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- [00:19]
A
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 science, 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 back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and here with me is my my partner in all kinds of crimes, the mysterious Mr. Banks.
- [01:39]
B
Ms. Stanford, it has been too long.
- [01:40]
A
It has been too long. We have been having a summer break and we hope that you guys have been enjoying our series on the short story, which is one of my favorite series that we've ever done. But we are back here today to try to in some kind of way maybe answer your questions. This is our ask us almost anything episode and you guys threw it all at us. Everything from literary questions that will require a three hour conference talk for me
- [02:05]
B
to answer to ones we had to consult our attorneys before answering. That maybe a bit dicey.
- [02:11]
A
We might need you all to sign NDAs before we can answer some of these more personal questions. But we appreciate how many of you said you wanted to get to know us on this episode, so we shall see what we can do. Before we jump in though, let me tell you what I've got going on at the House of Humane Letters. We have had a fabulous summer and you can still pick up the videos of the things that we've done so far. Back in May we had a great webinar on Mary Poppins and we had Jim Rogers mini class on the Chronicles of Narnia. Ella Hornstra is just finishing up her Shakespeare and nature class. So coming up from about mid August, the next in my Harry Potter series will be launched. I'll be covering book six. No, I will not be doing six and seven together. That is way too much. So I'm going to give them each their own mini class so you can sign up for that Harry Potter gateway to the literary tradition, the Half Blood Prince. August 3, Addison Hornstro will be giving us a webinar on an introduction to Chinese folklore which will be amazing. And this is hot off the presses. This is. I'm very excited about that. Dr. Michael Drought is back. He's coming back August 19th to give us a webinar called A Look back at the 100 Years of Science Fiction. For close to a century, science fiction has been one of the most popular and one of the least critically respected genres of fiction. This lecture follows the evolution of science fiction from its origins in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to its present day pop culture dominance, paying particular attention to the way the genre separated from its siblings, fantasy and horror. We will trace the evolution of sci fi from the pulp works of H.P. lovecraft in the 1930s, through the hard boiled stories of Robert Heinlein and A.E. van Voight in the 40s, and into the golden age of the 1950s and 60s, when much of the best work of Isaac Asimov, Fritz Lieber and Theodore Sturgeon was published. Although the further diversification of the genre makes it somewhat more challenging to follow a single path, in the 1960s and 70s, we can see that the effects of a turn towards the social and revolutionary in the writings of Ursula Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick and Octavia Butler. Building on These foundations, the 1980s cyberpunk revolution brought innovations in literary style to the genre that we can trace further into the aesthetically accomplished sci fi of the 90s and 2000s, and in this fragmented but still massively influential science fiction of the present day. My goal in this lecture is to sketch out the broad literary history of the genre's development, showing students how to see where their own favorite sci fi fits and suggesting further authors and works that might be appealing. I think this is going to be a great webinar. I'm always looking to explore literary landscapes that we have not explored before. We have never done anything officially on sci fi, although I do teach Frankenstein and we've talked a little bit about sci fi on the podcast when we did out of the Silent Planet, Brave New World, the machine stops by E.M. forster. So we've covered it here or there, but I'm actually really looking forward to learning more about the history of the genre and the way that it's developed. We've also got. I want to remind you guys about this. Just pinch me. This talk that he's giving is going to be 18 and is going to basically be the exact same class he teaches in college on science fiction. Kind of, you know, distilled for you in. In one one cheap nut. But we've also got two college professors back to teach semester long classes to give you the opportunity to teach from some of the best scholars in the world, gifted teachers at a fraction of the cost, no written work, so you just come and learn. In the spring we're going to have Dr. Jason Baxter teaching a class called Where Do We Go From Here? Reading for Life. And he's going to be going through the major genres and hitting, you know, tragedy and epic and lyric poem and just taking you through how to approach reading for life. And in the spring, Michael Jowl will be back with a 16 week class called Tolkien's Creation. And he is going to be taking us, like the title says, through the works of JRL Tolkien. And we'll be looking at his Beowulf essay, his translations of things like the Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the other things that influenced his imagination. This is actually the exact same class that he teaches at Wheaton. And we are just so thrilled to be able to offer it to you. I, I can, I know what I'll be doing on my Thursday nights. But all of these things, like everything we do, is available live or later, so you will have lifetime access to these recordings. And we have a brand new dashboard system set up on the website which I think you guys are going to find very accessible and makes keeping up with the courses so much easier. So you can go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com that's our day job, guys. And that's what keeps the lights on here and the Internet on here for this podcast. And you could sign up for any or all of those classes. All right, Mr. Banks, are we ready to be exposed to the world in the episode?
- [07:14]
B
I think so. After some commonplaces, perhaps?
- [07:17]
A
Oh, yes, thank you. See, this is what happens when I'm out of practice. Do you have a commonplace quote, Mr. Banks?
- [07:21]
B
Yeah. Mine is from Sir Keith Feeling's History of England under the Tudors and Stuarts, which I was rereading recently. And he writes, the human mind, which creates forms and institutions, is the last thing to be tamed by its creatures. You know, one of those word to the wide sufficeth, sort of.
- [07:46]
A
Precisely. So. So my commonplace comes from the fact that we're actually recording this episode a bit early because at the end of July I am leading a retreat, an in person retreat where we will be discussing Shakespeare's the Tempest, among other things. So I have been deep into the research on Shakespeare and the Tempest and I have been reading a lot of the works of a scholar from the 1930s that I have come to really admire, G. Wilson Knight. He was an influence on Northrop Fry. He was a peer of CS Lewis. He's working in a lot of that same tradition. You'll see him quoting Tilliard and, and Lewis and a lot of the same names that you hear me tossing around. And I'm hard pressed to pick one quote because I, I just, I like him so much. I mean, Mr. Banks can attest to the fact that this book is full of multicolored flags and, you know, underlines and stars and in some cases, hearts. Don't be jealous. He's dead. I do put hearts sometimes in my book. But this will give you a little taste of what his scholarship is like. This is from a book called the Crown of Life and a chapter called Myth and Miracle. And he's trying to make the case that there is much more going on with Shakespeare than just. He's giving us interesting characters or there's some psychological insights, but that Shakespeare is really giving us this peek behind the veil that he's trying to get us to see through the window. If you've been on this, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know, I always go back to the window, right. That, that literature is an icon. It's a window. You see through it to the light on the other side. And that so much of the mistakes that literary criticism makes is that it's hyper focusing on how's the glass made. Let's look at this ornament on the frame. Let's look at the curtains. And forgetting the fact that there's a window and you're supposed to look through it, that is the point of the window. And I think Wilson Knight here is really trying to help us to see that. In fact, you were telling me, Mr. Banks, his brother was a renowned classicist.
- [09:47]
B
Yes. Jackson Knight was. He wrote one of the, one of the definitive studies on Virgil. I think it's just called Roman Virgil, published by T.S. eliot's Faber and Faber.
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A
Right.
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B
That was probably about 1940. 1945. Anyway, so it's one of those families that produced.
- [10:04]
A
Does that make sense? T.S. eliot wrote the introduction to the Wheel of Fire by Wilson.
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B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [10:12]
A
All right, so here's a quote just to give you a taste. He's talking about the tragedies again. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you're going to be saying, but what about the comedies? This is only half the story. Correct. And he knows that. And he says this in the book, but, you know, I'm not going to read a 500 page commonplace quote, this is something he's saying about tragedies. All these plays are to the reader what they must have been to the author. Revelations of profundity and grandeur. The mystery of human fate, though still a mystery to the intellect, is intuitively apprehended as we endure to the end of a great tragedy. In essence, our understanding is a mystic understanding and our sense of victory a mystic joy. Tragedy and our religion are inter. Significant. The Christian cross is only the symbol of the greatest of tragedies.
- [11:01]
B
Very sharp. Very sharp indeed.
- [11:03]
A
I like him a lot. I like him a lot. I. Yeah, I have a large selection
- [11:09]
B
of Jebus things like Northrop Fry. It.
- [11:12]
A
Yes, it does. And Fry is a. Fry is an. Fry is an influence. Other way. Night is an influence on Frye. Fry does talk about him. In fact, reading so much Wilson Knight and then reading Northrop Fry's essays on Shakespeare, I had to laugh because they were like quotes, quotes from Night that. Not that he's plagiarizing Night, but they're
- [11:30]
B
of a similar kidney.
- [11:31]
A
Well, his Shakespeare book is transcripts of a class he taught. And so you could just. Some of the phrases of Night are coming out in his teaching. He's. He's clearly a big influence. All right, shall we get started? There's so many questions. Well, okay. I like. I actually, I wondered this.
- [11:51]
B
Some of them were almost book length.
- [11:53]
A
Some of them were almost book length. Yeah. So we'll do our best here. This is from Melissa. I actually want to know the answer to this, too. Did you want to.
- [12:01]
B
Yeah, I wanted to recognize everyone collectively who contributed to this list. And because I read through it and I didn't see any editorials or manifestos disguised as questions. And I kind of expected at least, like fire.
- [12:15]
A
You saw Odious, Like.
- [12:16]
B
Well, yeah, like. No, but like, we've all been to the meeting where. Yes. And now we're going to open it up to Q and A. And the one guy takes the microphone and rants and then tosses in some kind of an inquiry at the end to justify his rant. But there was nothing that was the equivalent of that.
- [12:34]
A
Or like, you know, Kelly from the office, when Ryan says, are there any questions? She says, yes, how dare you?
- [12:39]
B
That kind of thing.
- [12:40]
A
That kind of thing. Maybe we did get those questions and Atlee just didn't put it on the.
- [12:44]
B
He spared our feelings.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
He.
- [12:45]
A
He. Maybe he edited it, but. This is a question from Melissa. This is a question I would very much love to hear the answer to. How does Mr. Banks go about Choosing which poem he will read at the end of each episode. I have wondered that, too.
- [12:58]
B
I tried to make it topically related to the main subject under discussion. Some kind of similar thematic content or. I don't know. Or maybe if we happen to be reading an author who say, we're reading a novel by an author who is also a poet as well as a novelist, like Thomas Hardy or someone like that, then I'll take something by that author and have it as the closing poem. But, yeah, other than that, I try to keep things thematically similar. Not always, though. Sometimes if we're rushed and we're about to record and I think to myself that I don't have a poem, I just grab an old favorite, and I have lots of those. So it's, you know, it's pretty easy
- [13:43]
A
mark a lot that you always seem to choose the perfect poem. It always goes with whatever we were talking.
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B
I'm glad it goes over well.
- [13:50]
A
You always pick it out before we talk. So if there's some kind of mystical thing happening there.
- [13:55]
B
Okay. I don't know that there is, but we'll go with that.
- [13:58]
A
You do a great job on the poetry. All right, this is a great question. How do we, you and I, go about secondary research and finding good literary criticism for literature? Should I go first?
- [14:12]
B
You go first.
