79:15) observes:

“Mr. Banks genuinely appreciates both high and low culture, seamlessly integrating them into his literary discussions.”

Angelina shares:

“I bought him Kingsley Amos’s James Bond Dossier for Christmas—a perfect blend of scholarly analysis and pop culture.”

This balance underscores Thomas’s belief in the interconnectedness of all forms of storytelling, whether classical literature or modern film.

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f. Recommendations and Current Reading

Thomas recommends Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, explaining its relevance to contemporary generational struggles.

Thomas Banks (90:07) describes:

“It’s a slice-of-life novel depicting generational strife, much like today’s cultural conflicts.”

He also shares his current readings, including Dostoevsky’s The Double, highlighting his continuous exploration of diverse literary genres.

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Final Remarks and Promotions

As the episode concludes, the hosts encourage listeners to engage with their Patreon community, join their Facebook discussion group, and subscribe to their sister podcasts. They emphasize the importance of cultivating a rich literary life, reinforcing their motto:

“Stories Will Save the World.”

Cindy Rollins (93:14) humorously asserts:

“We keep this group our happy place. Friends, the power of the delete and block button has gone to my head.”

The episode wraps up with Thomas Banks reciting Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Time Real and Imaginable, encapsulating the poetic essence of their literary discussions.

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Notable Quotes

1. Thomas Banks (07:06):
   “We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air and lets our hearts soar with the notes we let out... We sing either way, that's the end of it.”

2. Cindy Rollins (12:55):
   “Singing in hope of better times is a powerful sentiment to begin the new year with.”

3. Thomas Banks (35:16):
   “Growing up in a home where learning and reading were normal things was an inexpressibly huge advantage.”

4. Thomas Banks (85:13):
   “I began commonplace not out of choice, but because it was assigned in high school. Now, it helps me keep track of a wide variety of readings.”

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Conclusion

This episode of The Literary Life Podcast offers an enriching exploration of Thomas Banks's literary journey, blending personal anecdotes with scholarly insights. Through disciplined reading, a passion for both high and low culture, and the practice of commonplace books, Thomas exemplifies the podcast's dedication to fostering a deep, engaging relationship with literature. Listeners are encouraged to join the community, engage in thoughtful discussions, and continue building their own literary lives.

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For more information, visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and join the conversation on Patreon and Facebook. Subscribe, rate, and review to stay updated with all the literary explorations and discussions.

Transcript

[Angelina Stanford]

Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the Best of the Literary Life Podcast.

[Cindy Rollins]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week, we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. I am Angelina Stanford, and here with me, as always, is the blondest, bombshelliest, Cindy Rollins. Hello, Cindy.

[Thomas Banks]

Hello.

[Cindy Rollins]

And.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, I'm sorry, Barbie.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, thanks, thanks. And also with us is the mysterious Mr. Banks, who, after today, may be actually more mysterious. I feel like the more I get to know him, the more mysterious he is. So we shall see what happens today. But we do have a very special episode today. We are launching the year with the Literary life of Thomas Banks. We've sort of held him back. You've gotten to know him. If you've been listening to the episodes and you guys have had a lot of questions about what was the reading life of someone? How did someone like this exist? So we're gonna try to unravel the mystery that is you today, dear.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, okay. Well, I look forward to being unraveled.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'm gonna. I'm bringing up the psychiatrist couch here, and we're just gonna plop your head up. All right?

[Thomas Banks]

So before, we're gonna give him a word in edgewise. So.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. My job today is to keep my big mouth shut and let my husband do the talking, not just jump ahead and say, this was his favorite book as a child. But I will not. I will not interview myself about my husband. I promise I'll be quiet, but I will be sort of bouncing up and down on my seat if you want to imagine that at home. So, guys, how was your Christmas?

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I spent it with you, so it was lovely.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, you have to say that because I'll kick you off the show if you don't. Cindy, how was your Christmas?

[Thomas Banks]

It was good. We had a great. We had a lot of pre Christmas activity and post Christmas activity, so really enjoyed that. I enjoyed seeing my family. We had a six week old baby for a week, so I'm not complaining at all. That's so good.

[Cindy Rollins]

So yeah, we had a really good Christmas and got books and relaxed as much as one can in a busy holiday and read a few things here and there. And of course very excited to get back, moving along with the podcast. We hope our listeners have had a good break too. So we have made the schedule for the first quarter of 2021. We did decide that we're not going to plan out the whole year ahead of time because, you know, we kind of like to go where the spirit move. And I appreciated that one person in the Facebook group said that she liked that we were not doing the whole year. That way we can sort of spontaneously respond to different things that come up over the year and interests that we all have. And as she said too, we can continue lobbying for books, which of course you can. So we will talk about that at the end of the episode about what's coming up. But you can also find the schedule on our Patreon and it's available to the set on public. So anybody who goes to patreon.com literarylife can see the public posts which include the schedule. And we also have it on our Facebook group. So that's coming up. The other announcement I want to make sure we make is that we do have a sister podcast launching this month, if everything's recorded and ready to go, if all goes well on itunes, end of things, the new podcast should launch January 18th. So that'll be basically a week after this one launches. And that is a new podcast called the well Read Poem, which will be hosted by our very own poet, Mr. Thomas Banks. And we're really excited about this because you guys gave us so much feedback about how much you enjoy the poems he reads at the end of these episodes and that the way that he read them actually helps you to understand the poem better. And of course, there is a huge connection between understanding and recitation. Poetry is not meant to be read silently. It's meant to be read aloud and to be heard. And a great deal of the meaning cannot be understood unless you hear it. And that means you have to read it well. So with that in mind, Cindy coined the phrase the well Read Poem and a new podcast was created. So Mr. Banks is going to be launching the first season on January 18th. And if you check that out, the first episode will explain to you how it all works. And so he'll be reading poems to you and telling you about the meaning and the form and the poet. And I'm really excited about how those came out.

[Angelina Stanford]

They were a lot of fun to record. I mean, they're quite short episodes, too. This isn't really. I should say, this isn't really an ambitious, make everyone an expert type of podcast by any means. It's not going to be on the same scale as the one you're listening to right now, but it's. Yeah. Just something friendly for you to do with your kids.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. That's a good point. Each episode is under 10 minutes, and it's something that can be used during morning time or just part of your day, part of your homeschool day.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm looking forward to that, too, because I struggle to listen to long podcasts.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, so do I.

[Thomas Banks]

So I'm. I'm going to subscribe and I will be listening, and I'm very excited about it.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right. So that is. That one will be called the well Read Poem. So you can look for that in your podcast feeds. January 18th. All right, guys, your first commonplace quotes of 2021. I am eager to hear this. Cindy wants to come out of the bag. We're gonna. We're gonna use out of the bag. She's gonna come right out swinging. Here we go. What you got, Cindy?

[Thomas Banks]

All right, so I picked this quote and I put it up on the page, and everybody saw that it was the Facebook page. It was a long quote, so I hope you'll bear with me. And I probably need to catch my breath before I start, but this comes from a book called Wintering by Catherine May. And this book kind of had a funny. I didn't even know what this book was about, but I saw the title and I thought, I want this book. And it was on audible. So I immediately bought it, which I rarely do. Last year, I had done the same thing with the book range. I saw the title range, I read a quick blurb, and I was like, this is my book. I want this book. And truly, it was one of the best books I read last year, Wintering. If you're interested in reading the book, it's a good book. It has some very high moments. It also has some low moments. So I don't want people to think this is just the perfect book. It isn't. But I really like the concept of what she was talking about, which was that our need and our desire that God has really placed in us. And she doesn't come at it from a totally Christian perspective, but we all need winter. We need winter. And at the very end of the book, she has a chapter called song and. And I'm sorry to give this long update before I even get to the long quote, but as I was planning for the new year, I always have all these, you know, I'm going to walk more, I'm going to diet, I'm going to exercise. And those things help me generally to stay on track and get, you know, re. Reprogram me. Although, you know, I rarely reach any real goals. But this year, out of the blue, I just had two really weird things that hit my mind. And as my, if you want to call them, New Year's resolutions, that's. I started them well before New Year's, but they were just things that came to my mind that I needed to be doing. One was to go outside every day. I'm, you know, I don't have small children, so I can say that a lot, but I wasn't doing that as much. So I just a few minutes ago, sat out in the rain for 20 minutes and let the rain hit me in order to check my little box for the day. But that has been life changing. The other thing I decided to do this year, and I don't even know where it came from, it just hit me as something I needed to be doing was I needed to be singing out loud every day. I don't sing hardly at all. And when I was talking to my son about this, it was kind of funny because I'm telling him these, here's what I'm gonna do this year. Because he had this new thing he's doing and he said, well, that took a weird turn. But anyway, I imagine my excitement with this new thing I'm doing is singing out loud every day, hoping nobody is around, making sure I'm all alone. But when I came to this chapter and she's talking about singing out loud and how good it is for our mental health. So I'm going to read what she said, and I'm also going to just challenge all of you if any of you want to join me in singing out loud every day. If you have a family, it's a little bit easier. I used to sing out loud every day with my family. But if you're alone and you aren't at home with anybody, I'm going to still encourage you. To try it and see what happens. I feel like my life has been changed just by going outside and singing. But we'll see. But here's what she said in wintering. But I was glad to sing again, too. It had been a greater loss than I realized in that particular wintering which saw the waning of my voice. It wasn't about the vanity of being able to trill out a fine song. It was about the joy of singing for its own sake. In 21st century Britain, we've linked singing with talent and we've got that fundamentally wrong. The right to sing is an absolute, regardless of how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air and lets our hearts soar with the notes we let out. We sing because it allows us to speak of love and loss and delight and desire, all encoded in lyrics which let us pretend that those feelings are not quite ours. In songs, we have permission to rehearse all our heartbreaks, all our lusts in song. We can console our children while they are too young to judge our rusty voices. And we can find shortcuts to ecstasy while performing the mundane duty of daily shower or scrubbing down the kitchen after yet another meal. Best of all, we can sing together. Whole families knowing the same songs and giving them the same meaning. When I sing with my son, I am teaching him something. Not just words and lyrics, but how to survive. Like the robin, we sometimes sing to show how strong we are and sometimes sing in hope of better times. We sing either way, that's the end of it.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's so good, Cindy.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yeah. Singing in hope of better times. It's a good sentiment to begin the new year with.

