Podcast appearances and mentions of michael dirda

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 10, 2025 is: chary • CHAIR-ee • adjective Chary is usually used with about or of to describe someone who is cautious about doing something. // The director is chary about spending money. // I've always been chary of travelling alone. See the entry > Examples: “Overall, Rendell is chary about divulging the selling price of various documents, but he does occasionally reveal some financial details.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2024 Did you know? How did chary, which began as the opposite of cheery, become a synonym of wary? Don't worry, there's no need to be chary—the answer is not dreary. Chary's Middle English predecessor, charri, meant “sorrowful,” a sense that harks back to the Old English word cearig, meaning “troubled, troublesome, taking care,” which ultimately comes from an assumed-but-unattested Germanic word, karō, meaning “sorrow” or “worry,” that is also an ancestor of the word care. It's perhaps unsurprising then, that chary was once used to mean “dear” or “cherished.” Both sorrow and affection have largely faded from chary, and today the word is most often used as a synonym of careful.

Relive Capclaves past and present during the lightning-round Capclave Donut Carnival, where you'll hear R. Z. Held and me bond over rejection, David Hacker explain his love of listening to writers read, Michael Dirda recall why Orson Scott Card once kneeled before him on an elevator, James Morrow share his fascination with Charles Darwin, how Katy Lewis found her husband through Dungeons and Dragons, Michael Walsh's favorite moment as a con chair (which involved Howard Waldrop, Gardner Dozois, and George R. R. Martin), Bill Lawhorn clarify the creation of the bronze dodo, Sarah Pinsker reveal how and why her first science fiction convention was Capclave, Adeena Mignogna explain why space is cool but space travel gets really hot, Mike Zipzer's memories of Terry Pratchett's surprise visit, Sarah Mitchell's arranging of a secret con wedding, Sunny Moraine opine on how the world's response to COVID-19 changes our ideas of what would happen in a real-world zombie apocalypse, John Pomeranz chat about how the infamous Disclave Great Flood transformed him into a hotel liaison — and much more!

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 8, 2023 is: ascetic • uh-SET-ik • adjective Ascetic is a formal word used to describe people or things that are markedly simple and restrained in appearance, manner, or attitude. Its original meaning, still in use, is “practicing strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline,” as in “an ascetic monk.” // On her first visit to Colorado's Great Sand Dunes, she immediately fell in love with their ascetic, windswept beauty. // His choice to lead such an ascetic lifestyle was at first in defiance of the conspicuous consumption of modern society, but it had the added benefit of bringing him great inner peace. See the entry > Examples: “[T. S.] Eliot's bedroom was flamboyantly ascetic: a single bed, an ebony crucifix, a bare lightbulb hanging from a chain.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post, 28 Sept. 2022 Did you know? If you've been refraining from adding ascetic to your vocabulary, it's time to let your hair down and live a little! In other words, be the opposite of ascetic. Ascetic comes from askētikos, a Greek adjective meaning “laborious,” and its earliest meaning in English implies the labor involved in abstention from pleasure, comfort, and self-indulgence as a spiritual discipline. These days, ascetic is also used to describe anyone or anything demonstrating marked restraint, plainness, or simplicity, even when no appeals to the divine or spiritual are attached, making it not unlike another adjective with connections to ancient Greece: spartan.

“Plutarch regularly shows that great leaders transcend their own purely material interests and petty, personal vanities. Noble ideals actually do matter, in government as in life.” —Michael Dirda, Washington Post Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, Antony: the names still resonate across thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended the Roman republic, their lives pose a question that haunts us still: how to safeguard a republic from the flaws of its leaders. This reader's edition of Plutarch delivers a fresh translation of notable clarity, explanatory notes, and ample historical context in the Preface and Introduction.