- [14:13]
A
Okay. There's a line in C.S. lewis's experiment in Criticism where he says, if you're reading a book that's an interpretation of literature, you can only know if it's right or not if you already know what the book means. And so this is one of those difficult things because you start off and you're just like, well, there's so many books. There's so much interpretation. There's so much criticism in scholarship. How do I know who to trust? I try very hard on the podcast, when we're covering different books, to constantly be dropping names to you. If you're taking notes on the podcast, you will get a lot of names of people that I trust. You will then be able to follow the footnotes of what they're saying and, you know, see who their influences were. And that's how I found Wilson Knight is. I knew he was an influence on Northrop Fry, and I went backwards from there. So I do try to give you trustworthy names. But just because somebody's a trustworthy name, of course, doesn't mean that every single sentence they wrote is gospel or that they got everything right. So in Experiment Criticism, Lewis kind of distinguishes what he thinks is helpful and what he Thinks is not helpful. And I feel the same way. What is helpful are things that are essentially tour guides that help you to understand what words mean. The literary landscape, the metaphors, the imaginative landscape. In other words, all of the things that the original audience would have had in their mind so that basically we're speaking the same language that they are. You know, in that sense, it functions almost like having a dictionary. Like, what did this word mean to the people when they heard it? Right. What did. What did it mean to Shakespeare when he used this word? Things like that are extremely helpful and can be difficult to find. I trust basically no one still living. And I have. In fact, we were just talking about this. Today we have a quite a substantial library of dead scholars. I'm very fond of the scholarship from the 1930s. So I usually start with the people I know. I trust C. S Lewis and Tolkien, right? See if they wrote anything. Northrop Fry, see if he wrote anything. And you can just do a quick Google search on it. And then, you know, Tillard and Knight and Douglas Bush, and on and on and on. Like, I just. I start to collect people. But here's. Here's what it boils down to. You know how in our culture there's like a million competing voices on things like parenting, or what does it even mean to eat healthy? That's such a debatable topic. Or even be healthy. And at first, it's just overwhelming. So many competing voices. How do I know who to believe? What ends up happening, though, is as you start to get in there and learn things about, actually, this is what works with my kids, and this is what does not work with my kids. Or this is actually what it means to eat healthy. And I've learned this because I've been cooking for, you know, five years. After you get in there and you start learning it, you find it's not hard at all to distinguish it, right? You hear these talking heads, and you're like, that guy doesn't even have kids. He has never met a child. That is not how children act. He doesn't know what he's talking about, right? Or that person thinks that, you know, having protein shakes three times a day means being healthy. That's nonsense. That. That's not. No, that's. That's not how this. This works. And it's sort of the same experience. So I would say start with the people that you hear us recommending on the podcast. I, like I said, I. I go out of my way to always be referencing people you can trust. And so I Would. I would start there. Yeah.
- [17:42]
B
For my part, I. I found that the literary critics I have learned the most from are not, with a couple of exceptions, were not literary critics solely or primarily. So the general sort of men of letters, writers like Robert Lind, G.K. chesterton, Arthur Quiller Cooch, Andrew Lang. Oh, C.S. lewis would make my list, certainly. And that's, you know, one side of Lewis, of course, he has so many. And you could even take this back to Aristotle. Aristotle, of course, left us the. The oldest extant work of literary or dramatic interpretation that we have in the poetics. But that's obviously not, you know, the sum of Aristotle's work right there. So I. I guess that for me, academic criticism is something that I don't read as much as, you know, I guess you could say kind of high quality literary journalism. So that's. That tends to be the sort of literary criticism that draws me in the most, rather than, Rather than the sort of stuff that has ever come out of universities.
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A
Right. I agree. I very.
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B
For the most part. And there are exceptions to that. I mentioned Quiller Couch. I guess he was an academic. But other than that. Yeah, yeah.
- [19:01]
A
I mean, I'm not terribly interested in anybody who. Well, the literary critic, that term means something very different depending what decade you're in or even what century you're in. And that can be very confusing. But the way people mean it now, as basically taste makers, they want to tell you who's in and who's out. Again, if you go and listen to our experiment and pod Experiment podcasting, that is exactly what we have, an experiment podcasting, our CS Lewis experiment criticism episodes.
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B
He.
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A
He deals with that. So I don't have any interest, nor did Lewis, in people whose job it is that they think it's their job to tell you, you know, this guy's in and this guy's out. I. I don't find that helpful. You can have your own opinion about if somebody's worthy or not, but what Lewis describes is, you know, people who are or who he talks about. Literary historians. I know you like them as well. Those are helpful to me. You know, anybody who's, who's helping me to understand the landscape I'm entering. And of course, with this podcast we try. We try to do that with this podcast. All right, well, clearly we are starting off spending way too much time, never going to get through this. All right, this is another one where our students, Olivia Wetzel, shout out to her, who has quickly become one of our greatest, most intense lovers of alchemy. Not surprisingly, she has a question about alchemy. Alchemy is a topic that has been brought up a lot recently and became a rather big subject. It's clearly a thread running through the literary tradition and is found everywhere from the Greek myths to J.K. rowling. My question is, how did you first learn about alchemy? Is it something you just stumble upon while doing research, or had you known a bit about it for a while, but only look deeper into it for the Harry Potter podcast? All right, so if you haven't heard us talk about this before, she's talking about literary alchemy. Not. I mean, as much as I would love to say I've got a bathtub full of gold that I. I took some. Some metal screws and turned them into gold, that is not what we're talking about. We're talking about literary alchemy, which bec shorthand of symbols for the journey of the soul. Essentially, that we are the base metal is our base metal soul, and we are all trying to reach a perfected state of our soul. And that's gold. That's the really shorthand version. I. We talked about this on the Harry Potter podcast. I explained it most thoroughly in the Harry Potter class I did on Book Books four and book five. I spent an entire class period, and I read all the books, I'm telling you, all the books on alchemy and feel like, I know, but when this girl deep dives, she deep dives like, you know, activate hyperfocus. Here we go. But how did I first learn about it? I first came across it when I was looking into Snow White, and the colors in Snow White are white, black, and red. And just a passing comment I ran across that didn't explain it. It was just like, well, that's also alchemy. And just kind of went on from there. And so I just had that in. That. That was. That was before we were married. So this is. This is quite a while back. And I just had it in the back of my mind as, oh, okay, there's something about alchemy with literature. I don't know what that's about. And I just left it. Every now and then I would run across another reference. Again, it wasn't time to activate my hyper focus, so I just kind of left it in the back. And then. Well, I think it was two summer. It was. It was two summers ago. Addison Hornstrand and I were talking about Alice in Wonderland, which is. Has a ton of alchemy in it. She ended up doing a series on Alice in Wonderland over on the HHL website. If you go over there, she did a webinar and a mini class, which was absolutely breathtaking. But she and I together started to try to answer the question, what is going on with the alchemical colors in Alice in Wonderland? And that. That led us to try to answer. That basically activated my hyper focus. And then I think it was two summers ago, we did the first Harry Potter episode, too. So just coincidentally, while she and I were researching alchemy for Alice in Wonderland, I started doing Harry Potter research and ran across that J.K. rowling said she was very deliberate about putting literary alchemy and alchemical symbolism in the book. So I started to learn about it. And now. Now, of course, I see it. I see it everywhere. It's in Shakespeare, it's in C.S. lewis, it's in the Bible. It's in all kinds of places. Good question. All right. Oh, here you go. Random question. Is Thomas Banks any relative of the sculptor? Okay. Would you like to go on record?
- [23:30]
B
Okay, so answer this question. Yeah, it's. I. No one ever asked me this until about six years ago, and now I get. I've had emails and posts on Facebook. So, yes, there was an English sculptor in The, I think, 18th century named Thomas Banks, and he's buried in Westminster Abbey. He's a neoclassical sculptor. No, I am no relation at all to him. My family. My family was all over here on this side of the Atlantic in America by that time. So, no, I don't have any connection to him, though. Yeah. I'm flattered, though, to think that people naturally assume that I'm the sort of person who would have relatives buried in Westminster Abbey, but I don't.
- [24:14]
A
But I pretend that Lady Banks Roses is really irrelative.
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B
Sure, sure. That would be nice, too. No, I, I. Yeah, my ancestors do come from England, but they got kicked out before the 18th century. So there you are. Yeah.
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A
Some of your ancestors come from England.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Your English and Welsh and French.
- [24:35]
B
Yeah.
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A
So we have in common, those of you who are interested, asking to know a little bit more about us. We have the odd thing in common, that we both have English last names, but we are, in fact, French, and we both have interesting stories about how that came to be.
- [24:48]
B
Story for another time.
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A
Story for another time. Yes. But it's so funny because our grandparents spoke French, both of us, you and I. And so, anyway, different story. We're a melange of things. All right, here's a question. Angelina, can you give us a brief definition of each of the building blocks of stories. Okay, well, that's one of the she said brief. All right, I'll try not to give a 40 minute backstory. This is a very brief. Don't overthink this. It's nuanced. And I will just give you the. The briefest, briefest outline. Okay, so the building blocks of stories are Bible stories, myths, fairy tales, fables and legends. And I give an honorable mention to nursery rhymes and folk songs. I think you know what a nursery rhyme is, and I think you know what a folk song is. So we're good. You probably also know what a Bible story is. All right, so we're good. Three right? Out of the way. What is a myth? So officially, a myth is a story before the time of men. So if it's. I know your face. Hang on, let me get there, let me get there. See, you're being less precise in your definitions than I am. That's why you have that face. I'll get to there in a second. So officially, a myth is the story of gods and goddesses, the supernatural creation of the world before the time of men. So any story you read that's sort of like in the beginning, you know, this is how mountains were made. This is how humans were made even, because it'll. It'll often go up to that, but there's some kind of creation of man story, the stories, so. All right, so you might be saying the same thing as Mr. Banks's face right now, but my book of myths also has people like Theseus and Perseus and he and Orpheus. And those are men. Correct. Officially, those are called hero stories. And so those are the stories about the first men, the heroes, the demigods, the establishment of civilization. All right, he's. Oh, he just gave me the thumbs up and he's nodding. Okay, see, we're tracking. And this is where I say in good books, typically any collection of mythology that you have is going to put both of those together. And so, like, if you have Edith Hamilton, she has one section called the Stories of Gods, and part two is the Stories of Heroes. Same thing with Stephen Fry. His volume one is called Mythos. So it's just the stories of gods before men. And his second volume is Heroes. So that's the hero stories. So that's a myth. A lot of these stories function the same way in terms of story structure and in terms of archetypes and images and symbols. So I'm just trying to give you some shorthand about what that is. And mythology has the unique Position of, well, not Bible stories obviously are sacred also. But as opposed to like fairy tales and fables and legends, Mythology is sacred and originally had a sacred function. Eventually it kind of morphs with other things like fairy tales. And fairy tales do not have a sacred function. Okay, so fairy tales, now this is complicated. Gosh. See, that is not an easy question. I'm going to try to give you a simple answer. Fairy tales is complicated because a story can be a fairy tale and not have a fairy in it. And we call a lot of things fairy tales that are not fairy tales. So a fairy tale is going to be something that has some sort of displacement of time and space. All right? So you don't really know when you are where you are. This is different from, you know, you read the Odyssey and you know you're going to Ithaca. That's a, that's a place. Right? Those. Ms. Theseus is in Athens or he's in Thebes. Right? Those are geographical places. Even Mount Olympus is a place. Fairy tales is going to be, you know, once upon a time in a kingdom far away. And you don't really know when or where that is. And there's, there are certain functions for that. It's going to have a much more everyman quality. It's not going to have a sacred function. It's going to be very similar to a myth, however. And by definition a fairy tale has to have a happy ending. If you're like, but my Grims has some that are not happy happy, those are cautionary tales. Okay, so that's, that's your easy version. It's so hard, you guys don't know how hard it is to give you the short answer because while I'm saying I'm like, somebody's going to be confused because I can't give a two hour explanation right now.
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B
I think that was pretty good, actually.
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A
Okay. Fable short and is usually a beast. Fable doesn't have to be, but it's usually got talking animals and a legend. So again, very, very similar. But a legend is going to be different from a myth or a fairy tale in that is going to be about someone who actually existed. But you're telling stories now that have become sort of exaggerated over time. So sometimes you'll hear people say things like Odysseus is a legendary figure. If you look over in the corner, I'm twitching because no, he's not. He's a mythic figure. He's not a legendary figure. Odysseus is not real.