[Cindy Rollins]

Certainly I have a feeling our listeners are going to really have a lot of thoughts about that. I know that I am responding deeply to that. That taps into a lot of things like, I mean, other kind of social commentators have noticed that so much of our art now is just a performance and we are the audience that consumes it. Right. And doesn't participate in it. And music, of course, is one of. We go to concerts, we, you know, put on the headphones and I was going to say we put on the cd. That was going to really age me or Mellor. If you have a hipster, I put on. Put on some vinyl.

[Thomas Banks]

But we stream it.

[Cindy Rollins]

Right. But the point is someone else performs it and we consume it. And I'm not saying there's not a place for that. I love music being performed, but you Always sort of had performance art and then folk art at the same time. And folk art would be like, you know, if you got together, you know, Little House on the Prairie. Paul's gonna take out the violin after dinner, right? The fiddle, and he's gonna play, and y'all are all gonna sing and participate and make music. I think the same thing is true about stories that primarily our culture right now consumes stories through film. And so someone else is performing the story and we are consuming it in passively, which is very, very different than being a storyteller reading stories. I think families making music together and families telling stories are. I think those are deeply connected together. Especially since, boy, now we're really getting on one of my pet things. I mean, the first stories were sung, right? And so singing and storytelling are very, very closely connected.

[Thomas Banks]

I was gonna bring that out, too. When we talk about stories will save the world. Singing is part of. Of the redemption story.

[Cindy Rollins]

Absolutely, absolutely. And telling your own family stories is so important. And singing is part of that too. Yeah, my brain's going in, like, a million different directions right now. But, you know, I personally feel that when music and stories separated and went into two different paths, that something really important was lost there. And it's interesting to see, like, musicals and opera and things like that sort of bringing back storytelling and music. And, I mean, you look at something like the popularity of Hamilton, and that really speaks to the power of story and music together. Right. But anyway, just the whole idea, right, that we were just so passive in the way that we consume everything instead of actively singing and actively telling stories. I love that, Cindy. That's a great way to start.

[Thomas Banks]

One more thought on that before. Not to totally hijack this, but Kay Pelham, one of our longtime friends, has started after thinking about some of these concepts for a while, about the stories will save the world. And she's a musician. She decided to have a class, a local class for her for little children to learn the songs that are quickly being forgotten by our culture. And I just think that is a work of the Lord that she's doing. And I'm really pleased that she's doing that. And I hope other people will find ways to teach children these old songs and folk songs and hymns and all of these things that hold us together. Nursery rhymes as a culture.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, that's good. That's good, Cindy. Okay, well, I'll go next for my commonplace book. We'll let Mr. Banks go last, and that way we can lead into your interview here. Gotta be very formal. I'VE got to interview you. And it's really inappropriate that you keep trying to hold my hand, because this is a professional. I'm interviewing you. You gotta.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, of course. Of course.

[Cindy Rollins]

I went through my commonplace book this morning, and I kind of wanted to pick something that, I don't know, was hitting the right spirit for 2021. I feel like you really did that, Cindy. Those are some really good thoughts. I went a very different direction. So when I teach Renaissance literature, one of the things that strikes me and my students and I make a big deal about it in my class is writers like Milton and writers like Shakespeare. For them, when they talk about a disordered political world, you can see where I'm going. I'm going with this, right? We know all about a disordered political realm. And I think everybody agrees it's disordered, Even though we might disagree on what's the cause of the disorder and how to fix it. I think everybody can sort of universally see we've got disorder on our hands. For writers like Milton and Shakespeare, the answer to political disorder was never a political answer. For them, the political disorder simply was the outward working of inner disorder. That each of us are disordered in our hearts and souls, and that's the problem. And that if you want to reorder the kingdom, you got to reorder your soul. And that. That hits just really hard through all of their books. And it's one of the reasons why it's so important to read them, to be reminded that not every political problem has a political answer. Right? Sometimes the answer is decidedly not political, but nonetheless. So here's a quote I had in my commonplace book by, of course, my boy Northrop Fry, from a book he wrote called the Double Vision. And here he's explaining, making a point about Paradise Lost. So Milton, as we were just saying, and he just says this so well. And I think no matter where you fall politically, I think we are all observing this phenomenon right now in our culture. Michael explains to Adam in the last book of Milton's Paradise Lost that tyranny exists in human society because every individual in such a society is a tyrant within himself, or at least is, if he conforms acceptably to his social surroundings.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, I like that a lot.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow, that is really good. Everybody doing what is right in their own eyes. And that is culturally mandated, sort of.

[Cindy Rollins]

And it's not a new problem. And I think of that as a new problem, but it's a universal problem. As long as there have been human beings and governments and kingdoms is the Tendency toward tyranny in its many different manifestations. All right, Mr. Banks, let's hear you. He's going to start us off with something pithy and make me and Cindy seem so long winded.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, it's maybe not as profound as either of yours. It's a quatrain from one of Kipling's poems. The gods who are wiser than learning and kinder than life have made sure that. Sorry, I should.

[Cindy Rollins]

He's saying.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, my gosh, this is so anti climatic. I was trying to do this from memory.

[Cindy Rollins]

I was about to say he's doing this with no notes.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow. Okay. Well, this will be on the blooper reel, I guess, so. Sorry I messed that up. The gods that are wiser than learning, kinder than life have made sure no mortal may boast in the morning that even will find him secure. So that's Rudyard Kipling.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, wow. That's not the gods of the copy book headings, is it?

[Angelina Stanford]

No. It reminded me of that one a lot, though.

[Thomas Banks]

That has the same meter, doesn't it?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

It says gods.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Rhythmically, they're. Yeah, like it's called. That's from a rector's memory.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, nice. Oh, I need to go read that. That sounds good.

[Cindy Rollins]

All right, so without further ado, let's see if we can't get to know the mysterious Mr. Banks a little better. I'm excited. I'm taking notes.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay, Mr. Banks, so here you are. And you know, we've all been listening to you quietly try to get a word in edgewise here and there between Angelina and me. But today is your day, so we want to start at the very beginning. We want to go all the way back to when your mother was pregnant, and we want to know, did she read to you in utero?

[Angelina Stanford]

I. You know, I don't think that was really a thing yet. I know a lot of it seems I've known a lot of people who, you know, while, you know, while expecting children will, you know, set up, you know, rig up the pregnant moms. You know, like the big headphones that they put, you know, next to like, you know, the lady's tummy and have the kid listen to Mozart and that kind of thing. I've known a few people who have done that. I don't believe my mom. Mother did. So I guess I wasn't born a cultured person.

[Cindy Rollins]

Perhaps, but your mother is such a reader.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm sure she said while you were writing. I mean, my mother is my mother. Yeah. Is well educated. And most of her literary knowledge, I think is kind of self supplied. I mean, she did, she did attend college. She did not finish. She left to work, that kind of thing. Didn't finish her degree. But she, you know, she studied, she studied German and a number of other things and she knows, she actually knows, I think to this day German literature far better than I do. That's always been kind of a gap in my knowledge. But yeah, she read herself and read to us and my father also. They're both well read people in their different ways. And they both, I think, bequeath that to myself and my brother and sister. So we were blessed in that regard.

[Thomas Banks]

So you grew up in a home with books. There were books there in your home?

[Angelina Stanford]

Very much so, yeah. My parents said, I think they were. There was a study which had most of my father's. My dad reads, I would say 80% of my father's reading is nonfiction, history and political philosophy. Was. I mean, that's kind of what he studied in college. And you look at his bookshelves and I remember a lot of books about American and actually Central American history. Sort of interesting areas of his, I guess, you know, private obsessions. And a lot of biographies of Abraham Lincoln and also of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. So like a lot of political biographies. And then my mom, you look at her shelves and she had a lot of classic novels. There were, you know, there was Dickens and Flaubert and William Faulkner. And I'm just kind of mentioning that the book spines, I remember as a little kid and kind of wondering, oh, I wonder who that was. And. Yeah, that kind of thing. So, yeah, I think you could say they had a lot of. A wide variety of good stuff, kind of a mishmash.

[Thomas Banks]

Have you seen that, you know that commercial where they say the guy does the parenting like you're becoming your father, you're becoming your mother. And they're really cute commercials for some progressive maybe. I'm not sure. If you see, if you're watching like Hulu, you see these commercials where they'll say the people are like, she puts too many pillows on her couch. And he's like, now, now, if you can't sit on the couch, you have too many pillows.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that sounds familiar. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, one of them is a guy sitting on the couch reading a book about submarines. And the, the guy who's trying to help them not be their parents comes in and says, now who else reads a book about submarines?

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh yeah, I get so upset at.

[Thomas Banks]

That because I'm like, well, That's a legitimate thing to read about.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that's kind of a legacy. That's a wonderful heritage.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's not a quirk.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

So you're not your father. If you read a book about you, you should be doing what your father does at that point.

[Cindy Rollins]

I gotta say that. Well, there are many, many perks to being married to Mr. Banks. One of the fun, unexpected perks is that his parents regularly mail me books, just both of them. And then just the different. Whatever they're reading that they think I might like, they pop it in the mail. So that's always fun.