Today's show is a discussion and review of the 2021 American Neo-Noir Psychological Thriller Nightmare Alley. In 1946, Author William Lindsay Gresham, published his novel Nightmare Alley, which was a study of the lowest depths of showbiz and its sleazy inhabitants - the dark, shadowy world of a second rate carnival filled with hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales.  Gresham's book is considered to be one of the finest American novels of the 20th century.  Pulitzer-Prize winning book critic Michael Dirda stated, “I was utterly unprepared for its raw, Dostoevskian power…it's not often that a novel leaves a weathered and jaded reviewer like myself utterly flattened, but this one did…it's more than just a steamy noir classic.  As a portrait of the human condition, Nightmare Alley is a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece”.In 1992, actor Ron Perlman, who also stars in the film, gave Guillermo del Toro a copy of William Lindsay Gersham's 1946 novel, “Nightmare Alley”.  After reading the book, del Toro acknowledged it would be nearly impossible to put everything contained in the book in a feature film, but his adaptation would be “just a straight, really dark story”.Contrary to what folks believe, del Toro blends a style of fantasy with somber tones and a blend of whimsy and wonder.  This dark story is a departure from his previous films in that there is no supernatural element like In the Shape of Water, The Strain, Hellboy, and Pan's Labyrinth.One final note before we get into our feature film is that del Toro claims his film adaptation of Gersham's book has no relation to the 1947 film of the same, although both are born of the same book.  So for today, we are going to forgo comparisons to the first film adaptation and focus solely on del Toro's film on its own merit.  Afterall, this film received 4 Oscar noms, so let's see what this film has to offer.    In this show, we do more than a movie review by delving into the lives of the cast and crew, fan theories, trivia, scene breakdowns, and anything related to the film itself.  Needless to say, our shows are a little longer than your average movie review show, but we can assure you that our shows are jam packed with entertaining and interesting discussions.  If that sounds like your sort of bag, hang out with Kenny and Del as they get into Nightmare Alley.Thanks for listening and feel free to hit us up on any of our social media platforms!https://linktr.ee/BiAPodcastTheme song "Loli'ana" written and performed by award-winning musician Kamuela Kahoano.   Listen to more of Kamuela's music on iTunes and https://kamuelamusic.com/.  Also, "Loli'ana" performed live at The Ko'olau Banquet Hall can be seen here https://youtu.be/YDJ1NNJgEiA  If you enjoyed our show, subscribe and check out our new shows that drop every Friday.  Also, new this year, our non-routine Hot Topic show where we discuss what's hot in the movie world and our Anniversary Specials, which are 30 minute show that pay tribute to a movie celebrating a significant anniversary.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 2, 2022 is: captious • KAP-shuss • adjective Captious usually means "tending to find fault and raise objections." Less commonly, it means "calculated to confuse, entrap, or entangle in argument." // Surprisingly, the critic, who is known for being captious, found the movie to be a flawless gem. // Befuddled by the captious questions, the suspect broke down and confessed to the crime. See the entry > Examples: "Enjoyable as the book is, a purist will nonetheless fault its loose construction. Still, readers shouldn't be overly captious about this diverting, light entertainment." — Michael Dirda, The Denver Post, 7 Oct. 2018 Did you know? Captious comes from Latin captio, which refers to a deception or verbal quibble. Arguments labeled captious are likely to "capture" a person; they often entrap through subtly deceptive reasoning or trifling points. A captious individual is one who might also be dubbed "hypercritical," the sort of carping, censorious critic only too ready to point out minor faults and raise objections on trivial grounds.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 2, 2022 is: captious • KAP-shuss • adjective Captious means "tending to find fault and raise objections" or "calculated to confuse, entrap, or entangle in argument." // Surprisingly, the critic, who is known for being captious, found the movie to be a flawless gem. // Befuddled by the captious questions, the suspect broke down and confessed to the crime. See the entry > Examples: "Enjoyable as the book is, a purist will nonetheless fault its loose construction. Still, readers shouldn't be overly captious about this diverting, light entertainment." — Michael Dirda, The Denver Post, 7 Oct. 2018 Did you know? Captious comes from Latin captio, which refers to a deception or verbal quibble. Arguments labeled captious are likely to "capture" a person; they often entrap through subtly deceptive reasoning or trifling points. A captious individual is one who might also be dubbed "hypercritical," the sort of carping, censorious critic only too ready to point out minor faults and raise objections on trivial grounds.