- [29:33]
B
I would add that legends and Myths and myths often usually originate even in pre literate societies, whereas legends typically do not.
- [29:44]
A
Well, that's interesting. That's interesting. So legendary figures are people like King Arthur and Robin Hood and Rob Roy in Scotland. Rob. Even Charlemagne becomes legend. So it's a real person who becomes exaggerated. So it can even have supernatural things in it. Now, someone else asked a question about legends, so this would be a good time to answer that. And this is Alyssa who is saying, you know, she reads different versions of Robin Hood, and they're set in different centuries. They can be set in different countries. And what are we to think about that? So that actually is one of the things about legends. One of the things that amuses me so much is how many different countries fight over where King Arthur was from. He was definitely Welsh, spoken like a true Welshman. Is he Welsh? Is he Scottish? Is he Irish? Is he a Britain? Is he from Brittany? You know, the French have their King Arthur tradition. So one of the things that happens, and this is distinguishing legend from history, is as they reach that legendary status, they are no longer tied to time and place. And you'll recognize that that's something similar to fairy tale. So it is not uncommon to have Robin hood's set in 1066, just have it set at the time of the Crusades and Richard the Lionhearted, to have it be in England, to have it be in Wales, to have it be in France, they hop around the globe and hop around the timeline, and that is perfectly okay. That is what legends do. Each, each people and each time period will see something in the legend that I guess expresses something for them, for lack of a better phrase. I'm cringing as I hear myself say it because I think, oh, don't, don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. And, and it's applicable to a lot of different times in the same way that a fairy tale is right. Like no one time owns Red Riding Hood. No one place owns Red Riding Hood. They. They. They reach archetypal universal status. I guess I would say that. All right. Oh, oh, this is going to be a juicy one. All right. Linnea asks, what exactly is the objective correlative? Is it wrong? Do we agree with it?
- [31:55]
B
It's a piece of critical apparatus that we don't have recourse to very much on our show. It's. That's not to say it doesn't exist. It. It's a phrase that was coined by T. Coined and popularized by T.S. eliot.
- [32:09]
A
Please explain how he later regretted.
- [32:11]
B
Yeah, so it's from an essay called Hamlet and His Problems, which appeared in the 1920s, I think. And he was making the case that the play Hamlet is a failure because it does not feature an objective correlative which he defines as a sort of device. It could be a physical object that appears in a play that serves not only as a plot device, but sort of also as the embodiment of many of the plays or stories. Themes like the spot in Lady Macbeth's hand, I think, is an example he gives of an objective correlative. So I would allow that this device which he is describing. He is describing something. I don't think he makes the case that Hamlet is a failure because it does not. Actually.
- [33:04]
A
That's modern 20th century literary criticism in a nutshell. They decide what has to be in a story, then say a story is a failure that it doesn't have.
- [33:11]
B
Looking back, looking back retrospectively on that essay, which he wrote as a fairly, I think fairly young man, he was just sort of making his reputation. But years later, he admitted that he had tried to make of this particular concept more than it really deserved.
- [33:32]
A
Yes, T.S. eliot repented for many of his youthful literary sins. We have to remember that if you read early Elliot, he. He's not.
- [33:40]
B
He was.
- [33:40]
A
So.
- [33:40]
B
Yeah, I think actually he improves as a critic as he grows older, for the most part. And. But early on he's. He was very much determined to salvage reputations that he felt had been unjustly overlooked. That's why he was such an advocate of the metaphysical poets, because for a very long time they had sort of been shunted into the. Well, the wastebasket of the unfashionable, and he was determined to stamp down the Romantics and Milton and the. The more Romantic side of Shakespeare too. So I think that's.
- [34:15]
A
Yeah, he found himself on the other side of many, many literary debates with C.S. lewis.
- [34:20]
B
Yeah, yeah. They actually managed to be civil when they. When they met.
- [34:24]
A
That was actually one of the struggles of Lewis's life, is that he. When he met Elliot, he actually really liked him as a person. But, like. But they were enemies. Yeah, you could say that, because they had different views. Although Elliot, like you said, he does come around so objective, correlative. You hardly ever hear that anymore. It's very out of fashion. Except for one literary podcast that I think is a joke, that this seems to be their one trick pony, that every time they read a book, they start talking about objective correlative, and I just roll my eyes.
- [34:54]
B
It was one of those things I learned in a History of Literary, the class in college. But it's, it's, it had its moment. Scholars trivia, I guess. Yes. I mean, sure, if you study English literature, it's worth knowing what it is,
- [35:06]
A
but it is not your magic skeleton key that will let you into every room of the literature. Right. Maybe it had a use when T.S. eliot was using it very, in a very small, specific way, but it is not useful. My biggest issue with the objective correlative is that it is not the same thing as trying to find a symbol. A symbol is something that is rooted in nature. It is something that help. It's an icon. A symbol is an icon. Like I was talking about the window. It's something that helps you see through it to a transcendent reality. And the objective correlative is much more like he thinks the author is very intentionally trying to signal you to something in this world. Like, oh, I don't know, like the yellow curtains are an objective correlative for the economic situation of the 1920s. Like you, you end up hearing those kinds of interpretations. And that's not the same thing as a symbol. That's, that's arbitrary. I do not like when occasionally and again, early 20th century, when ts elite is talking about, people are very deliberately rejecting the literary tradition. They're very deliberately rejecting symbolic language. And so you're seeing more deliberate kind of objective correlatives in that time period. Again, it's passe now. No one does it anymore. It had, it had. It was fashionable like, like, you know, paying dots. It was fashionable like those 1990s posters, Magic Eye. Like that. Like, like it was popular like that. And then it went away and nobody thinks about it anymore.
- [36:40]
B
So you're saying this, it's basically the Chia Pet.
- [36:43]
A
Yes.
- [36:43]
B
Literary criticism.
- [36:44]
A
That is exactly what I'm saying. It's time to move on.
- [36:46]
B
Wow.
- [36:47]
A
On. It's time to ch. Ch. Chia. It's time to move on. But it was an attempt to not have symbols and instead just kind of have a flashing red light of hello, I'm signaling to you what my important theme is. Look at me. Aren't I so literary? And you know, you know, Mr. Banks, I can't stand that kind of stuff. And so yeah, I'm, I'm anything that's too in your face, like, hey, can't you see the suitcase on her bed is a symbol for her locked away inner trauma. I'm like, I will vomit on you. Right.
- [37:15]
B
This is not. Would it not have been funny though? T.S. eliot, neither of his marriages Produced any children. But what if he had a child who wrote a little story for him, you know, like a boy with a dog sort of story, and brings it to him, this little five year old, and T.S. eliot corrects him, saying, your story does not have an objective correlative, so you'll have to rewrite it so that it does.
- [37:38]
A
Yeah, exactly. And that's what T.S. eliot is essentially doing to Shakespeare. Are you guys mad at him now? Can you imagine telling Shakespeare, you have the thing I decided you needed? Now again, to it, to his credit, he repented of that essay. But young T.S. eliot and all of his arrogance decided Shakespeare was a failure because it didn't meet.
- [37:57]
B
He famously says of Hamlet that it was the Mona Lisa of plays that everyone praises mindlessly without knowing why.
- [38:03]
A
Man, if that doesn't sound like a 25 year old arrogant God.
- [38:08]
B
I remember writing adjectives not quite that good perhaps, but I remember writing sentences like that when I was, yeah, a teenager.
- [38:14]
A
All right, next, a question from another student. This is Elizabeth Hobson. Is rereading important in the literary life and what makes it important? All right, you go for that. You're a great rereader. Tell us about that.
- [38:25]
B
Yeah, well, I think also it's a very, very rare person who takes everything from a book that might profitably be taken in a single read. In fact, if you, you might be something either much more or much less than human, if you can do that. Yeah. And books are not like. Books are not like a box of juice. You suck out all the juice, you toss the box away. It's. Yeah, I, it's, it's, it's much more like a favorite landscape or something. I'm sorry if this analogy becomes cheesy, but if you have a favorite, a favorite piece of woodland or a favorite. If you live in a mountainous state. I don't know. Or if you live near a beach, would you never visit a place again that you really thought was beautiful and profoundly moved you because you had been there before? Yeah, you know, I've been to, I've been to Venice Beach. Why? I don't know why that example just came to mind. Maybe, maybe not.
- [39:23]
A
That's not actual Venice.
- [39:24]
B
Yeah, well. Oh, yeah, I've been to Venice. Thank you. That's much better. I've been to Venice. Yeah, the lagoons and all that, you know, it's, it's fine. I'm never going back. It was actually a great vacation. But. Yeah, I don't know. I can't imagine anyone treating place that way unless it was a really unpleasant place, then of course you don't want to go there again. I don't know. But otherwise it would seem kind of a blase and even sort of arrogant way to treat a city or a country or a stretch of woodland or mountain, if you felt that, yeah, I absorbed everything that can possibly be absorbed there and I never need to see it again.
- [40:03]
A
That's a great analogy. And for me, I think I would say my analogy is that literature is the great feast. And would you say, I'm not interested in eating, I already ate last year? Like, of course not. But in a more pragmatic answer, you really can't know a book well from just reading it one time. And so every time I go back and read and I don't reread every book, I am a finite human being. There are many, many books. I, you know, I can't possibly reread all of them. Although I do find the older I get, the more, the more that I'm likely to revisit an old favorite than read something new. I just feel like I don't have enough time to be disappointed anymore. But when I revisit these old favors, I see new things. Like, that is the nature of it. New layers. Like, you know, like, like my good book students know that literature is not a nut that we're trying to crack open and get to the center and eat. It is. It's an onion. And it has layers and layers and layers and layers. And I want to experience as many layers as possible. And I actually do. It is better on many, many levels to spend time rereading and really experiencing the multi layers of meaning in a book than to just have like a giant checklist and say, you know, I read 50 classics this year. And I do try, when I, when I think about my year of reading, I do try to be deliberate about having rereading in, in my, in my year. It will, it will, well, repay you, and it will, it will give you the experience of realizing, wow, I've gotten a lot better. When I read this five years ago, I didn't see any of this, and now it's jumping out at me. And it's very exciting. It's very exciting. So that's a good question.
- [41:43]
B
All right.
- [41:43]
A
How do I keep up with the millions of images? And she lists a whole bunch of them when I'm reading. Okay, so I get this question a lot, and I think part of it is you're thinking about this the wrong way. I, I don't open a book and have in my mind some sort of checklist, and these are all the things I'm going to see. One of the things I'm fond of saying in my classes is a book will tell you how to read it. And this also connects to the previous question about why you reread. I'm usually following just one or two threads. You. You can't track everything that. I mean, it's just not possible and nor would should you want to. And I don't think you need to put that stress on yourself. You know, I. I'm a reader like anybody else. I'm having a literary experience. I'm getting sucked in. I'm enjoying the story, and things are popping out at me, and I'm like, oh, look at that. And, oh, look at that. Oh, that's cool. That's. That's cool. And then I'll read it again, and I might find a different thread this time. So I'm not trying to keep it all in.
- [42:41]
B
In.
- [42:41]
A
In my mind. When you take a class with me, however, I'm approaching the book as I am the teacher and I need to teach all these things. And so that's a different reading experience for me. I don't want y' all to think when you take a class with me that I read every book like I do if I'm teaching a class. Like, it's my job as the teacher to. To. To bring it all to you. And so I'm doing a ton of research, and I'm multiple times and slowly and trying to track as many things as I possibly can. So that's a. That's a very different experience. How about you? Do you have an answer for that?