[Thomas Banks]

Wow, that's awesome.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yeah, they're very generous with printed matter, I guess. I think that's a family trait. Like, you fall in love with a book and you want to make converts to it. So that's something, I guess. Another way I kind of resemble both of them to go back to their bookshelf, the books that I would have read as a little kid. Of course, I remember a few in particular. My mother had. This was actually a set of books she had when she was a little girl, I think, that she had brought with her. And it was a set of orange books with black spines called Classics to Grow On. And it had a lot of. There was a. I think it was a set of about 20 odd books. It had the Lambs Tales from Shakespeare. It had Howard Pyle's Robin Hood, Collodi's Pinocchio, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales, of course, which I think that was the one we probably read the most from that particular set. It had the just so stories by Rudyard Kipling. And I think there was some Stevenson, maybe like some of Stevenson's Poems for Children. And then. Yeah. Then like, you know, kind of odd, you know, odds and ends stories like Mother Goose's Fairy Tales and Humpty Dumpty and all that kind of thing. So, yeah, there was a lot of good stuff. She read Beatrix Potter to us. And I really liked. I think that Potter, the Beatrix Potter universe kind of captured me more because of the illustrations than because of this stories. But I remember really falling in love with. Yeah, I remember. Think the illustrations were just really, really good.

[Thomas Banks]

The words were good. But you were actually pulled into those pictures.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I think I would appreciate the stories probably more now. But, yeah, the illustrations really captured me. So I guess I always thought of Beatrix Potter as a really gifted illustrator who wrote stories for the illustrations anyway. So, yeah, Beatrix Potter was kind of part of our upbringing now. Another thing I like now, but I don't think appealed to me necessarily so much then was Alice in Wonderland. I guess, maybe as a kid. I like the sort of. The otherworldly absurdism of it. Appeals to me now, and I find it funny, I don't think. I think the sense of humor was kind of lost to me at the time.

[Thomas Banks]

It is almost an adult book in a lot of ways.

[Angelina Stanford]

In a lot of ways.

[Thomas Banks]

Get pulled into it. Some kids will enjoy it, but it definitely can leave you feeling like, what in the world. I don't. I don't even know what this book is about or. The vocabulary is difficult, for one thing, but that's.

[Angelina Stanford]

That is true. Also. I. Actually, another book I. The Wind in the Willows also, I think, is something. There's a lot of children's books that, honestly, I feel like I've really had to. Well, had to wait. Simply waited. Tune to the time I was an adult to discover. And that's. That's another one. I remember picking up the Wind in the Willows as a kid, and I was probably, I don't know, maybe 11 or so at the time, reading part of it and not really getting it. And I don't know. I. It. It seemed that there was a. The book presumed a great knowledge of flora and fauna, flora in particular. Like, it presumed a level of outdoorsy ness, which I did not possess, I guess.

[Cindy Rollins]

But.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, it's a wonderful story, but, yeah, I just didn't. It did.

[Thomas Banks]

Also, a lot of people consider it two books, the adult book and the children's book. If you get past all the. The ethereal, you know, Pan and the. And the.

[Angelina Stanford]

The Piper. The Gates of Dawn and Piper.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And then. And just get to the. Mr. Straight to Mr. Toad. You know, it's great.

[Angelina Stanford]

Toad in the Motor Car. That part.

[Thomas Banks]

I think that part is hilariously childlike, but.

[Angelina Stanford]

I am Mr. Badger, you say.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, you just want to be underground in your library with your books and your sweater and your tea.

[Angelina Stanford]

I guess. Yeah. I think that's a sane badger. Was a sane view of life.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes. He comes out and just says a few pithy things or growls at people.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

So from what you've told me, your mother read out loud to you guys a lot. That was a big.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, from day one. Absolutely. She. She wasn't necessarily the. I don't know. What's the term? Sort of the tiger mom type who wants the kid to start reading at age 3 or something like that. So, no, she didn't pressure us into learning to Read too quickly.

[Thomas Banks]

I think she was just sharing her joy with you.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. By the time I started to learn to read, I remember wanting to. And I wasn't, like, an exceptionally bright kid. I think I had a pretty. Pretty average intellect. But I. Yeah. So she started teaching my sister and I when we were. My sister and me when we were about five. And I think I could read, like, picture books on my own comfortably by the time I was 6. And maybe my sister. I think my sister was a bit quicker than I was. And your sister a little younger than.

[Thomas Banks]

You or a little older.

[Angelina Stanford]

Dana's a bit. A year and a half older than I am.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

He's the middle child.

[Angelina Stanford]

I'm the middle child.

[Thomas Banks]

You're the middle. Oh, interesting. Let's floor this concept. Anyway, so did your mom. So you're a poet, and I know probably everybody knows that, but did you. Did she read you nursery rhymes or poetry while you were growing up or. I know you run across it when you read.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, absolutely. I remember her reading. Let me see, we had an Oxford Book of Children's Verse. We had. Oh, I remember her reading us. I remember her reading us, like, nonsense rhymes and.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

You know, things from. Things from, like, you know, sort of the Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll continuum. I think I'm quite certain that the first poem I ever memorized was Jabberwocky. And also, let me see, another. Other poems I would have liked at that age. I remember her reading to us occasionally out of Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake. I remember her the Tiger, also. That was another one that I think she had us. She didn't have us memorize a whole lot, but occasionally also, she read to us from the Bible every day and again, didn't compel us to memorize. I was reading John Ruskin's autobiography, Praeterita, some years ago, and he said that his mother, who, like a very, very pious Scots woman, had him, I think, memorize a chapter a day or something to that effect. So my mom was not like. I guess I'm thankful that she was not like Mrs. Ruskin. So, yeah, she would alternate, you know, reading a story from the Old Testament and the New. And I always preferred the Old Testament stories. I remember. I do not think I enjoyed anything in the New Testament.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, the New Testament is way more esoteric than the Old Testament's got those.

[Cindy Rollins]

Stories that'll catch your imagination.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it was like. Yeah. I think, honestly, just being a boy, I think that the New Testament, the body count is so much Lower. I hate to say that again, like, yeah, just like there was no Ehud stabbing Eglon or David taking out Goliath or anything like that, or Samson going to work on the Philistines with a jawbone. So, no, the New Testament, that was kind of another thing that was kind of. I had to wait to maybe discover the merits of that until I was older.

[Cindy Rollins]

But one of the things that's always fascinated me about Tom's upbringing is, you know, when I get on my hobby horse about kids should be reading fairy tales and poetry and myths, and he'll just laugh and you'll say, well, that's. My mother believed that. And she absolutely filled all three kids. I mean, they're used with those things. But one of the books you haven't mentioned that you have talked to me about as being really important in your life, so important that he actually bought me a copy of it was the Golden Book of Myths.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, Golden Book of Myths. And so, yeah, it's. There's a lot, you know, I think it's out of print. You can get copies on Amazon still for probably 20 to 30 bucks. I mean, it's a bit of change, but it's worth having. Yeah. The Golden Book of Myths and Legends, which included retellings of Oedipus, Jason and the Argonauts, Hercules, let me see, there was the Song of Roland. That was. That was like a sort of kids version of the Song of Roland. That was the first I read. The illustrations also are really, really good. They're kind of minimalistic, almost. Almost stick figures, honestly. But they're really quite wonderful in their way. And also Rustum and Saurabh and the oh Sigurd and the Volsung saga and. Yeah, things that, you know, I might not have. I don't think every American child's, you know, childhood is full of these stories necessarily anymore. And they should. They should be, which is really too, too bad.

[Thomas Banks]

So, I mean, some of those anthologies on the shelf that kids can just pick up and just start wandering in themselves, I think is really important. I mean, we had several of those kind of sets in our house and nobody was really reading them to us, but we would get lost. You would. I would just pick up one and look at it. And then I felt like, oh, this is important. I need to read this.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, I have several collections of the. My Book House, which is the same sort of thing. Fairy Tales and Myths Retold. I've got a set from the 1920s all the way through the 1950s. I've got multiple sets because I just think old books are so cool. But I love collecting that stuff because what strikes me over and over is how much the standard of what is appropriate children's literature has just plummeted. It just wasn't that long ago that golden book had, you know, the Volsung saga for kids, and that was. That was appropriate. And now it's just all. It's just twaddle. All twaddle.

[Angelina Stanford]

Sadly. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, you kind of insinuated that your mom. So your mom started teaching you and your. Your sister was. You were homeschooled, is that what you're saying?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Let me see. I was homeschooled till I was, I guess, in fifth grade or so. And yeah, so my mother, she. I think that she worked on our education very, very hard. And, you know, I think that she eventually put us in, you know, standard, you know, sort of a more conventional school because she realized that since neither she or my dad had anything like a scientific history education themselves, that that side of our minds would. Would be permanently underdeveloped. And anyway, joke's on her.

[Cindy Rollins]

You went to school and it's still under development.

[Angelina Stanford]

I know. And then I. And then I. Then I was the kid who just never paid attention in, you know, geology class or anything like that. But it was. Yeah, it was. I. The good things they gave us stand out in my mind much more than like, whatever. Whatever shortcomings there were. And again, it's, you know, everyone. Every homeschooler there are. There's going to be some blanks that they have to fill some way or other.

[Thomas Banks]

And, you know, this the way I say it, every person, like, I wanted to homeschool my kids because I was ashamed of my public school education. I thought, look at all the things I didn't learn. And that made me homeschool. And then my homeschool kids are like, well, look at all the things I didn't learn. And you see. Hear this from, you know, Christian school kids. Same thing. Whatever. You went to school as you realize there's a vast body of knowledge that somebody didn't teach you because actually your education is on you.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's true. That is true.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, that's right. We make such a mistake of thinking high school is everything you're supposed to know. It's not. It's fundamentals that you then take and have a lifetime of learning after that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Amen. I was fortunate to be in a house that was full of books. And again, I'm not making any comparisons between myself and CS Lewis but that's one of the first, I think that may be like the first thing he writes in his own, his own memoir. Surprised by Joy that yeah, my parents were people who, you know, accumulated books and they were both in their way readers and that kind of thing. And yeah, I think if you, if you're going to be a reader yourself, having parents who are is an almost inexpressibly huge advantage.