- [43:15]
B
Yeah, I. I would say that you will not enjoy a novel or a poem or a play nearly as much if every time a symbol appears, you jot it down. Maybe you will, if that's your thing. I don't know. I can't imagine anyone really liking a book, though. So, yeah, I would say don't stress yourself out about it. And it's the sort of thing that you notice with practice, because there's a kinship between symbols. There are probably. They're really not as many of them as you think, necessarily. I mean, there's a, you know, an infinite variety of a finite number perhaps, that actually have a universal quality in them to read.
- [43:52]
A
Kind of open. They sort of just bubble up to the surface. I don't even feel like I'm hunting for them as much as, like, they slap me, which is also a lesson,
- [44:00]
B
perhaps A lesson in writing. If you plan to become a writer of fiction or drama or poetry, whatever. Like, you don't necessarily have to signal that you're introducing a symbol when you introduce one.
- [44:10]
A
Yes. By saying here's a cough, cough. Here's my objective correlative.
- [44:14]
B
Here's my Christological sacrifice symbol. And I'm going to draw attention to it by saying that the character's arms were outstretched in the manner of a cross.
- [44:24]
A
I think you missed it. Yeah. Or say something like the sentence I always make fun of, like Odysseus and Huckleberry Finn. I too was on a journey. No, stop. Immediately stop.
- [44:34]
B
Oh, I think I know what book that's from.
- [44:36]
A
Yes.
- [44:36]
B
You know, I've always roasted Unhappy Memory. We won't bring it up.
- [44:40]
A
Next question. A follow up question. What, what book is that? Somebody else did ask though, how do I write in the tradition? What's your answer to that?
- [44:50]
B
Try to tell. I mean, if you're writing fiction. Again, try to write. I don't know, I guess I would say don't try to write the tradition.
- [44:58]
A
Try. Yeah. How about this?
- [44:59]
B
This is smaller. Maybe this is helpful though. I think a profitable way to which. Which might also be an enjoyable way to write actually kind of anything. It could be non fiction as well. But imitate at least begin by deliberately imitating the kind of writers that you enjoy. That's actually not a bad way at all. Robert Louis Stevenson freely admitted when he was an established writer that when he was a young guy in high school, college, he was. He called it a sedulous ape and he would. He. Yeah, well actually, yeah, Scott was one of the ones actually Ruskin too. Ruskin was a big influence on, on Stevenson and he mentions half a dozen others but. But yeah, like. And also writing about the same kind of things that your favorite writers wrote about isn't. Not necessarily a bad way to begin. I don't think necessarily you need to stay there. But yeah, and this is advice coming from someone who's not a professional writer. I've written a lot of essays, a lot of poems. I've published some of them. I've written just enough fiction to know I'm bad at it. So there you go. For whatever that advice is worth.
- [46:10]
A
No, I think that's excellent advice. And part of what it is is, you know, we have this modern assumption that, that you need to be original. And so, you know, I fought that even in the early 90s in my grad school program. I was upset at how many of the creative writers didn't want to read any old books. And it was like, you just. I remember thinking, God forbid you have anything to learn from Shakespeare about writing and staying power. But you know that. But it's this pressure to be original. So I don't want to be influenced. That's nonsense. It's like trying to bake a cake without ingredients. You know, like, you have to build it on something. But I will. I will tell you what my favorite art professor from college was. And I took this. I took. Took three of his classes out of nothing but Love, because they were fabulous classes. And we had this. My university had a very, very respected art program and was basically like, we can teach anybody how to draw, and you will be an accomplished artist when you leave. And he said, students come to me all the time and ask, you know, about the art degree and what they need to do to become an artist. And he said, what I tell them is, don't spend your money on college. Spend it by going to the Louvre and sit at. Sit at the master's feet and copy them. And then you will lear how to be an artist. And I remember just slow clapping him at the same time. I thought, you're going to get fired.
- [47:23]
B
But expensive. Less expensive in the long run.
- [47:26]
A
But I think the same is true. You read a lot and then you copy. And then you actually do find your own style. You actually do find your own style that way. All right.
- [47:35]
B
Oh, and also, like, don't feel the need. It doesn't actually make your fiction better, your short stories or your novel better if you deliberately make it depressing. That's. Some great stories are depressing. Thomas Hardy. I. I revel in Thomas Hardy. He's often very depressing. But it's. No, it's.
- [47:54]
A
It's. It's.
- [47:54]
B
Some stories are happy. Some stories need to be happy. Some stories need to be sad. But one is not better than the other simply for being happy.
- [48:03]
A
Sad podcast and he talked about his writing experience, and he said his imagination is smarter than him and it knows stories better than he does. Does. I think what he's getting at is if you just fill up your imagination with the best stories, it will come out.
- [48:16]
B
Yeah.
- [48:16]
A
When you're ready to tell your story, it will come out shaped by the whole world of stories. That's how Lewis did it. That's how Tolkien did it. That's how Shakespeare did it.
- [48:24]
B
And.
- [48:25]
A
And that really is the only way to do it. You can't. You can't pour out of your picture what is not in your picture. And so you really. The job when you're younger is to just fill it up. Just fill it up.
- [48:34]
B
That's very good. Did you just say that or is that something you said before?
- [48:37]
A
I just said it. It just came to me. Me, I've been shaped by words. How do you deal with reading slumps?
- [48:45]
B
Oh yeah, we've had this one before.
- [48:46]
A
Do you have. I feel like I'm the one who has.
- [48:49]
B
There are times. No, there are times when I. Yeah, there are times when I don't want to pick up a book. Sure. Actually, that's often when I go back to rereading and I pick up a book that I know I like and I have enjoyed before. I, you know, I'm reading one of my Evelyn Wall novels for the fifth time now and a book about Savonarola. The book about Savonarola I think I also had read before, actually. But anyway, yeah, it's. So, yeah, I find that rereading, going back to a trusted friend is something that, is something that does not let you down.
- [49:23]
A
I do the same. I think in general I probably have more slumps than you just because I'm more of an up and down kind of person. Like I will hyper focus on something really intensely for two months and then kind of burn out. And it's really hard for me to pick back up again or, you know, any kind of life change. Like anytime I've had a baby or moved or anything like that, I find it really difficult to get back on track. But I will go to an old favorite. Typically, I'm almost always going to pick up a detective novel. Sometimes a PG Wodehouse, but almost always a detective novel. Often a detective novel I already know and love and it's kind of like a comfort read to me or a new golden age author. But detective novels are short. They're very plot driven. They keep me going and they, they help me to develop that habit again. It's just really easy to fall out of the habit. Habit. But you were going to say something. You had another thought?
- [50:13]
B
Oh yeah. And also reading, I would say some people read because they mean to be improved by it or they want to improve their stock of knowledge or something. I would say no matter what it is, what your vocation in life is and what your reading life is, how. How it is bound up with that, read something for pleasure every once in a while just because you think you will enjoy it and for no other reason than that otherwise you'll go insane. So, yeah, agree. I mean, a professor of mine, a Mentor in college who died this past year. I remember the year after he retired, he said he read, I think it was War and Peace for the first time since he was a young man. And he had forgotten how, how much fun it is just to lose yourself in a really spacious novel that had nothing to do with work and was something he was reading solely for him. And it was like falling in love again.
- [51:15]
A
Oh, yeah. So anyway, that's great. That's great. What's your favorite book? I know someone who's gonna ask that. I can't answer it. I don't think about like that.
- [51:29]
B
Even like within a genre. It's so hard. Like, what's your favorite novel? Is too hard for me.
- [51:33]
A
What's next one is my favorite.
- [51:35]
B
I'm just gonna rattle off some novels, plays, and others that I really like. Novels. Waverly by Walter Scott, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, Tess of the d' Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Most anything by Anthony Trollope. Probably something by Jane Austen. But it would be hard for me to name what plays, most of Shakespeare's tragedies or romances and some of the comedies. But again, this is useless. I mean, I'm just, I can't even specify, like, when I come to Shakespeare, what is my favorite Shakespeare play? I think probably of the tragedies, Macbeth is the one I've read the most. I think Coriolanus comes close.
- [52:21]
A
Oh, more obscure.
- [52:24]
B
It's the Roman. It's the things. I like the Roman tragedies a lot, but yeah, sorry that it's a really fine, It's a fine question, but I can't answer it.
- [52:33]
A
These questions earlier, neither of us thought
- [52:35]
B
to say the Bible. Yeah, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Well, no, no, I mean, it's like some people's favorite book, honestly, is the Bible. I don't think necessarily a lot of people. But here's the thing, I will admit though, and I think this is, is you can do with this what you will. There are parts of the Bible I don't enjoy at all.
- [52:52]
A
Like First Chronicles, you, they like all of it is long.
- [52:55]
B
Anyone who says First Chronicles is fun to read is lying.
- [52:58]
A
Yeah, okay. I think that's, I look, sorry. Some part of them.
- [53:01]
B
Pentateuch. I just, yeah, I keep trying.
- [53:04]
A
I can't do it, guys. But yeah, so no, I will read it. And, and I like some, I love some parts of it. But no, I'm not going to pretend like every single word is a personal favorite. I, I, I don't know that we're supposed to think of it that way. Oh, we're getting hot in here. But a lot of people ask some version of the question, what's your favorite book? What was your most influential book? What are the 10 books that most influence you? And so I'm. Since so many of you said you would like to get to know us a little bit better in this episode, I will just tell you something about how I respond to those kinds of questions. My mind goes completely blank. Completely blank. Somebody. If somebody asks me in real life, what's your favorite book? My brain is like, what's a book? Have I ever read a book before? Okay, like, what's my name? My mind goes completely blank. I have spent half a century trying to figure out why that happens. Not just about books. What's your favorite food? Blank. Okay.
- [53:55]
B
I think if either of us were a professional cook and someone asked, what's the best meal you ever ate? I think that would be. That would be probably a really hard question.
- [54:02]
A
I do hope your favorite person is. It's you.
- [54:04]
B
Oh, well, okay.
- [54:06]
A
But I think I have figured out what happens to me. My brain. I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I am neurodivergent, as I have spoken about many times on this show. And my brain does not think hierarchically. It does not put things from top to bottom, vertically. I think laterally about everything. This is why I am so good at being like, this is like, this is like. This is like this, right? This book is like. This book is like, like Mr. Makes. And I sit down and watch a movie. I'm just like the whole time going, oh, and this is like, this is like this. And he's like, wow, how do you do that? Because I cannot not put things stacked on top of each other. I just see everything laterally. So it's like I am incapable of making. My brain simply cannot compile information in a top down way. It just cannot do it. I have like a miniature panic attack if you ask me what my favorite book is. So instead I will answer, what is the book I have read the most? And the answer is Pride and Prejudice. I read for the first time when I was 17 and I think I am coming close to having read it 30 times now.
- [55:09]
B
Know I don't think I've read any book 30 times.
- [55:12]
A
Yeah, I've. And I've just always gone back to it. It's never failed me. The Pride and Prejudice movie is my comfort movie. We experienced some real sad news here. And, and, and I Coped by. I coped by watching Pride and Prejudice. So, yeah, there you go. That was way more of an explanation than you wanted. How do you explain why we need the humanities in this stem obsessed age? You want to give that one a show that.
- [55:41]
B
Because it's a stem obsessed age?
- [55:43]
A
Well, I think that's a pretty good answer.
- [55:45]
B
Yeah, Because I think it's a. I think it is a healthy and a stalwart. No, let me rephrase. I think that it is a good means of tending to our sanity, to occupy ourselves with subjects of study and values that cannot be quantified. It seems that if. It seems that if all of our knowledge is either scientific or quasi scientific or something pretending to be scientific, then we're. We're collectively in danger of transforming ourselves into so many automatons. But these are things that other people have said a thousand times before and have said better than I have. But, but, yeah, I think that's. That's one. One of many reasons.
- [56:46]
A
All right, so here. Here's my off the cuff answer. I get some version of this question every day. How do I explain to my friend, my co op, my mom, my church, what it is we're talking about? And the answer is you sort of can't. And I'm not saying you shouldn't keep trying, but one of the things you're learning on this podcast is that what happens with literature is an experience that happens in the imagination. It is something that is apprehended, not comprehended. The minute you start to discuss theory with somebody, and I'm going to explain to you what this experience is now, you have moved out of the world of the imagination, out of the world of apprehension, and you have moved into the world of the intellectual and comprehension. And so you essentially are trying to explain to somebody what a symphony sounds like. I'm like, I don't get it. No, but you're like, but the violins and you're soaring and oh, my gosh. And my. My heart leaves my chest and they're like, I don't get.
- [57:44]
B
I don't.
- [57:44]
A
I don't understand what you're talking about. Right, because they can't understand what you're talking about. You got to put on a symphony, right? How do you explain a symphony? You play a symphony and honestly, that's what it comes down to. They have to have the literary experience. Now, I try to explain it as best I can. I give conference talks. I try to explain to you guys as best I can, but what I like, what I tried to do in the last conference talk, which people said they really appreciated is the first half I explained and the second half I just walked you through three different stories to show you how to experience that. And that that was where the light bulb went off. And the final thing I'll say about why does any of the, any of this literature matter in a world where, you know, we're focused on, you know, math and science and engineering and computers and tech and things like that? I will tell you a story, might make you cry, because it made me cry. I had a really good friend who was a cancer surgeon. He literally cut cancerous tumors out of people's heads. And we would talk about books. He was such an interesting person. He had memorized Hamlet and would just quote it all the time. Time. And he loved literature. And so he was always hitting me up for book recommendations of which translation of Dante should I get? And oh, and I made my medical students in their rounds today recite poetry because it's National Poetry Day. And he was just really into it. And one day when he was talking like that, I said to him,
- [59:07]
B
you
- [59:08]
A
are out there literally saving people's lives. I talk about fairy tales. And he was quiet and he thought about his answer and he said, yes, you're right, I save people's lives, but you, Angelina, give them something to live for.
- [59:27]
B
Did violins swell in the background? But I know that's like a line from a movie or something.
- [59:33]
A
I cried and he said, no, I'm being serious, I mean it. And he did mean it. So that's my answer. That's my answer. Oh, here's a great question. My little brother wants to know if you have Legos.
- [59:46]
B
You know, I did as a child, my brother and I had a pretty decent collection and we mostly had the pirate Legos, which I think are. It was kind of funny. I don't think they make those anymore. The pirate Legos. You, you have to find them like on ebay now or something. But I was, I was actually going to buy a set for my nephews who are toddlers. Like they go for.
- [60:09]
A
Oh, they're crazy expensive.
- [60:10]
B
Yeah, they're really expensive anyway. Yeah, it's like you have to get them on the black market. You know, we have to find like the one guy, the one middle aged guy whose mom didn't throw them away at some point. But anyway, I remember once a, the, the son, probably six year old son of a friend was showing me his Legos and I was lecturing him on the inferiority of present day Legos. With like Mandalorian rubbish and all this kind of, you know, corporate tie in nonsense. And anyway, yeah, I think, I think I convinced him that sadly the golden age of Legos was before his time.
- [60:44]
A
Him.
- [60:45]
B
And he was just born in the wrong. Born in the wrong century.
- [60:48]
A
I do not have any legos. Any Legos that was owned by me has been absconded with by my children who have taken the.
- [60:57]
B
That was kind of before
- [61:00]
A
legos. Well, no. So my little brother had Legos.
- [61:04]
B
Okay. Okay.
- [61:05]
A
Yeah, my little brother had Legos, which I really liked his Legos, but I did not personally have Legos, but he had Legos and I did like, I liked them a lot, lot. So there you go.
- [61:13]
B
Good.
- [61:13]
A
We're pro legos here at Literary Life Podcast. Oh, how many books do you have?
- [61:21]
B
I think it's got to be close to. If it's 5000.
- [61:26]
A
You always underestimate. I think at least 5000, maybe more.
- [61:30]
B
I think that's, I think 5000 is a pretty conservative estimate.
- [61:33]
A
That's a conservative. We have many thousands of books.
- [61:35]
B
I remember maybe it was six months ago we counted the ones in my office and yours and that's not even
- [61:40]
A
like these are just the tiny little books in our.
- [61:42]
B
And it was, yeah, it was, it was definitely in the low four figures between these two rooms.
- [61:46]
A
Yeah. And that's not even catching our actual library.
- [61:49]
B
Actual library downstairs.
- [61:50]
A
And then we also have the children's library upstairs. And then my golden age detective. Not. We have a lot. We have a lot of books. We have a lot of. We have enough books that if we could have a second location.
- [61:58]
B
The last year I've become much more, much more careful about what I, what I buy. And I don't just. This will amuse me and purchase that. So. Yeah, and we'll, we'll have to get rid of some stuff, I'm sure.
- [62:09]
A
Well, I mean, part of it is that we have a research library so that either. If either of us wants to do any kind of preparation for anything we're teaching, we don't have to look any further than our own, you know, our own library downstairs. But it gets to be difficult to wrangle when it's that big. We're actually, we're going to have a project we have in mind a project where we're going to have it all cataloged so we can keep track of things. But yeah, we have a lot, we have a lot of books. So those of you who asked for advice. We don't have advice on how to manage your books. We are not managing our books. I am overwhelmed. We have a. We basically have a. A sort of loose system in the official library. The problem is we have so many books in each of our offices because of what. We have them because of what we're teaching. So, like, some CS Lewis stuff for just, for example, is going to be downstairs in the Lewis section and you
- [63:01]
B
have a shelf or two.
- [63:02]
A
But then if it's very criticism, it's up here. And. Yeah, so it's. It's. Yeah, it's. It's. It's difficult.
- [63:08]
B
All right.
- [63:09]
A
We got a spicy question about Pilgrim's Progress, saying she heard that I don't like it, and they would like us to elucidate on that. And I'm actually glad for this opportunity because I think there's been a lot of misunderstanding about exactly what I said. And it's not easy to be a somewhat public figure and to have yourself be misunderstood all the time. And so I will regularly see people on Facebook saying something like, angelina hates Pilgrim's Progress Risk. That is not true. That is not true. Actually, I'll go first with my opinion, and then you. You say your thing, because Mr. Banks is actually going to be doing a webinar on John Bunyan in September. So you're going to want. You're going to want to hear this. I do not hate Pilgrimage Progress. I. Okay. You know how we were just talking earlier about the objective correlative that I don't like things that are, like, hitting you over the head and how much they are trying to be a symbol? That's Bunyan. Bunyan has no subtlety, and he explains all of the symbols, but that doesn't mean I hate it. I actually understand why he's doing it. I understand that he has a great deal of guilt about literature or fiction at all. He's a puritan who believes that fiction is lies. And so he really goes out of his way to show everybody, hey, I'm writing a sermon, and there's a spiritual meaning here, so don't come at me. Don't hate me. Me. I understand all of that he's doing there. And I very much side with C.S. lewis, who says, if you can look past all of the didactic sermons, there's a great romance here. Romance meaning like night on a quest story. And. And I agree with that. I don't hate it. It's just. It's not subtle. It's not subtle. And maybe it's because I have the sort of mind that picks up on subtle symbols to the point where I feel like they're screaming at me that if something's not a subtle symbol, I feel. Feel physically assaulted by it.
- [64:55]
B
To cut in there. I think, actually, because it's so close formally to a number of books that you do enjoy. I mean, you enjoy all kinds of allegories. You enjoy. You enjoy Edmund Spencer and Boethius and Dante and all these things, because it's. I don't know, it's almost like an uncanny valley sort of thing, because it's. Yeah, kind of like those books, but also radically different in the author's purpose and his. His means of presenting his material that I think you find it more off putting than you would otherwise. But I would say, yeah, Bunyan is one of the great adventure writers. So I think if you preach him, if you think of him as more the peer of, say, a Robert Louis Stevenson, say, or a Walter Scott or someone like that rather than Edmund Spencer or Dante, because he's not one of the great religious things, thinkers of history, you sort of have to put that notion aside. But, yeah, he writes very, very fine action sequences. The fight with Apollyon and, you know, Giant Despair and all these. All those things. And actually, his. I think his dialogue is really good. And I was reading a biography of him that made the observation that it's interesting that Bunyan would have been told, like, how he would have reacted if someone said, you know, you write dialogue between two characters really, really well. You have characters can argue really convincingly in your pages. You should write for the stage. And what Bunyan would have thought of that. And he would have stood aghast and thought, no, no, the stage is the, you know, Babylon right there. But no, he really is a great writer of dialogue. And that's. That's not a talent to be despised. And also just I think the sheer compelling nature of the adventure story he tells. So I think that's enough to.
- [66:42]
A
Yeah. And it's people who've heard me say anything critical and thought, well, I shouldn't read it like that. That was never occurred to me that someone would be making fun of me.
- [66:50]
B
No, I don't think I've ever said that. But, yeah, I never said the things. But no, and even. Even I was reading a, like I said, this biography by a guy named W.H. hutton. He really admires Bunyan as a writer. And he says, even allowing for all these things, there are times when Bunyan, in his hectoring, ultra zealous state, he almost wants you to. Makes you want to take the side of the devil against you. Him, he's. He's an. He's an author who's trying to argue his reader into the kingdom, so to speak. And that can vex the nerves at times.
- [67:26]
A
Right, right, right. And. And I can love a writer in a book and still be critical of something. So, like, mostly people have heard me talk about John Bunyan in the context of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who I said, bunions me to death, which he does. Was. But I love Nathaniel Hawthorne. I love him. I love his short stories. And I. When we get to the part where he explains his symbols in the class, we just all roll our eyes and say, we understand, Nathaniel. We understand you have puritan guilt, and it's okay. We're just going to move on. Like, you know, just because I criticize. There's a difference between me saying this book is not worthy of your time and me saying, hey, here's some kind of things I'm not crazy about in a book that's otherwise worthy of your time. Time. All right, we're on page three, and we've already gone over an hour, so we.
- [68:14]
B
Okay, we gotta move along here. Yeah.
- [68:17]
A
Oh, here's a nice little personal one. Who are your and Mr. Banks's patron saints?
- [68:24]
B
The ones I appeal to the most often are St. Thomas Moore, Ignatius Loyola and St. Joan of. St. Joan of Arc.
- [68:30]
A
And my namesake patron saint is Fotini, the Samaritan woman. All right, lots of people asking if we have any thoughts about the Odyssey movie.
- [68:38]
B
So we have seen it as of
- [68:40]
A
this record, because it hasn't come out yet, but we plan to. And if you want to know what our thoughts are, we are actually planning to discuss this in our Patreon, the first Wednesday of the month in our All Fellows Eve event. We're going to come and share our thoughts about Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey movie, which we're going to go see.