[Thomas Banks]

And I read a parents that said that even if you never read the books like you still benefited from living in a home. And I would say that you, that part of that is that you are, you're. How much do you learn just by reading the title of books about what's important in life and about what people buy books about and just, I don't know, it just seems like, I don't know if you're a kid who just kind of knew what was on your parents bookshelf sort of just accidentally.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, just living in a growing up in an environment in which learning and reading are considered normal things.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A life of book is normal. I spent a ton of time as a kid going through my parents books and just looking at the titles, touching them. Mr. Banks laughs because I used to play library and was very elaborate and I put library cards, I like had my own card catalog. Every one of my parents books was cataloged and then I would force my siblings to come and check it out so I could be librarian. But I knew my parents bookshelves very well. I just, I've always been fascinated with a book. I know you are too. So it does make a big difference.

[Angelina Stanford]

We also, my mother also made a point to take us to the public library every week certainly when we were little kids and we would. When I got my own library card, I remember I. The things I checked out at that age. I remember a lot of Tintin books and a lot of Encyclopedia Brown and when I was 7 or 8 that was kind of. I was kind of fixated on those two things and I like those two things still. I think probably I was maybe too much obsessed with those things.

[Thomas Banks]

I think every kid goes through a stage, an Encyclopedia Brown type stage that. Yeah, I don't think it's a harm. I think it's actually something that is has to happen and is good or should happen. It won't always happen.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. Because when you're that beginning reader, I mean it's not like you can, you know, open up Milton. You gotta have something that you can read on your own.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Cindy Rollins]

And I Encyclopedia Brown or, you know, Nancy Drew or the Boxcar children. Any of those that I remember with my kids. You know, just that feeling like I got a real book, it's a novel. I read the whole thing. I'm working through this series like that just that made them feel like readers and they were readers.

[Angelina Stanford]

And you know, I remember when I was introduced to Encyclopedia Brown, it was like these old kind of copies from. It must have been when the series was first published in the early 60s, because the illustrations were really good. Okay. Then, you know, five years ago or something like that. I'm in a. I think it was a Barnes and Noble or something like that. And I, I pick a new, like a newer edition of Encyclopedia Brown off the shelf. I was like, oh, yeah, I think I read this when I was a kid and I looked through it, but new illustrations, new, like they made him look like a 21st century kid. Oh my gosh, the glory has departed. I put it down angrily and it was, yeah. And I think the author, Donald Sobel just died within the last few years. And it was. Yeah, I guess, anyway, like. And all the. I remember all the obituaries I read of him, all of them. A couple of them said that he had become. The books had become sort of feminist icons, I guess, because of Encyclopedia Brown's Watson, because of Sally Kimball, who's like sort of his, sort of his fixer. She's like the tough sort of tomboy enforcer and that kind of thing who, you know, can tangle with the boys and beat them up and that sort of thing. So, yeah, oddly enough the books kind of entered the feminist canon, I guess, which I guess wasn't something you would necessarily expect, but go figure.

[Cindy Rollins]

Before we leave, the question of your childhood. You also told. Didn't you tell me your mom took y'all to see Shakespeare plays?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, my parents, during the summers. And I was, you know, when we were 10 to 12, the three of us, I guess, and then. And then on into junior high and high school. They would take us to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, which is near Access to. Near Medford, Oregon, if you know, Oregon at all. And the biggest Shakespeare festival in Western America, like, you know, lasts all summer, I think. I think during every festival. And I'm sure it's probably curtailed or canceled this year, but it used to be the case that they would play the whole canon of Shakespeare over the course of a summer in a couple of. They had an old fashioned theater that was modeled on the Globe, actually. So you kind of had the experience of seeing Shakespeare like Shakespeare's original audience would have seen him. And yeah, it was really, really good. The quality of the productions that we got exposed to. And that's again, like something that I dare say not every kid gets to see.

[Cindy Rollins]

Growing up in so many ways, you just have this ideal literary childhood.

[Angelina Stanford]

I was very lucky. Like I said, I was certainly very blessed.

[Thomas Banks]

Now, did you. So here you are, this fifth grader who is now going to go to school. How was that transition for you?

[Angelina Stanford]

I did well in literature classes, I think all the way from, you know, middle school to junior middle school through high school. Latin I was, I think I was pretty good at. And so like the humanities side of my education, I think I was very well equipped for. I was not a dedicated student, though. I was the kind of student, I would work hard at things that interested me and I was just utterly, I would say, criminally lazy when it came to things that did not. So. And that was.

[Thomas Banks]

I'm going to stop you right there because I'm reading, finally, the book I keep saying I'm going to read Boswell's Johnson and apparently you sound just like Johnson right now. He was criminally lazy as a child and he only read what he wanted to read, but it happened to be pretty big stuff. And he felt like that was how everybody learned and how everybody should learn. Not by being lazy, but he really wasn't lazy. It just seemed like he was lazy because he wasn't doing what everybody wanted him to do.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, well, thank you. I'll tell myself that from now on. You're just like Johnson. Yeah, no, no, that's, that's kind. I, yeah. And I, that was, and I was, I think, pretty, pretty fortunate altogether in the, in the school that my parents put me in. And again, it was, it was a classical school where I learned, got exposed to a lot of things that I would not otherwise have been exposed to. The fact that I, you know, learned. Learned Latin, which my father actually, you know, kind of started me on early. He knew some of the fundamentals. That was certainly a life changing experience and has done much to determine the course of my, you know, the course of my profession and that kind of thing since. So, yeah, I. Latin has always been a friend and I'm again, just hard.

[Thomas Banks]

To express right away. Did you just feel like, oh, I like this, this is fun?

[Angelina Stanford]

Basically, yes. It depended on the teacher we had, because we had. It was unfortunate. The school I went to when I was in middle school and junior high had like. I think we Went through, like, three or four Latin teachers in, I'm going to say, five years. And it was kind of like, you know, the new teacher would come in and start again at the very beginning. Like, I'm not sure what you kids learned, but here, let's start again with Amo Amah Samat. And I don't think we made progress the way that maybe we should have. But again, that was just the fault of circumstances, not necessarily any person. So, yeah, I remember not liking one or two years of Latin in maybe junior high. But my high school Latin teacher was brilliant. She got us started on Catullus and Virgil, and we read some of the New Testament, I think the Gospel of Mark and Livy and some Cicero and other things. And. Yeah, anyways, it was. Yeah, I was fortunate in most of my teachers, I think.

[Cindy Rollins]

I love that you're comparing him to Samuel Johnson, because I think I had the impression, and so perhaps our listeners do that. I expected. I knew that he was a bit of a pedant, and so I guess I had expected him to be, like, very studious, but it was not. And I'm delighted when he tells me stories like. So he was literally the kid in high school who would have the textbook open on his desk and a novel inside the textbook, reading that. So he was reading all the time and not necessarily what was assigned to him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that. That's true. I. Yeah, I. My. The school I went to also had a pretty good. A pretty. It was a small school, but it had a good library for its size, and I made use of that. And again, I read. I read a lot. Not always on the curriculum.

[Thomas Banks]

Did you read Harry Potter or were you.

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I. I was the right age because I would have been, I guess, maybe 10 or 11 when those books started coming out in the mid to late 90s, and I did not get into them. I remember my mother brought home that. What was the first one? The Sorcerer's Sorcerer's Stone. Yeah. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I picked that one up one summer and I don't even know that I finished it. I might not have, but I did not like it. I don't know why.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's not your kind of book.

[Thomas Banks]

It must have missed you, like, the right age or something.

[Angelina Stanford]

Maybe. I don't know. Like, I could probably. I might go back to it and like it now. I have no idea. But I. And then when the movies started to come out. I did not get into the movies either. I. And again, it's. It's nothing against the quality of the work. I think J.K. rowling is a very bright and gifted woman, but I. Yeah, I don't know. They just did not speak to me.

[Thomas Banks]

They were not. You're kind of. So do you remember having a favorite book? I know you liked Encyclopedia Brown, but like, say, as you're moving into junior high and that age group, did you find a favorite at that point?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, like non comic book, non illustrated. I guess it's like my literary taste developed a little bit more. I really liked Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when I was in middle school. I really liked Rifles for Watie, which I. That's kind of a perennial favorite with homeschoolers, I think maybe still. And that's if anyone has not heard of Rifles for Weighty. And the name of the author, I'm.

[Thomas Banks]

Now forgetting it's not. It's not William O. Steele. Let's see.

[Angelina Stanford]

I want to say it's a Kenneth. Anyway, it's set in the American Civil War.

[Cindy Rollins]

What is it, Cindy?

[Thomas Banks]

Harold. Keith.

[Angelina Stanford]

Harold Keith. Keith. That was it. Yeah. So, yeah, set in the American Civil War. The main character is a farm boy from Kansas who goes off, joins the Union army and has all kinds of adventures in battle. And there's a spy and I think he falls in love with a Confederate girl who's kind of a. Kind of a passionate, sort of Scarlett O'Hara type. And anyway, yeah, so that was, I think that book. I think I picked that up again maybe 10 years ago and read a few chapters and I think it holds up quite well. I think that's my oldest.

[Thomas Banks]

Loved that book. He read that many times for some reason, it really captured his attention.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that's one that I think that again, you know, one of those books that I hope remains in print and doesn't get. It doesn't get cancelled. I don't think it would. But I mean, who knows? There are some sympathetic Confederate characters, so maybe that would be enough these days. I have no idea. But anyway, I hope the book remains in school libraries. So. Yeah, that was a big favorite of mine for a long time. Let me see what else? I remember liking Robert Louis Stevenson was a big one for me when I started reading him and middle school. So I like Treasure island even more than Treasure Island. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and kidnapped, I remember discovering.