- [68:56]
B
Any opinion I have already formed is merely an opinion before the fact and not worth very much at this point. The criticisms I've read of it, actually, almost all the reviews I've read have been glowing so far, which actually kind of surprised me because I don't think the trailers looked good. But again, sometimes a good book can have a lousy cover. You know, it's a wonder if we
- [69:14]
A
don't know how to make a trailer anymore. I have not seen a good trailers
- [69:17]
B
look really bad anymore. But. Yeah, but one or two critics and actually even professional classicists have come forward and said that if you allow him. If you allow him to pass with Some of the changes that he has made. It's. There is something kind of stirring and sublime about this film. Maybe that's true. One that really annoyed me, okay, this was this critic, whom I will not name, was just gushing over this film and saying it was one of the. I think he said one of the five best films of the century so far. And he said that even if it. Even if he had overthrown the whole Homeric lumber.
- [69:56]
A
Wow.
- [69:57]
B
Yeah. No, he. He said that basically. He, he, he. Basically his position was that there's this boring old Greek book and Christopher Nolan found something magical in it and is sharing that magic with us. And I think the critic also might have admitted that he hadn't read the book. I'm not starting to. It was.
- [70:15]
A
It was. He know that it's an old lumbering thing.
- [70:17]
B
Okay.
- [70:17]
A
Yes. Down, boy. Down, boy. So we'll talk about that at afe. And then the video will be released to all the levels of the. Patreon. Patreon. The paid levels. What drew us to North Carolina? Oh, I know the answer to you. I know. What drew you to North Carolina.
- [70:33]
B
Ms. Stanford. Yeah, I. I had no intention of moving to North Carolina ever, until I met Ms. Stanford. So, yeah, it was convenient.
- [70:41]
A
Yes. And I'm here. Oh, it's a long, long story, but I can say that the short version is my children and I desperately needed a fresh start. And we had some lovely friends in North Carolina who gave us that here. And we fell in love with the area. And then I fell in love with this guy. And North Carolina has been home.
- [70:58]
B
So your answer was charming. Mine. Mine. I might have made it sound like when I said I had no intention of moving to North Carolina before. I don't mean that to say that I really hated North Carolina.
- [71:09]
A
I guess we're gonna move anywhere.
- [71:10]
B
Yeah. Weird barbecue. No, it wasn't that at all. I had been to North Carolina at least once before I met you, and I did like the state, but. Yeah, it wasn't one of those places that was really on my radar.
- [71:22]
A
But we love it here because Mr. Bank. Banks comes from Montana, where it is.
- [71:26]
B
This is, like, as far south as I can live. Yeah, I think, like, South Carolina or Georgia would kill me. And I like those states a lot, too.
- [71:32]
A
You could never make it in Louisiana, dear. So I'm from South Louisiana, where it is summer 10 months out of the year, and you're from Montana, where it's winter 10 months of the year. And now we live someplace where we
- [71:41]
B
get four kind of the Happy medium.
- [71:43]
A
Yes. And it's really funny because what that looks like is us stepping out and me thinking, oh, gosh, it's really not hot today. And him going, whoa, it's a scorcher. And then the flip happens in. In the winter. We're like, it's freezing, and there's so much snow. And he's like, there's no snow. It's. And I'm out here with, you know, just his sweater on. So it.
- [72:02]
B
It.
- [72:02]
A
It's constantly comical over here.
- [72:04]
B
It is. Yeah. Jack Spratt could eat no fat.
- [72:07]
A
That's it. That's it. Thomas Brinks could have no heat. His wife could have no cold, and together they live in North Carolina, where they shall grow very old. Okay, there you go. There's your limerick. Okay. Oh, this is a good question. What does it mean that something is a good book? Oh, that is such a good.
- [72:27]
B
That was another question. It's a good question. I was also hoping no one would ask that.
- [72:31]
A
Requires a TikTok to answer.
- [72:34]
B
The only way I could answer that without leaving anything, without leaving any trees behind, is to say. A book whose form it answers to its purpose and whose content is worthy of its form. That's a really bad abstract answer, but it's the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
- [73:08]
A
All right. The first thing I think we have to do is define our terms. This is something I notice a lot on the Facebook group and in just general conversation. Often what people will mean when they say something is a good book. They mean, I liked it. And so if I come back and say something's not a good book, they're offended, because who am I to tell them that they.
- [73:25]
B
Or it was edifying in some way?
- [73:27]
A
Well, yes, I was gonna. That's gonna be my subset. But yes. So when I say that something is a good book, I am never talking about the categories of I liked it or I didn't like it. Actually, that's meaningless to me. If you asked me if I like something, I can answer that. But if you ask me if a book is good or a film is good, I'm never going to answer that in terms of my personal, subjective experience. Well, I liked it. Okay. I'm always going to be thinking in terms of did it meet some sort of objective definition of art? Okay. So when we talk about what is a good book, we mean, is this an artful work or not? So when it comes to, like, contemporary novels, almost none of which I think meet the definition of art, almost none of which there'll be pushback. There'll even be people offended at me. And they'll come back and say, but this book meant so much to me. And I'll think, but I didn't say the book can't mean that much to you. A book can mean a lot to you and still not be great art. And that is true about things I love. I am aware that I love some albums, some books. I love candy. There's all kinds of things I really like and have meant a lot to me and maybe even got me through a hard time that I don't think are objectively artful or good. And both of those things can be true.
- [74:45]
B
And often those will be bound up with like intense personal experiences or something like that. Like, okay, how about this? How about this? All right, here's. And again, I'm not meaning to insult anyone's musical taste here, but say like you say you're someone about my age. I'm 40 cats out of the bag right there. Okay. And say like, you met the person you married, you met the guy or the girl that you eventually married and had a family with at a Coldplay concert in 2004.
- [75:13]
A
Oh, you're about to get spicy over here.
- [75:15]
B
It doesn't actually make the music of Coldplay any better.
- [75:19]
A
That's right.
- [75:19]
B
That this very important life changing experience occurred with that. With. With Yellow playing in the background. And if Chris Martin is listening to this, I'm gonna stand by this. You can come. I. 100, right?
- [75:32]
A
100% standby.
- [75:33]
B
Now, that doesn't mean that Coldplay shouldn't hold like, you know, a deep, albeit perhaps self knowing and ironic place in your heart because of this.
- [75:43]
A
Now that the Coldplay fans are mad, let me try a new analogy. Okay. This is like if you.
- [75:49]
B
Or if you were with someone else's wife at a cold place. Sorry, I had to go there as well.
- [75:54]
A
I had to go there. You had to go there. All right. What if somebody asked me, is a hot dog a good food?
- [76:01]
B
Okay.
- [76:01]
A
Yeah, right?
- [76:02]
B
Yeah.
- [76:02]
A
Is a hot dog a good food? Well, we'd have to define our terms. Good in what sense? Do people like it? Yes. Is it a favorite of some people? Yes. Have you probably had hot dogs in really good moments in your life? I was at a baseball game with my grandpa. Was the last time we were together before he died. I'll never forget that hot dog. Okay, nobody is saying you shouldn't feel that way about that. That moment. Nobody should. Is saying that every time you look at a hot dog for the rest of your life, you shouldn't feel kind of of, you know, happy inside because it reminds you of a great time in your childhood or, you know, whenever. It doesn't mean a hot dog's a good food. It's not. It's objectively not. It's not healthy for you. It doesn't taste particularly good.
- [76:37]
B
It's not good in the same way that foie gras is good. It's for certain. You mentioned the baseball game, though. It would be more fit for that situation.
- [76:45]
A
It is more fit for that situation.
- [76:47]
B
Just like if you're on vacation and you need some light reading, much better to bring, like, your favorite sci fi novel than Hamlet, probably.
- [76:54]
A
No. Or exactly.
- [76:55]
B
Whatever.
- [76:55]
A
Exactly. No. Agreed.
- [76:56]
B
Agreed.
- [76:56]
A
So it's really apples and oranges here. Yeah. Right. So a hot dog is a good food for a baseball game. A hot dog is probably not a great food for your wedding unless it's a backyard barbecue in your own theme. You understand what I'm saying? Like, it has to fit its purpose. Like you were saying. So I'm aware that there are. There's so much emotion, subjective emotion wrapped up in books. And the reading experience is part of why we love it. It that when I talk about such and such is a good book or it's not a good book, people get their feelings hurt. So the first thing I would say is, and this is me too, guys. Okay? There are books that are special to me, and I know they're not great books. Okay? Like, I think this is every reader. You have to be able to separate it. It's okay. It's not just okay. It is good and fine and proper. To say, I read this book, I know it's really not that great, is pretty sentimental. It's actually pretty terrible writing. But it's about a guy who died from cancer. I read it at the time that my dad was going through his cancer battle. This book meant everything to me. Like, that's valid. That's 100% valid. And I'm glad you found a book that helped you through that. That doesn't mean it's good writing. It's great art. And it's okay for me to say, see, both of these things are true. It's okay for me to say, this is not very well written. And for you to say, this book meant everything to me in a hard time, in my life. Life. They're both true. They're just both.
- [78:13]
B
I was going through a crisis and I picked up a copy of the Shack that just happened to be lying around.
- [78:18]
A
I just stuff on everybody's.
- [78:20]
B
I know. I'm sorry, but, but no, I've actually had people sincerely recommend to me because I'm. I teach literature for a living. I, I. One person recommended the Shack to me on the grounds that if you like Dante, I'm not even kidding. You will, like, like. Yeah. You will like the Shack.
- [78:37]
A
Yeah. No, no. Yeah. We've talked about guilty pleasure books before. We've talked about penny dreadfuls. I'm not a snob. I'm not saying every book you read has to be Dante. I don't read like that, and I'm not suggesting anybody read like that. But, you know, if you're asking me what is the definition of a good book, we're talking about an objective standard that has to be met for art and that. That is separate from your subjective emotional experience, which is also valid. It can also work in the other direction. You can have such a negative emotional experience with a book that you say it's a bad book when really it's not a bad book. It just has bad associations for you.
- [79:18]
B
Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I. I didn't mean that to be dead air right there. I was trying to think of an example, but. Well, okay, how about this? Okay, here's. This might be silly, but, like, someone who, like, has an emotionally just complete rejection of where the red fern grows because they had a beloved pet that died or something. Yeah.
- [79:42]
A
I can't read all yellow again.
- [79:44]
B
I wish I could come up with these examples more quickly, but that would be an example of that example.
- [79:49]
A
So hopefully that helps. Right. When I say that Such and Such is not a good book, I'm not telling you you didn't have a valid emotional experience with it. Those are completely separate things in my mind.
- [80:03]
B
Sure.
- [80:03]
A
Because somebody saying, well, my dad was going through cancer, and so this book really, really meant to me. Somebody else could say, I read that book and my dad was going with. Through cancer, and I couldn't handle. I could. I hated that book because it was about all these things I couldn't handle at time. Right. So subjective emotional experiences are exactly that. They're subjective emotional experiences. So what I'm trying to say is a book can be special and meaningful to you and important to you and significant to you and still not be a good book Book. That is the nature of art.
- [80:31]
B
Yeah.
- [80:32]
A
All right. What is a book you read in high school that has stuck with you?
- [80:44]
B
A book I read in high school that I still really like today.
- [80:48]
A
I actually have an Answer for this, you go first. It's the Odyssey. I read the Odyssey in high school. I read very, very little of what was assigned, but I had such a great love of mythology. I read the Odyssey because it was about mythology and it wasn't signed in the ninth grade and I loved it. And I still love it and I still teach it.
- [81:05]
B
See, here's the thing. Almost all the books I was assigned to read, at least the ones I remember throughout my high school years, with rare exceptions, I have come at least to appreciate them also with rare exceptions, I didn't love most of them at first. Like the Aeneid I first read when I was 15 or 16. I did not like that the first time.