[Thomas Banks]

Did you read David Balfour? Do you remember?

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't think I've ever read. That's the sequel to Kidnapped, right? Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

A lot of people like that better. I mean, like, it's a Very. I've read it, but I can't remember because it's been so long. The son that seems to like all the books she likes, he loved David Balfour, so you might want to try reading it.

[Angelina Stanford]

I should definitely read that one. Let me see. I think I've read most of Stevenson by this point in my life, but there's still some gaps, I think, like the new Arabian Nights, that series of stories he did. I have not. I don't think I've ever touched those. And I probably should be on our shelf again, chances are. Yeah. If it's like any piece of Victorian literature, my wife has a copy. Copy. Or I do. Between the two of us. Walter Scott, I think I came to after Stevenson. Walter Scott, Shakespeare, I think I started reading about the same time I read. Oh, I know. I read Ivanhoe and Rob Roy a lot. Rob Roy I think I watched after the movie expecting it to be like the movie and it wasn't, which is fine. It was. Yeah. I mean the movie I like, but it has some, some stuff anyway. We'll say. But yeah. So some of the Waverly novels and I think I slowly, over time I think I got to the point where I think by the end of college I read most of those.

[Thomas Banks]

You know, Charlotte Mason went to bed every night reading a Waverly novel.

[Cindy Rollins]

Really?

[Angelina Stanford]

She was. Yeah, I remember you saying that she was a big fan and she seems to have like just really good judgment in. Yeah. In the literature that she, she thought children should. Should know and the stories they should know and. Yeah. So I, I liked, I like Walter Scott. I still like Walter Scott. Maybe not his poetry so much, but his novels certainly. Yes. And then Shakespeare, I think the first Shakespeare I read on my own, I think probably Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet were the first two. And I really liked those a lot.

[Thomas Banks]

And that's two good ones people can start with if they're wondering where should I start?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, like, I think that works well for you junior high students. Yeah. Julius Cease is a good place to begin. And A Midsummer Night's Dream too. I think we. I think there was a performance of that at my school when I was maybe in middle school or something like that. And yeah, I've always found that one just really, really delightful.

[Thomas Banks]

I started, that's where I started with my kids, A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was mid July, so it was kind of a no brainer. But they laughed at the right places and I always thought, oh, that was a perfect play to start with.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it's one that it's funny. I was talking about it with a friend, and we were thinking of film versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I remember one I saw back in the day was one with a very young Ian Holm as Puck. This is probably.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, I've seen that one.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yes. So it's. Yeah. If you can think of a young Ian Holm, then you can see him.

[Thomas Banks]

In that role very well.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. And that was. I remember that. I think that was like a television production, but I remember kind of liking that one.

[Thomas Banks]

I think the old 1939 Mickey Rooney, James Cagney one is pretty good.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, my goodness. I have James Cagney in Midsummer Night's Dream.

[Thomas Banks]

Yes, he is. Is he like, Oberlin or something?

[Angelina Stanford]

Huh?

[Thomas Banks]

Who's the donkey? Who's Nick?

[Angelina Stanford]

Bob?

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, he's bottom.

[Angelina Stanford]

Huh. That's great.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow. Well, thank you for that. Now I have to look that one up.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

Were you also reading poetry on your own at this point? Like, could you tell us a little bit about how you fell in love with poetry?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, so the fact that my mother read, you know, nonsense poetry to us and nursery rhymes, and I think my taste kind of grew from there. That was kind of the seed that was planted. So, yeah, you know, I sort of fell in love with Shakespeare when I was probably 12 or 13. And I think the next poet after Shakespeare I really, really got bowled over by was John Keats. One of my aunts and uncles sent me a copy of John Keats Collected Poetry for Christmas, and I read through that. And, yeah, the sonnets and the great odes in Keats have always been among my favorite poems since then.

[Cindy Rollins]

And when did you start writing poetry?

[Angelina Stanford]

I think about the same time. I think I was in junior high. And I'm fortunate that I don't remember what I wrote then. I think I started writing. I think I could write a passable sonnet by the time I was, like, 16. That's after much trial and error. I think by the time I graduated high school, I'd written a few hundred, probably 200 sonnets by the time I finished high school, almost all of them bad, but it was good practice.

[Cindy Rollins]

But you had a teacher in high school who told you you had talent and she encouraged you, right?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I did have a very good English teacher, Mrs. Trudy Marston, who now is retired, I believe. But she was a wonderful teacher, and she. She taught us. Let me see. I had senior English literature with her and a couple other classes before that. And, yeah, she was. She really loved her subject. I Think she. I think she had gone to Stanford University and A woman who easily was qualified to teach at a college level but liked, you know, just, I think high school students that. That age, she. She liked a lot and. And yeah, so it was through her that I, you know, I discovered. Let me see. I remember her teaching Dickens really well. I read David Copperfield under her and I think I kind of fell in love with Dickens in a way. And I won't say that I've read all of the Dickens canon. There's actually several of the longer novels that I haven't read, but there's a few that I go back to again and again and still very much enjoy.

[Thomas Banks]

So now you graduate from high school and it's time to go to college. So what happened then? I mean, did you graduate with honors or did you just graduate with good grades?

[Angelina Stanford]

No, I graduated. I was a mediocre student. I would get A's in subjects that interested me and Bs, or sometimes C pluses and ones that didn't. So I was a pretty mediocre student all the way through high school.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'm just gonna preface what he's gonn next was. This is going to surprise you, Cindy, because it really surprised me.

[Thomas Banks]

Okay.

[Cindy Rollins]

This will make him even more mysterious. He was not on a path to college. Tell us what your plan.

[Angelina Stanford]

I didn't want to go to college at all. My parents, you know, talked me into it. They said that, you know, if you, if you don't go to college, like given what your talents are, you'd probably be shutting a lot of doors on yourself. And we think it would be a mistake not to. Instead, I had. I had sort of flirted with the idea of joining the army, being a.

[Thomas Banks]

Being your brother did do.

[Angelina Stanford]

I had a lot of just kind of, kind of half formed dreams in my mind at that point. Like that. The idea of being a soldier, maybe of being a. Living in a van and being a musician or something. I played guitar.

[Thomas Banks]

One of those. Living in a van and being a musician or going and being beaten by.

[Cindy Rollins]

See, that's another thing that I think people would find surprising is that as much as he read in high school, he spent most of his time playing the electric guitar.

[Thomas Banks]

I was gonna say, what music? What music are we talking about?

[Cindy Rollins]

No, he wanted to be a rock star.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I wasn't. I was in a, you know, like a garage band and that kind of thing. And I listened to like a lot of, you know, punk and grunge and alternative rock and I. My hearing Actually has suffered in consequence. I think I have the ears now for probably a 70 year old, but I. But yeah, I mean, and then actually after college, I went so far as the military idea that that notion was still with me. And I, I went so far as signing the papers and all that. And then I got my, you know, medical. Medical record back and the recruiting officer said that we can't take you because of, you know, this set of conditions you were born with and that kind of thing. So. Yeah. And in the end, it's probably good for me that I didn't join the army. I don't think I would have made it very good.

[Cindy Rollins]

You're the most unlikely soldier.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that my husband tried to join.

[Thomas Banks]

The army, that there's something in our culture, like if you grow up reading good books about honor, there's nowhere for a young man to really test that except the military, which is why we see a lot of kids going into the military, but kids that you would think are well read and stuff, because they're reading all about this stuff. But you know, you look around in our culture and there's no outlet for that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, that's, that's a good point. Yeah. I remember after I found out that I wasn't able to join, I. I was kind of depressed for a couple of months. And one day I ran into a gentleman who had been. He had worked at my school. He wasn't a teacher there, but he was in development or something like that, and a very cheerful man. And anyway, he asked me what was new in my life and I said, well, I found out that I won't be able to join the army. And he kind of breathes a sigh of relief and he says, thank God. Do you have any idea the low life expectancy poets have? Like Rupert Brooke and all these guys from war? You should have known better. So anyway, that kind of put it in perspective. So, yeah, probably, probably good for me that I wasn't able to sign up.

[Thomas Banks]

But anyway, society.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. So. Exactly. So anyway, so, yeah, later my brother, I guess, kind of fulfilled that ambition for me. My brother was. He was in the reserves for a while and he was actually deployed in Jordan and thereabouts. So he got some adventures out of it and got to do some paratrooping and that sort of thing. And my brother was actually a very good soldier from what I understand. And probably I wouldn't stand a comparison with him.

[Cindy Rollins]

Okay, so your parents popped the bubble of your dream of rock stardom and you decided to go to college.

[Angelina Stanford]

So I went to college. I majored at first. I was English and English literature and philosophy. And I found out over the course of a year and a half, two years, yeah, that was the first two years of college. I found out that philosophy. I really don't have the turn of mind for it. My mind does not move easily in the realm of abstraction. And I enjoyed some of the classes. I had a really good. A really gifted professor. He was actually a Scotsman. He was from. From Glasgow. He taught. No, no, not Glasgow, Aberdeen. He taught Nietzsche. So I studied Nietzsche with this Scotsman who. Really funny guy. Also a really foul mouth. Like, he had like a really dirty sense of humor and just a wonderful lecturer and did not suffer fools gladly. And I found out recently that he. I think he now lives on the east coast and makes. Makes whiskey. I think he owns a bar. So philosopher to being a whiskey bar owner.

[Cindy Rollins]

It is the path of every philosopher that's.

[Angelina Stanford]

That actually is kind of ends up in a bar anyway. So, yeah, he was. I had him and a couple of other really good teachers in the philosophy department. But I found out that this is not for me. I. I remember one day, I think we were reading Hegel or something, just really dreary like that. And I looked at the book and I was like, I've been reading this book for an hour. I'm 15 pages in and I have 300 pages to go. I think I'm going. It was just one of those sort of Road to Damascus, I'm done with this sort of thing. So I went and I changed my major the next day. So I stuck with the English and I replaced philosophy with classical studies. So I was already taking a lot of Latin courses already. So I.

[Cindy Rollins]

Just for fun.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. So I pursued. I pursued that to the end. And I picked up some Greek in my last couple years there at U of I. And so. Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Did you live at home? Did you live at home or did you live at school?

[Angelina Stanford]

The first. Let me see, the first year of college, my parents actually had. Their house was on the edge of campus. So I. Yeah, the first year, I think I lived at home during college. And then I lived at a. I rented a room at a boarding house after that. I'm really glad that I grew up.

[Cindy Rollins]

Like, I really did have a 19th century life. And then I worked my way through college at the boarding house.

[Thomas Banks]

I know he's this boarding house. I'm like. Only Thomas would say I lived at the boarding house.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, no, I took rooms yeah, well, actually, it was wonderful. It was this old. I think it was a house from about the early 1900s, so this kind of late Victorian mansion, really, that I rented a room in for a couple of years. And yeah, it had a really good library. And, yeah, it was just kind of. Kind of a delightful. I remember. I remember the widow.

[Thomas Banks]

Did the widow cook for you?

[Angelina Stanford]

Actually, it was. It was meals included. It was meals. It was room and board. So, yeah, it was.

[Cindy Rollins]

Fortunately for me, they didn't have, like, you know, a lonely spinster daughter.

[Angelina Stanford]

And it was not very expensive either. I think of, like, what I paid for. I mean, you know, rent, including utilities and all my meals. I think it was less than $500 I was paying at the time, which, I mean, then it wouldn't. I mean, I wasn't exactly rolling in money then, but I. You know, I. It was just kind of a. Kind of a delightful time. And, yeah, I was quite lucky in my. In my college years, I think, and.

[Cindy Rollins]

But even in your college, one of.

[Angelina Stanford]

The things that I keep saying. Sorry. I keep saying I was so lucky and I was so fortunate. I was so privileged and I was all those things. But it makes me feel kind of bad because it's like, yeah, nothing bad ever happened to me.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, you're just gonna get started, because when we get to the part of this, then I got married, then you're really going to start thinking.

[Angelina Stanford]

You'Ve just.

[Cindy Rollins]

Had a charmed life, my dear. But he tells stories to me, so we'll be talking about a book or something. He'll say, oh, I read that. I remember I was just roaming the stacks of the library of U of I, and I pulled this Victorian novel off and I went home and knocked it off in an afternoon. Like, he just. So you weren't just taking classes, you were continuing to just read and read and read, and you've just always been drawn to the classics, especially the Victorians.

[Angelina Stanford]

Very much so, yeah. I took. I probably took three classes on, well, 19th century literature, broadly. I think I took at least three at the U of I. And I remember I took Victorian fiction and then Victorian nonfiction and poetry, and both of those, especially the nonfiction and poetry were. That was one of those classes that changed my life. The. The professor was. It was his last year at U of I. He was very old school. Like, I mean, he kind of. I think he had come up, you know, his own education had been in the late 50s and early 60s. So he kind of looked back to the new critics, you know, like, oh, you know T.S. eliot and those guys as kind of like, these are the lights, there are no others. This is sort of the law and the prophets. This is how you read a book. Never assume that I means the author himself, that kind of thing. So he had a very, very severe method of interpretation. Some things about it I disagree with now, but just absolutely loved his Browning and Tennyson and Matthew Arnold and just one of those classes that I look back to when I'm giving my own lectures now even. And I try to think, like, how would Professor Wallins say this? Still kind of. I found as a teacher, you tend to imitate the teachers you really admired and it's like, yeah, how would he say this? Or how would she do that kind of thing? But yeah, and yeah, so like Victorian literature, that was something I developed another lifelong affair that began in college, I think.

[Thomas Banks]

So as you kind of neared the end of your college, did you move into a career immediately or you go to grad school? What happened?

[Angelina Stanford]

I graduated in 2008, and so the year when everything crashed and it took me, oh about. It took me about a year after college to find a, like an actual job, you know, that wasn't. Didn't involve staying up at odd hours to do janitorial work. So, no, I. It wasn't right away. So, yeah, I taught part time at a. At a day school in my home hometown, this little school called Montrose, which I think is no longer there, I'm not entirely certain. And then, so, yeah, about a year after I graduated college, I got an offer to go teach in Montana. Moved there late 2009 and stuck it out there for the next 10 years. And that's where I met my. That's where I met the illustrious Ms. Stanford. I mean, she was not living in Montana, but on a sort of working vacation there. So, yeah, so I taught. And again, you know, being a teacher that, you know, that got me, that compelled me to learn things that I might not otherwise have learned otherwise. For a year. Actually, I. Early on, it was one of those sort of little Dutch boy scenarios when the one teacher who had been teaching logic had taken on another. Taken on another class and needed someone. Basically we needed someone to teach logic for a year. And it was sort of a tag, you're it. So I actually had to teach. Teach junior high logic for one year. I will never do that again. I decided I was just working with the other teacher's notes and textbook and I was really not doing anything.

[Thomas Banks]

That's a full quote.

[Angelina Stanford]

But yeah, I will never do Policies, and it was just like, all right, kids.

[Thomas Banks]

Me neither.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that's a subject that I'm not well equipped to teach. I decided everything else, though. I remember having fun in almost every other class I taught. And. And yeah, it's. I again, you know, fond memories of those days as well. Aside from.

[Thomas Banks]

So you're a single man, you're teaching, and you go home at night and do read. Or is that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I was. I was single for. I mean, I was. Yeah. Unmarried during the years I taught. I. And for most of them, I wasn't. I was mostly not dating people as well, so, like, there weren't. Yeah, there weren't many romantic distractions in my life to keep me from my books. So, yeah, I would go home and for a lot of years, actually, most of the time I was there, I did not have Internet at my house because just when I went home, I did not want to look at a computer screen again, because that's one thing that. Just staying up. I remember entering grades online. That was one side of the job I just never liked at all and always wanted to get away from screens when I got home. So, yeah, I would come home, listen to, you know, listen to music. You know, some. Some I would listen to, you know, Miles Davis or. Or. Or Chet Baker. It's like some old jazz. And I would cook and. And then read and go to bed, and that was. That was kind of my. My routine.

[Thomas Banks]

You're just like that. You're like the American Western. Ms. Reed. I always thought that would be the ideal life if I didn't have a large family, which would just be a spinster British, living in a little cottage and walking to school every day.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, that was. That was kind of it. It was again, you know, not for everyone. Certainly not an exciting life.

[Thomas Banks]

Did you get lonely in that, in that time? I mean, were you okay with your friends in your books?

[Angelina Stanford]

I was okay. You know, I would have people I've always liked hosting, you know, dinners and that kind of thing. So I cooked for people and would have them over on a pretty. Pretty regular, you know, weeks basis.

[Cindy Rollins]

But he's way more social than I am. People totally get that wrong about us.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, she seems. Because she's more charming that she would be. But no, I actually like, you know, I think, like, conversation over dinner more than.

[Thomas Banks]

More than she does, because you're taking in a lot, so if you're not, it is nice to have a place sometimes to give out some of the things that you're reading and thinking about.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. It is really. And I did know I was fortunate that I was working at a school where I am. I mean, it sounds like of course this would be the case, but I do know that this is not always the case. The teachers, the other English teachers, history teachers I worked with, actually read and liked their subjects. Sadly, that is not something you can assume is the case. I think, honestly, I'm always just shocked. Even in private schooling, I've met teachers who I think do not like literature.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah, I remember meeting a kid who got a degree in education. He said, I'm so proud to say I've never read a book. And I was like, oh, you're so practicing I could even shoot you right now.

[Angelina Stanford]

Wow. Wow.

[Thomas Banks]

So that's what I was wondering. So when you go to teach a class, how do you do you read? I mean, does that force you to like get in some things you might not have read otherwise?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I mean, when I'm teaching, I mean both my classes now, and you know, when I'm not as thorough going as my wife is in my, in the secondary literature, I'll read about a subject. But yeah, I have several shelves, not so much anymore because I gave up a lot of my library when I moved here. But when I worked at Petra, I had my sort of working library in my room at school and then I had my personal library at home. So I really bought far too many books. But yeah, at Petra, like if you looked at my shelves, it would be like this sort of things you would expect a Latin and Greek and Roman history teacher to have. So yeah, I think I've probably read more about my subject, more in and about my subject than most high school level teachers have. I think I can say that much. That's not to say now you also.

[Thomas Banks]

Have this long history of reading, so you have things available to compare things to. Like that's one thing you're really good at.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, thank you.

[Thomas Banks]

Oh, you make a connection to something you already read. And maybe you read it 10 or 15 years ago, you didn't just study it.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, thank you. Yeah, I guess the more you read, the more you realize that like everything you read is interconnected to everything else you read. Or if it's not, your mind sort of supposes that it is. And yeah, I've noticed that my type of lecturing over the years has tended to be more digressive and tangential. And by the time I'm, by the time I'm 70, I hate to think like, what a pathless forest. Listening to me talk Will be.

[Thomas Banks]

But also be like Samuel Johnson.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

Made him mad.

[Angelina Stanford]

Exactly. So yeah, I guess more and more I find that I teach by analogy, maybe in comparison.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, I actually think that's the best way to teach. But I do want to say this. So we met through a mutual friend and the reason that I was so. One of the reasons I was so intrigued with Mr. Banks was because our mutual friend said that he was the most well read man that he knew. And this person also knew Wes Callahan. So I got really excited about who is this extraordinary well read man.