- [81:24]
A
Interesting.
- [81:25]
B
Yeah. After, after Homer, it just seemed. I just thought that this is a pale. And. And I read the Land Imitation in
- [81:32]
A
Latin in a Latin class and it forever confused me. What was the Odyssey and what was the Aeneid?
- [81:38]
B
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, a book that I've read that stuck with me when I was in high school. I'm going to go back a little bit before high school, but King Solomon's Minds just was one I picked up on my own that I still enjoy quite as much today as I enjoyed back then.
- [81:56]
A
Them. And what's a book you really enjoy teaching is another question. These are all from Chris.
- [82:05]
B
Almost anything in ancient. My ancient literature class. So Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Euripides, Sophocles. Yeah, any. Anything there. And I really, I really like teaching the Death of Yvonne Ilyich, which is a book I only started teaching about three years ago, I think. And that's.
- [82:30]
A
I think I taught that in.
- [82:32]
B
Yeah.
- [82:32]
A
1993.
- [82:34]
B
Yeah, that, that, that's one that improves every time I teach it. And I like to think I get better at teaching it every time I teach it. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it's one that it's. I just, Yeah, I, I have have some of my most fun with that. With that particular novella.
- [82:52]
A
And my answer is that I have the great privilege that I, I make my own syllabi. So I don't teach anything I don't like. So pretty much everything I'm teaching is my favorite thing to teach.
- [83:06]
B
The perks of being self employed.
- [83:08]
A
Yeah. So I, I like them all. Yeah, I like them all. I would say in my Medieval lit class, Sir Orpheo and Sir Gowan are probably highlights. And in Early Modern, it's definitely the entire second semester where we just go all through German Romantics, English Romantics American Romantics. That's. That's a whole lot of fun.
- [83:28]
B
Early in your teaching career, did you ever have the experience where you had to teach a book or an essay or a story or whatever, and you also had secondary materials that interpreted it for you that you also had to read with the students and you found something you horribly disagreed with?
- [83:44]
A
Okay, I'm going to sound really snotty right now. Now, I've actually never been in a position where I didn't make my own syllabus when I taught at a university. When I taught at AP English, I made the syllabus. I have never stepped into a situation. Look at your face. Where I didn't make my own syllabus.
- [83:57]
B
Lafayette, you got to.
- [83:58]
A
Yep.
- [83:59]
B
Well, okay.
- [83:59]
A
Well, even when I taught sophomore literature at the university, I got to make my own syllabus.
- [84:06]
B
Yeah. I think you're, like, the first teacher since, like, Socrates who's able to say this, so.
- [84:11]
A
I am. And I know.
- [84:12]
B
Whatever.
- [84:12]
A
I want to know that this is not.
- [84:14]
B
I want to strangle you.
- [84:15]
A
Great, great, great. 91 1. But this. This is really going to make me sound like a snotty person, but I've never had the experience of having to teach something I didn't want to teach. And so. And I know that this is not everybody's experience. Trust me, I do know. But when people will ask, like, I see this on social media or whatever, like, advice for what to do if you teach a book that you don't like. My thought is always, always my brain is like, why are you teaching a book you don't like? That's crazy. Who does that? So I'm sorry, but I never.
- [84:42]
B
Don't.
- [84:42]
A
I never have. I've never had seizure bugs online.
- [84:45]
B
Okay. So my. My rookie year of teaching, I was. I'm, like, 21 at the time, I think, and I was teaching part time because I was still in college. But I remember I was teaching. It was American studies to freshmen in high school, and I was teaching them because it was on the syllabus some of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays, which I. I do not enjoy. Have never enjoyed. I dislike Ralph Waldo Emerson with a passion, but I almost felt compelled to go to bat for him because the supplementary text we were reading in this, it wasn't Bob Jones. I think it was an ABEKA American lit textbook or some. Something like that. It was one of those. Yeah. It introduced him as a, like. I think it called him, like, a monomaniacal cult leader, Ralph Waldo Emerson. And I. I just remember reading the passage. And like, pausing, it's like, well, surely there are many bad things we could say about him. But, like, let's just stick to the true bad things. Yeah, the cult leader Ralph, you know,
- [85:51]
A
Becca's not known for its subtlety. That's. That's pretty good. All right. A few people have asked what hobbies we have other than knitting. And this is an important question because Mr. Banks and I have talked about this amongst ourselves a lot, but because we both love reading, and reading would be a hobby for us, it's difficult because it's also our job, and we have had to be quite deliberate about doing things that won't make our minds and our bodies feel like we're still on the clock, which can happen with books. Because even if I'm like, oh, I'm just going to read this detective novel for fun, I end up talking about it in the Patreon, on the discord, in the podcast, in my classes. Like, it just ends up being work. Right? So we've tried to be very, very deliberate about that. That. And both of us have fostered our hobbies. I. My biggest hobby. It's not my only hobby. My biggest hobby, the one I am most committed to is I. I'm a knitter. And some of you actually wrote questions because you saw some photos of my knitting and said, where did you learn to do that? I. I recently completed a very intricate silk lace project, which was some silk that Mr. Banks bought me for Christmas. And. And I. I absolutely adore knitting. I am not skilled enough to be able to read and knit like some people. Actually, I don't want to. I can watch tv.
- [87:08]
B
Yeah, I've seen you watching tv.
- [87:10]
A
I can watch TV and needles. Clicking away, Just clicking away. And I. And I. I like to listen to audiobooks and knit, but I. I don't. Again, I'm trying to feel like I'm not on the clock. So, yeah, I enjoy knitting. I enjoy working all different kinds of fibers and different projects. I like. Right now, I'm mostly into making apparel. I made Mr. Banks because I know a lot of you have seen him, that he always has his Mr. Banks sweater. I made him a cardigan. And, yeah, so I'm. I make all kinds of things, and it brings me a whole lot of joy, and I find it deeply, deeply relaxing and just so good for my brain. I talk about it in classes a lot, and a lot of my students will bring their knitting or crocheting to class, and then. And I'm jealous. I wish I could teach the class and knit at the same time, but that I cannot do. Do. And Mr. Banks, you want to tell them about your. Your biggest hobby?
- [88:01]
B
I play guitar. I play guitar. I've.
- [88:03]
A
And you have quite a few something.
- [88:05]
B
I. Once upon a time, I. I owned several. And I sold them off when I was fresh out of college and needed the money. So I sold my guitar, my effects, my amp. And I regretted it from the moment I did it. But it was again, one of those sacrifices that needed to be made. So for years, I. I've always owned at least one. I had. I had an acoustic for years that I kind of plunked away on, but I didn't really play that much. And it got to the point where I just couldn't play very well anymore. And I decided I'm gonna become at least as good a player now as I was when I was a teenager, when I was 18, because I was actually without, you know, tooting my own horn too much. I was pretty good back then, then. And I'm getting better. I'm getting. I'm building back up to that level. So I've. I've started buying guitars and practicing pretty much every day, I'd say.
- [88:59]
A
And it is a great joy to your wife to hear the music coming out of your office.
- [89:04]
B
Well, thank you. Thank you.
- [89:05]
A
I love it so much.
- [89:06]
B
And yeah, it is. I think it is healthy to have a hobby that distracts you from your work.
- [89:11]
A
Now here we have a question from Grace because she wants us to jump into shark infested waters here.
- [89:15]
B
No, this is. This is my favorite question. Honestly, that's it. Okay. Yeah. So shout out to Grace. Gerardo. Yeah.
- [89:21]
A
What separates House of Humane Letters from other classical education institutions? Why do you think your students love reading and learning so much when other schools are producing students that detest everything they've studied?
- [89:33]
B
I think we don't advertise ourselves officially as a classical school, though obviously what we do is adjacent to that in many respects. But we don't. We don't have any mathematics program. We don't have a doctoring class. We don't have formal logic, apologetics, or any of those things that you tend to find at classical schools. So that's one reason why I think we are a bit distinct from the general run of the classical movement like you would find in the accs. I worked in an ACCS school, a very, very good one, for a lot of years. But what we're doing is
- [90:15]
A
we don't
- [90:16]
B
have a confession of faith. Even officially, though we tend to attract people who are religious and who are Christians of one shape and another. But we're not, I guess you could say we're not deeply involved in what you say, cultural politics either. That would be, I think, one distinctive. Just.
- [90:36]
A
That's, that's an understatement.
- [90:37]
B
Yeah, it's just not, it's just not something that deeply interest Ms. Stanford, myself or our colleagues, which isn't to kick dust at it or anything like that. It's just not, not our calling, I suppose. And I think the people that we. I don't know. Another thing that's interesting about our students is I, I couldn't say that we have a type of student who is drawn to our work or a type of family I guess would be a better way to say that because the ones we met, I've been really different people that. And, and then again we're, we're teaching online and people are, you know, attending our classes all over the country and internationally as well. So yeah, I guess that's, that's, that might be one of the reasons why is because, you know, just the fact that we are teaching online and we draw students from many walks of life and I'm quite happy that that is the case.
- [91:34]
A
So I don't find this an easy question to answer. And I'm thinking to myself, I have given multiple three hour talks to an aspects of this and in. So I'm going to try to nutshell it. Grace will know what I'm talking about because she's been in all those talks and she's been in my classes. But to somebody else they might be scratching their heads. And I will just say that I have given many long talks on Cindy Rollins's website for her Back to school conference about some of the distinctions between what we're doing versus what classical schools are doing. But if I had to just like nutshell it, all right, just. And so take it with many grains of salts because I cannot nuance this when I'm just trying to give a 30 second answer. I think our colleagues in classical education fundamentally misunderstand what the great conversation is. The great conversation is we get to learn to listen. We learn the language that that conversation is spoken in and we learn to hear. Hear it. And we learn to listen before we are encouraged to speak. And when we learn to hear that language, it ends up making the world much, much bigger and you end up hearing the music of the spheres. I think what classical education largely does is see the great conversation as something that we need to feel pressure to enter into. And so you end up with a system that is teaching students to talk before they have listened. They are formulating responses before they even know what has been said. And I think while our students are learning to hear the music of the spheres, everybody else is learning to hear the sound of their own voice. And not surprisingly, it makes them proud and it makes them debunkers and they end up despising all of it. That is my nutshell. Hot take. Oh, send your emails to thomasbanksgmail.com. that's not really his email. So then. All right, moving on. I feel like Grace cheered at my answer.
- [93:24]
B
All right.
- [93:24]
A
Right. They have heard us talk about the hero's journey. What do I mean by hero? This is actually a good question. I. When I say hero, I always mean it in the much older sense. An epic hero is simply the main character of an epic. So when I say hero, I mean the main character. I don't mean somebody who has, like, virtuous qualities. That's irrelevant. That has nothing to do with whether or not the character is the main character.
- [93:47]
B
So.
- [93:47]
A
So that's that. Okay, this is a good question. This is a good question. With the growth of the podcast over the years, would you say that the original purpose, slash attempted aims of the PODC have changed? If so, what are those purposes, aims now and why do you think they have changed?
- [94:01]
B
Well, I think it's not aims, but I think it's style, obviously, since we no longer have Cindy with us, sadly. But other than that, I don't know. I mean, it seems to me that our own particular scholarly interests that we bring from our private study find its way in a bit more. I hesitate to say obtrusively, but I guess more. More obviously in more ostensible sort of ways. But other than that. No, it doesn't seem to me that. I mean, the shape of the episodes is still kind of what it was 6, 7, 7 years ago, 8 years ago, 20, 19, 7 years ago when this started. I think the length tends to be about the same. So. No, I mean, we. We haven't sat down at any point and say, you know, instead of doing X, we're going to do Y. Yeah, I don't. If it's. If it's developed, I'm. I'm sure it has in some ways that maybe we can't discern ourselves, but not because of any deliberate choice.