[Thomas Banks]

And he is.

[Cindy Rollins]

And I mean you do teach, but when I look at your parents and I look at your siblings and none of whom are teachers and they all have very rich reading lives, I know that even if you weren't a teacher, you would still be the most well read person. So you told me once that since you were 18 years old your habit has been to read two books a week.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, yeah. I've been forced to scale that back since I married you.

[Cindy Rollins]

I know I have so much attention.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's all your fault. No, no. I mean, I think if I were still reading two books a week post marriage there would be something wrong with that. Something kind of perverse. But I suppose to take a year.

[Thomas Banks]

Off from reading after you get married. Did you get that rule?

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh yeah, the soldiers can't go to war.

[Angelina Stanford]

But no. Yeah. From the time I was 18 onward, I think I managed an average of about two books a week. And. Yeah, and that was always one of the delightful things about like, you know, being a teacher. You have your summers at least partially, if not always. I tutored privately in the summer too, just for extra income. But yeah, I've never a great deal of time to myself and you know, usually traveled and being, being a single man, I, you know, found myself with probably more expendable income than. Than a married pure might. So I, yeah, I was able to travel a fair, a fair bit.

[Thomas Banks]

And where did you go? Where? I mean, where did you travel with? Did you go to Europe?

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I mean, so I've been to Central America and Europe a handful of.

[Cindy Rollins]

Times and he's mad for Prague and wants to get me back there.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I don't know like when we'll be able to travel again. But actually my wife and I, we're kind of beat for travel right now. We were just down in Texas for a wedding. So it was, you know, one in my family was kind of high pressure and lovely time. But I think we're going to be home bodies For a while now. But, yeah, I'd like to go back to Europe with Angelina because we haven't done that together yet. And I'd like to show her some sights. She's been to France. I've never been to France.

[Cindy Rollins]

But we both love Italy.

[Angelina Stanford]

But we both love Italy. So, yeah, Italy will be on the list. And maybe some of, like, central Europe, too. I want to go back to Prague. I want to see. I want to go to Budapest and see, like, you know. Yeah. Kind of Middle Europa. That kind of thing appeals to me very much.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I am curious about this. I actually don't know the answer to this, so as much as you. And he does. He reads a lot and he buys a lot of books, which his wife will never, ever, ever complain about, nor does my husband complain when I come home with a bunch of books. But do you have a strategy when you read at all? How do you approach your reading life? Because, you know, I am very, like, whatever book speaks to me. And that's. Now I'm off on this tangent.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, I mean, like, to sort of. To take care of the purely professional side of it. So, I mean, when I'm teaching a book. So I've been teaching Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. So I've, you know, I also got a couple of books about Thomas Hardy. I got David Cecil's study of his novels and, you know, poked through some essays online about Hardy and, you know, his work and that kind of thing. So a fair bit of. Of a. Fair bit of my just downtime reading is spent picking up books about the books I'm teaching. Then there's subjects that interest me. 16th and 17th century biographies, books about the Tudors and stewards. Those are. I mean, again, those are.

[Cindy Rollins]

Yeah. I think you read a lot of nonfiction.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, a fair bit of biography and history. Probably more of that now than when I was young.

[Cindy Rollins]

And you read a lot of minor authors.

[Angelina Stanford]

That's true also. That's true. Yeah. I read kind of odds and ends in novels that.

[Cindy Rollins]

But that's because you end up reading.

[Thomas Banks]

More English literature than, say, American literature.

[Angelina Stanford]

I read more English, yeah. That's always been true of me. I don't necessarily know why I. Yeah. But like, a lot. A lot of the big. Yeah, I think it is, honestly, I think, like, the American art form is basically film. I think that's, like, the thing that we're really good at. And, you know, literature is our literature. I mean, there's. There's good stuff there, but I mean, I've never liked. I've never liked Emerson. Like, a lot of the big names like Emerson.

[Thomas Banks]

Take a stab at Emerson.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. Melville again. I think there's probably a lot of good in Melville, and maybe I. Maybe I should give him another shot, I'm thinking. But, yeah, there's a lot of, like, the big names to some of the transcendentalists, like, Thoreau is Thoreau. I just drives me mad.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

His face right now like that. He's fighting mad.

[Angelina Stanford]

I don't know. I just like. And there are. There are individual American authors I admire deeply, like Willow, Catherine and Scott Fitzgerald, and I could probably think of some others, but, yeah. I don't know. It's just American.

[Thomas Banks]

They're not good. Like, it's not that their writing isn't good. It's that the world they take us in, maybe it's the American ethos is not as appealing. And I say that as a proud American.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, sure, yeah. Know. Yeah. It's just, you know, I think when I'm sitting down and reading, like, I don't know, when I sit down to read Walt Whitman, I'm like, Tennyson was writing at the same time. I'm sorry. Just by any stroke, canon measure, you want to say Tennyson is just. There's just more there. There is a world there that Whitman. I don't know. GK Chesterton, who actually liked Whitman a lot, said that Whitman writes in an epic style about the. You know, and amplifies accordingly the emotions that a boy feels while fishing for trout by a stream. And it's just like he wrote a book. Yeah. Just like celebrating the democratic ego. And I don't like that. I don't know. It's just like. Yeah. Anyway, I should shut up. This is why I'm.

[Thomas Banks]

It's hard. It's hard when you. When you say what you don't like, you get a lot of attention for it.

[Angelina Stanford]

But I know it's not me saying, like, you shouldn't read American literature.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's just. Don't bother.

[Thomas Banks]

We put you in it. Yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

I have taught, actually, this past year. I did teach a couple of Hawthorne short stories. And I really like doing that because there's kind of.

[Cindy Rollins]

I see. I think the short story is the American form. I think we are really good at the short story.

[Thomas Banks]

I would agree.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah. I. And Hawthorne. And again, there's something kind of an old world sensibility and Hawthorne that you don't get in a lot of other writers. So, yeah, I like teaching Young Goodman Brown and the Celestial Railroad and some of those others were a lot of fun. Yeah.

[Cindy Rollins]

I feel like I want to make this point too about you, because.

[Angelina Stanford]

You.

[Cindy Rollins]

Might be tempted to think he's sort of snobbish when he's like, I came back and I put my Chet Baker album on, you know. But the thing about him is he's such an interesting mix of low and high culture, which I share that low of both high and low culture. So it's interesting how we kind of cross over there. But he's just as likely to quote every single 90s grunge band to you as he is to quote Miles Davis and Chet Baker.

[Angelina Stanford]

Actually, that was another book. I think it was like my sister who. She got me the private journals and diaries of Kurt Cobain when I was like something like that. And I remember, like, yeah, I probably drank those in far more deeply than they merited.

[Thomas Banks]

But we want to see some Kurt Cobain commonplace quotes here, right?

[Cindy Rollins]

Exactly, exactly. And it's the same thing. So, you know, he taught him. So of course he reads books in foreign languages as well. We haven't talked about that. So he sight reads Latin. So he sometimes will do his morning devotions by reading books in Latin that the church fathers in Latin. And he, of course, reads Virgil in Latin. And he's taught himself French and can read. Just pick up and read French poems and of course, translates a lot of French poems into English and gets those published. But then at the same time, he also. If you guys were at the Patreon, you already heard this story. But he loves. He loves Sean Connery, James Bond films, and he's been trying to force me to watch all of them. You know, it's a.

[Thomas Banks]

He just.

[Cindy Rollins]

Here's such a fascinating, you know, high combination of the high and low culture.

[Thomas Banks]

I don't think Tom comes across as having an affectation at all. Even though he. These are his genuine life, I would say he does not come across. You know, people who have affected to like things they don't really like are very different than people who genuinely like something. It's true.

[Cindy Rollins]

He does just genuinely like that stuff. And so for Christmas, one of the gifts I was most excited about giving him was this perfect combination of high and low brow. So Mr. Banks, as I said, loves. He loves Sean Connery, James Bond. He, like, really is into it. He. He's so into it. We put it on and I pull up my iPad and start scrolling Facebook. And he's like, no, you gotta watch this. You gotta watch this. Like, he's so into It.

[Angelina Stanford]

And Ursula, Ursula Andress, an actress of nuance and depth and subtlety, archetype of.

[Cindy Rollins]

The blonde bombshell Angelina. You can't miss this. But he also loves Kingsley Amos, the writer. And so then I found out that Kingsley Amos also shared a Pettit's love of the James Bond movies and wrote a scholarly analysis of all of the James Bond books called the James Bond Dossier. And I bought it for Mr. Banks for Christmas because it's the perfect. It's literally a pedantic approach, a serious, pedantic approach to James Bond.

[Angelina Stanford]

It's kind of. The funny thing is the tone of the book is not funny at all. And that makes it funny by itself. It takes them very seriously as literature. And. And he. And, like, it's like. It's almost frightening how obsessed he was with, like, the story form. And he's. I guess he read all the Ian Fleming books several times over and, like, counted the number of drinks Bond takes over the course and he says, yes, we see that as Bond ages, his drinking, you know, grows. He starts drinking harder spirits, but they, like, in an indiminished volume, as you see, like the. And then he'll quote, like, yeah, he only takes three drinks in this book versus ten in the earlier novelist.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's actually ridiculous.

[Angelina Stanford]

It is so ridiculous.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's right up my alley.

[Angelina Stanford]

I love that kind of stuff. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. And he also says, like, what we can tell because, like, you don't really find out about Bond's background ever, like, you know, really, like what, where he went to school, that kind of thing. And so, like, Kingsley Amos is, like, trying to piece together Bonds, what his education might have been from the literary illusions in his dialogue. And he says, yes, we probably had a good primary education but no university, because, like, like, the literary quotations he tosses off are those that might be known to any, like, general reader, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh, my gosh, Kingsley Amos, like, how long did it take you to research this book? It's like, did you not ever think that life is short? Maybe I should concentrate on other things?

[Cindy Rollins]

But not somewhere, one day there's going to be a pedant who loves James Bond and this book is written for him.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, actually, he even says, eventually, he says, it is inevitable that these books will become part of the university canon. So I thought that, like, students would have some, you know, some sort of secondary work to guide them through their doctoral theses, which they will eventually write on the Bond books.

[Thomas Banks]

I bet you there are a few out there already.

[Angelina Stanford]

I mean, they're teaching some ridiculous things.

[Cindy Rollins]

In college classes right next door to the complete films of Keanu Reeves class.

[Angelina Stanford]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Cindy Rollins]

The one thing before. We've been chatting a while here, but I want to make sure we touch on this, but before we depart, is that I have never met anyone more disciplined in their commonplacing than you. I would. I would love for you to tell us about your habit of commonplace. And when did it start? And like on the trip, he emailed himself the quote so he could come back and write it in his commonplace book. I've never done that.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I. So I began commonplace not out of choice, but because it was assigned to something that we had to do in high school for a couple of our classes. And it was actually an assignment that I always kind of enjoyed. And so like, I. It just, you know, the habit was formed and has remained with me. And I also, I. I don't have the best memory when it comes to recalling what I have and have not read. So, yeah, I've become. I've become pretty, I guess, meticulous about, you know, getting down the author and the work also. And. And that's a pretty. I think, I think my commonplace books represent a pretty wide variety of reading by this point. I don't think I brought all of them with me when I moved out here. I may have. I may have lost one or two, but, yeah, I've got a good half dozen or so lying around.

[Cindy Rollins]

You have an interesting approach. You don't just write down quotes you like, you also write down quotes you don't like.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I guess the only.

[Cindy Rollins]

The only which, thank God, boys and girls, that I figured that out, that he told me that, because I could just imagine if I was looking over his shoulder on the commonplace book and some of the quotes were horrifying. And I'm having this moment of who did I marry? And I asked him and he said, oh, I write down quotes I don't like too.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, no, I don't write down simply things I agree with or sentiments that I find edifying so much. It just has to interest me. That's kind of my one rule that something should interest me. Like, for instance, I recently copied down a line from a friend French poet named Paul Claudel, and it's le creme d'adjective et les commencement de stile, which is the fear of the adjective is the beginning of style. I completely agree with that. But I thought it was. My gosh, that's so clever.

[Thomas Banks]

That's bravo.

[Angelina Stanford]

Frenchman would say that. Yeah. The fear of the adjective is the beginning.

[Cindy Rollins]

See, I would say it's the fear of the adverb.

[Thomas Banks]

Either one. Fear them. Fear them.

[Cindy Rollins]

Fear them, yeah. Do not think putting adverbs as you're writing is the same thing as having descriptive writing.

[Thomas Banks]

You know, I just had a little thought. Maybe that's what the problem is. We don't have metaphors, so we have to use adjectives and adverbs. If we had metaphors, we would not need those adjectives.

[Cindy Rollins]

We could have allusions.

[Thomas Banks]

Yeah. And we wouldn't need adverbs and adjectives which are so boring.

[Cindy Rollins]

Oh, they're the worst. That. Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas Banks]

And to read something like that, like Thomas said, you know, if I'm bored with it, you know, has to interest me. So I'm curious what you're reading right now. Like, can you name like 5 books you've read recently and then everybody can write them down for obscure books.

[Angelina Stanford]

So sort of. I rounded out the year with P.D. james murder mystery, which I much enjoyed. Let me see. Read a Japanese novel which I had heard was great, and then I was kind of disappointed by it, called the Sailor who Fell From Grace with the Sea by author named Mishima. I would not recommend that to anyone. It was disturbing on a number of levels.

[Cindy Rollins]

I'll just say you read 84 Charing Cross Road.

[Angelina Stanford]

84 Charing Cross Road, yeah. That delightful collection of letters, which I like not just because I like books about books, but because it's kind of. It's kind of interesting to see civilization being saved by small individual efforts that people don't necessarily notice. So it's just, you know, this woman, you know, conducting her own education somewhat later in life and, you know, being put, you know, face to face with an older culture. And it's just a wonderful book in many ways. And it's one I'm going to go back to again. It's not a challenging book at all. It's just very charming and delightful. Let me see, what else? Right now I'm almost done with Dostoevsky. I got through a lot of Dostoevsky this past year. I'm reading one called the Double, which I had never read before, which is about a government employee who gets up one day and he meets a man who looks almost exactly like himself, who starts wandering around, finding his way into his life and gradually taking it over. So it's a. Yeah, that could count.

[Cindy Rollins]

As something Russian and a lesser known work by a well known author.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, it's. So it's actually an obscure reference by Mr. Banks.

[Cindy Rollins]

That's three categories in one, guys.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I guess I sort of made it sound like a horror novel there. It's not. It's. It's a dark comedy, I guess I would say. Oh, dark comedy, yeah, dark comedy, yeah. About a guy whose life is taken over by someone who looks exactly like him. Anyway, so like identity theft movies right.

[Thomas Banks]

Now, they're sort of funny, but yeah.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, yeah, right, right, exactly. So, yeah, making my way through those. Gee. And then just kind of like poking about in a few other books. And like there's poets I'm always kind of reading like you know, W.H. auden and John Keats and Rudyard Kipling and Walter de la Mare and a handful of others. So I'm always, I rarely sit down and read a book of poems all the way through, but I'm always reading poetry just kind of on the sly, as it were.

[Cindy Rollins]

I have one last question for you. The Facebook group wanted for me to ask you this question. So a lot of people are going to be picking up Fathers and Sons because you recommended that as a Russian pick and I mentioned that you said that you were on a personal mission to get everyone to read this book and people wanted to know why so you can give us the quick little blurb about why.

[Angelina Stanford]

So Fathers and Sons. Some English translations have Fathers and children as the title, but Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev is a not very long Russian novel about a. An old, very traditionalist kind of father whose son comes back after living in I think St. Petersburg and going to university for some years. And he brings back this, this, he brings back a friend with him who is a nihilist and you know, kind of in, you know, involved in Russian radical politics. This book is written in like 1860, but you see some of the same, same type of intellectual currents that would produce the Russian Revolution a lifetime later. So this friend of his son's kind of makes a nuisance of himself, sort of starts setting the son against the father and creating all these sort of family dramas and dilemmas. And it's kind of, I've honestly thought like you could film this novel today. Like if kid comes back from college with his roommate who's like this, I don't know, arrogant woke Portlandian or something like that, who makes fun of the sort of narrow minded Fox News watching geezer of a dad or something. And anyway it's that kind of generational strife story. And it's also just a great introduction to what Russia was like in the 19th century. It's a great. Just kind of slice of life novel. And the characters are really well drawn, beautifully written, and it's. I won't say that Turgenev was like a genius on the level of Dostoevsky, but his characters are less disturbing in a lot of ways. He writes more about. You read Turgenev and you think that these are probably more like the ordinary Russians as they existed at the time he was writing.

[Thomas Banks]

Well, I always thought he was just the opposite, so I'm gonna. That sounds good. I'm curious.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, I like Turgenev a lot. I think I read three books of his last year, but that's probably his best.

[Cindy Rollins]

Do you have a preferred translator for him?

[Angelina Stanford]

I think Penguin Classics. I think the guy who does. Did Penguin Classics as Richard Freeborn, he might not have done all of them, but he did several at least. And those are. Yeah, the Penguin Classics Turgenief. That's a fine place to start. So anyway, that's my. Again, shameless plug for a writer I like.

[Cindy Rollins]

Well, I have certainly enjoyed listening to you talk. I don't know if anybody else did, but.

[Angelina Stanford]

Well, thank you very much. It's been fun.

[Cindy Rollins]

So thank you very much to our Patreon for sponsoring this podcast and now the two podcasts. We're very excited about all the fun things we've got going on there. If you'd like to find out how you can become a sponsor, you go to patreon.com theliterarylife and see what we've got going on there and the bonus content, the fun community. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook. We've got a very happening and growing and lively and very intelligent Facebook discussion group there. So come for what a lot of people call their only happy place on the Internet these days. So you can join us there.

[Angelina Stanford]

I hope we're not the only happy place. I mean, that's really, really kind of people to say, but my goodness, that's.

[Cindy Rollins]

It's because we act like humans and we're not like just trying to kill each other.

[Angelina Stanford]

Yeah, we haven't. We haven't roused anything.

[Thomas Banks]

That's our role. People don't try to kill each other on our page.

[Cindy Rollins]

Not on my watch. Friends, the. The power of. Of the delete and block button has gone to my head. So just look at I. Off with their heads, man.

[Angelina Stanford]

Boom.

[Cindy Rollins]

Not gonna. Not gonna stand for it. I will keep this group our happy place. So we've got all kinds of fun things happening. Be sure to subscribe. Rate and review this podcast and the well read poem, so make sure you get that on your itunes, feed our stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts from. We'll also have information about that podcast on our website, TheLiterary Life, where you can go for all of the show notes, the book recommendations, links to the books, commonplace books, the reading contest, everything you need, it's all going to be right there. So until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[Angelina Stanford]

Time Real and Imaginable, an allegory by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. On the wide level of a mountain's head I knew not where, but twas some fairy place, Their pinions ostrich like for sails outspread. Two lovely children run an endless race. A sister and a brother this far outstripped the other, yet ever runs she with reverted face and looks and listens for the boy behind. For he, alas, is blind or rough and smooth, with even step he passed, and knows not whether he be first or last.