- [95:08]
A
Well, you know, so this the stated aim of the podcast when Cindy and I started it, it was. We just wanted to have a place where we could say what we wanted to say without anybody controlling our voice. Voices. Because we had both come out of a situation in which neither of us felt at liberty to speak what we wanted to speak. And so since our aim has always been that this is a place where I get to say what I want about literature, it's still a place where I get to say what I want about literature. It is still a place where Cindy gets to say what she wants to say when she comes on from time to time. And it is now a place where Thomas gets to say what he wants to say. So in that sense, I don't. It hasn't changed at all like you're saying, Mr. Banks. It's obviously changed. Practically. Cindy's not here anymore.
- [95:47]
B
There are those Ms. Stanford, who thinks that my voice is not sufficiently heard on this podcast. Actually, that's not true. Nobody thinks that.
- [95:53]
A
You're the one who gets hate mail, dear.
- [95:55]
B
Actually, that's true. I have got hate mail. From Guam, no less.
- [95:58]
A
Yes, Yes. I. I don't take well to this, but people have actually taken the time to put literal. Yeah, it was in the mail.
- [96:05]
B
It was an impressive amount of postage
- [96:07]
A
to say that he hated him.
- [96:09]
B
Yeah, well, no, but she was also praying for me.
- [96:11]
A
Oh, well, at least there's that. She should be praying for me. I have to be married to you.
- [96:14]
B
I know some people are just insensitive.
- [96:17]
A
Your favorite criticism of you is the person who said you're. You're the intellectual equivalent to all of these.
- [96:23]
B
To anyone. To anyone who is. Who's been mulling over whether they should send any hate mail to us or not. I actually enjoy receiving it. I don't know why.
- [96:36]
A
Sensitive one.
- [96:36]
B
No, I think it's because I. I have a. Maybe kind of an arrogant contempt for people who dislike me, which. Yeah, I don't know. Self. Admissions I probably shouldn't admit, but. But yeah, so I actually kind of enjoy reading hate mail. I'm. I'm always interested to find out the, you know, whatever. Whatever facets of my personality offend people. And so, yeah, send it all my way if you want to. You can find our PO Box on the HHL website.
- [97:04]
A
But to get back to the original question, I don't think it's chained. It's changing its aim or purpose. I'm. I'm. I'm still committed to talking about literature as. As I see fit, as we see fit in. In the literary tradition. It's changed in some practical ways. I've. The more that I get feedback and I see what Kind of, you know, what are the people? What are the questions people have? Where are they confused? I try to focus in on some of those areas. So there's been some change that way. We have more one off episodes now as I've realized how much you guys have enjoyed those. But, you know, it hasn't changed in any kind of fundamental way. Obviously, there's a difference with Cindy being gone. You know, that changes the nature of the conversations and we all miss her very much. And, you know, just in case anybody missed when she made that announcement, mostly we have tried just to keep it private because people's health issues don't need to be publicly shared. But I know that she has shared in a number of places this. So I feel comfortable saying part of her story, which is that her husband had a series of strokes and so she stepped back from the podcast because life looks very different for her now with an ailing husband. So, you know, I know it from time to time. People say, is Cindy coming back? Like, I talk to Cindy all the time. All the time, every week, often every day. She's, she's. She's in a difficult season of her life with the health issues that they're navigating and she would love nothing more to come on. But, you know, she, she takes it as it comes and does, she does come back from time to time. And she's always appreciated and, and greatly missed. She's also been just a huge, huge cheerleader of Thomas and I and, and what we're doing. And, you know, Cindy's my best friend. She's still my best friend. Her not being on the podcast hasn't changed any of that. And, you know, she tells me all the time that she's glad that we are able to take the podcast in the direction of making it more like our classes. And she thinks that has benefited everyone. But. But no, it hasn't fundamentally changed. You know, there have been some practical changes, but I would say it was always meant to be a place where I got to talk about literature and I got to say what I wanted. And I wasn't part of a panel discussion of people who, who had fundamentally
- [99:25]
B
different views or insert an objective correlative
- [99:29]
A
into the works, or worse, it was more likely wanted to sub interject their egos is what it was. All right, let's see. Okay. I am curious about this one. I. I know we need to go. It's been a long time now. Oh, gosh, has it been? Yeah, we're getting close to two hours here, so we better Wrap it up. But I need to know this, too. How do you walk and read? You go on long walks and read a book. How do you do that? And let me tell you, as his wife, I am worried about that. And every time I say something like, you're gonna get hit by a car, he comes back and says, I've only been hit twice.
- [100:04]
B
Four times.
- [100:05]
A
Oh, my gosh. Four times.
- [100:06]
B
Four times in my life. Four times. Yeah, but see what I have to
- [100:09]
A
deal with, y' all be praying for me.
- [100:11]
B
A couple of them were basically love taps, but, you know, from Guam, right? Yeah, but, yeah, no, it's just one of those things that I find it. I find it not. Here's one. And I. This wasn't always the case, but when I'm out walking, I'm not. There's no temptation to check my phone or anything like that. I'm just walking. And if I'm walking, you know, having a book in my hand is. I find it easy to concentrate. It's just. It's just something I can do. I don't know.
- [100:47]
A
Oh, it's your magic trick. Okay, that's fine. I would not recommend this to anybody. I fear for your life every time you walk out the door, as you know.
- [100:55]
B
You know. So, yeah, I guess I don't recommend it because, yes, it. Like I said, I've been hit by cars four times, but, you know, it's just a occupational hazard, I guess.
- [101:05]
A
So maybe as the last question, a lot of people have asked some version of, how do I share this kinds of stuff we're learning about? I'm excited about if I'm in my book club and I've just got. There's just normal readers in there. How do I talk about this stuff without sounding like a snob or sounding like I'm crazy? I think the answer is, joy is infectious. And when I have been in situations like that, I'm just excitedly saying what I see. And it has never happened to me that anybody's been like, what a snob? Because I. In fact, the opposite. I have literally had people say, you know, you know, all of this, you know, scholarly stuff. But you never sound like a know it all. And you never sound like you're above us. And that has always meant a lot to me because I don't feel that way. I feel like I'm just excitedly showing like, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh.
- [101:55]
B
Oh, my gosh.
- [101:55]
A
Y', all, this is Cinderella. Look, look, look. This is Cinderella and seeing the sisters in here. And then that's the shoes. And, oh, my gosh, she's by a fireplace. And, oh, see the whole things. And she's got ashes. And when I do that, everybody's just like, oh, wow. And they're all just caught up in the excitement. And so no one's ever accused me. My husband cannot not say this, but no one has ever accused me of being a snob. And I think it's because I don't come at it as I'm trying to school you. I'm just sharing the excited thing I saw, like, you guys have to taste this cheesecake. It's amazing. And everybody. Nobody's like, I can't believe Angelina wants me to in a cheesecake at the Bullet Club. What's wrong with her? You know, they're like, ooh, yes, please, cheesecake. So that would be my advice. Just excitedly share. If they don't understand it, if they don't like cheesecake, it's fine. Time you shared it. And maybe there'll be a spark somewhere with somebody, and they'll be like, tell me more about what you got. This cheesecake. I never had that before. That's amazing, right? That. That would be my advice.
- [102:47]
B
That's very good. I don't have anything really to add to that.
- [102:50]
A
All right, well, thanks, everybody who submitted a question. We could not get to all of them. We might be able to answer some of them in the. In the Patreon at our next meeting after we talk about the Odyssey. I do think, though, there's one question that we have to end on. Mr. Banks is 1. 1. They wanted to know what was our favorite way to eat potatoes. Boiled, mashed, or stewed. Of course, my first thought was Pride and Prejudice. Oh, what excellent boiled potatoes. But since you do the cooking. See, y' all getting to see a little bit behind the veil here. Mr. Banks, cooking at our house, what would you say is my favorite way to eat potatoes?
- [103:28]
B
We don't eat potatoes that often is the thing.
- [103:30]
A
We don't because they make me in end up. They end up making.
- [103:33]
B
Well, no, mostly we eat stews, you know, I guess fairly often in stews when it's cold weather.
- [103:38]
A
Yeah.
- [103:39]
B
So I guess boil.
- [103:40]
A
I do like a good beef stew, but that's not my favorite way to. I like. I like potatoes. They always like me.
- [103:45]
B
I like mashed.
- [103:46]
A
Mashed is my favorite, but we don't. It's too much work. We never do it. I fundamentally disagree with how much work is involved in mashed potatoes.
- [103:54]
B
Yeah. But. Yeah, I. A lot of potatoes, soups if they have other things as well. Yeah. So you can make sausage, potato, potatoes, soup.
- [104:04]
A
I might come back and say, oh, what? Excellent boiled potatoes. Yes. To which of your lovely daughters do I compliment for the excellent boiled potatoes? There you go. See you getting all the Pride and Prejudice jokes here.
- [104:17]
B
Yeah.
- [104:18]
A
I'm gonna leave with this little anecdote. I just happened to see a Facebook reel with a comedian who is doing a joke about Pride and Prejudice. And I was yelling at it because none of the things he said happened in Pride and Prejudice. And I was probably the only person who heard this bit to be angry. And they would be like, it doesn't matter if it was in there. Like, you get the joke he's making. And he was making a contrast between 1813 and 2026. But none of the things he said happened. And I was furious because, guys, like I've said, I've read this almost 30 times. He started off saying, so in Pride and Prejudice, they're all sitting around at this garden party. See? Thank you. I was like, there's no garden party. There's no garden party in Pride and Prejudice. I can tell you, every time they get together, there is no garden party. He's like, they sit around, and this woman over here in the corner, and she's looking at her hands. It literally says Jane Nelson. Literally, right? She's just looking at her hands on her rings like it didn't happen. Never happened. I don't know what you're talking about. So, yeah, there you go. If you want to know, I am that person.
- [105:15]
B
You are.
- [105:16]
A
I will be upset if your hair part is historically inaccurate in your film. Film, as Mr. Banks knows. I can tell you the dates of the different hair parts. I get. I get upset about that. And, yeah, if you're gonna make a joke about Jane Austen, you better get your facts right, mister. I was like, this is he. He says, I just read. I just read Pride and Prejudice. And then he did his bit. And I was like, you've never read Pride and Prejudice. All right, now that I've worked myself up into a Jane Austen style fury, thanks for submitting your questions. Thanks for sticking around. I'm really looking forward to the second half of the year. The things we've got coming up. We'll be starting a Watership down here, a book I have never read, but is a great favorite of Mr. Banks. And I have decided to do an experiment. I am not going to do any prep for this, and I'm going to let Mr. Banks teach me Watership down every time I say that, he says, you're going to love it. You're going to eat this up. It's a beast fable, right?
- [106:10]
B
That's you're on the right track already.
- [106:12]
A
Okay, no research. That's just my guess. We've got talking animals, likely it's a beast fable. Table all right, I look forward to seeing you all then. Don't forget to go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to take a look at what we've got going on and register for things past and present and future, and stick around to the end. Mr. Banks has got a special palm if you would like to join us for the Patreon event. Talk about the movie the Odyssey. You can head over to patreon.com backslash the literary life and you can join at the fellows level and can be in on that live conversation. The friends level will get the the recording. Again, thanks so much for joining us. And 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 House of Humane Link to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with Cindy@morningtimeformoms.com 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 right now a 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.
- [107:46]
B
Prospero's speech from the Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1 our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.