In 1891, a mysterious figure appeared on the streets of London, dispensing pills to poor young women who then died in agony. Suspicion came to center on a Scottish-Canadian doctor with a dark past in North America. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the career of the Lambeth Poisoner, whose victims remain uncounted. We'll also consider a Hungarian Jules Verne and puzzle over an ambiguous sentence. Intro: How can an investor responsibly divest herself of stock in a company that she feels has acted immorally? Lightning can vitrify sand into rootlike tubes. Sources for our feature on Thomas Neill Cream: Dean Jobb, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, 2021. Lee Mellor, Cold North Killers: Canadian Serial Murder, 2012. Joshua A. Perper and Stephen J. Cina, When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How, 2010. John H. Trestrail III, Criminal Poisoning: Investigational Guide for Law Enforcement, Toxicologists, Forensic Scientists, and Attorneys, 2007. Angus McLaren, A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, 1995. Paula J. Reiter, "Doctors, Detectives, and the Professional Ideal: The Trial of Thomas Neill Cream and the Mastery of Sherlock Holmes," College Literature 35:3 (Summer 2008), 57-95. Ian A. Burney, "A Poisoning of No Substance: The Trials of Medico-Legal Proof in Mid-Victorian England," Journal of British Studies 38:1 (January 1999), 59-92. Penelope Johnston, "The Murderous Ways of Dr Thomas Neill Cream," Medical Post 33:38 (Nov. 11, 1997), 47. Carolyn A. Conley, "A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream by Angus McLaren," American Historical Review 99:3 (June 1994), 899-900. Philippa Levin, "Modern Britain -- A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream by Angus McLaren," Canadian Journal of History 28:3 (December 1993), 595-597. E.H. Bensley, "McGill University's Most Infamous Medical Graduate," Canadian Medical Association Journal 109:10 (1973), 1024. "A Crazy Poisoner," British Medical Journal 1:3302 (April 12, 1924), 670. Michael Dirda, "A True-Crime Columnist Turns His Attention to Victorian-Era Serial Killer Thomas Neill Cream," Washington Post, Aug. 11, 2021. Evan F. Moore, "New Book Details Canadian Serial Killer's Murderous Legacy in Chicago and Beyond," Chicago Sun-Times, Aug. 10, 2021. Rick Kogan, "Story of Serial Killer Dr. Thomas Neill Cream Takes You on a Grand, Gruesome, Historical Journey, With His Time in Chicago," Chicago Tribune, July 22, 2021. W.M. Akers, "Getting Away With Murder, Literally," New York Times, July 13, 2021. "When Canada's 'Jack the Ripper' Serial Killer Struck in Ontario," Toronto Star, May 29, 2021. Marc Horne, "Doctor Who Had a Taste for Poison," Scotland on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008. Jill Foran, "The Evil Deeds of Dr. Cream," The [Winnipeg] Beaver 86:4 (August/September 2006), 16-22. "Coincidences Point the Finger at Cream as the Ripper," [Regina, Saskatchewan] Leader-Post, May 5, 1979. "The Violent and Sadistic Dr. Cream," [Regina, Saskatchewan] Leader-Post, April 28, 1979. "Poisoner Trailed Over Three Countries," Knoxville [Tenn.] Journal, Feb. 2, 1947. Ruth Reynolds, "When Justice Triumphed," [New York] Daily News, Feb. 2, 1947. "His Last Letter," Waterloo [N.Y.] Advertiser, Dec. 9, 1892. "Cream's Joke," Arizona Republican, Nov. 30, 1892. "Execution of Neill," [Cardiff] Western Mail, Nov. 16, 1892. "Cream's Two Manias," Waterbury [Conn.] Evening Democrat, Nov. 16, 1892. "Execution of Neill, the Poisoner," Yorkshire Herald and the York Herald, Nov. 16, 1892. "A Demon Strangled," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 15, 1892. "Cream's Many Crimes," Boston Globe, Nov. 15, 1892. "Neill Cream Hanged," [Wilmington, Del.] Evening Journal, Nov. 15, 1892. "Neill Will Hang," [Brockway Centre, Mich.] Weekly Expositor, Oct. 28, 1892. "Neill Cream On Trial," [Wilmington, Del.] Evening Journal, Oct. 17, 1892. "On the Grave's Brink," [Wilmington, Del.] Evening Journal, Aug. 9, 1892. "The South London Poisoning Cases," Berrow's Worcester Journal, July 2, 1892. "The Mysterious Poisoning of Girls," Reynolds's Newspaper, June 26, 1892. "Lambeth Poisoning Cases," Daily News, June 25, 1892. "Poisoning Mysteries," Lloyd's Illustrated Newspaper, June 19, 1892. Edward Butts, "Thomas Neill Cream," Canadian Encyclopedia, 2019. Listener mail: "Visit Norfolk Area Nebraska" (accessed Nov. 6, 2021). "Norfolk, Nebraska, United States," Encyclopaedia Britannica (accessed Nov. 6, 2021). City of Norfolk, Nebraska (accessed Nov. 6, 2021). Aaron Calvin, "17 Words Only a True Iowan Knows How to Pronounce," Des Moines Register, Sept. 16, 2021. "How to Pronounce Vaillant," Forvo (accessed Nov. 4, 2021). This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Peter Quinn. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

In this "Cutaway" episode, Jeffrey Overstreet continues to "unpack" (to borrow a word popular with pastors) the package of books he received from Eighth Day Books for attention during these months of "sheltering at home." Here, he takes a deep dive into Alan Jacobs' Breaking Bread With the Dead, and also considers Eric Gill's Beauty Will Look After Itself and Michael Dirda's Bound to Please. This is part two of a two-part reflection on readings for a time of pandemic isolation.

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World and the author of the memoir “An Open Book” and of four collections of essays: “Readings,” “Bound to Please,” “Book by Book” and “Classics for Pleasure.” Dirda was born in Lorain, Ohio, graduated with highest honors in English from Oberlin College, and received a Ph.D. in comparative literature (medieval studies and European romanticism) from Cornell University. We met in Washington D.C., pre-Covid, to discuss specifically Michael's book Readings, and more generally the books he thinks are worth reading and collecting. 

Chow down on crab cakes with Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda as we discuss the convention at which he thought he was about to be punched out by Harlan Ellison, the book he wants to write but which he realizes he could probably never publish, how discovering E. F. Bleiler's Guide to Supernatural Fiction opened a whole new world for him, whether he faced judgment from his peers for believing Georgette Heyer is as important as George Eliot, why he wants to be buried with a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, how Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins is like a Proustian madeleine, the way he navigates the tricky act of reviewing the fiction of friends, the word he used which annoyed Gene Wolfe, and much more.

Take a crash course in Indie Publishing 101 with the founders of Restless Books; hear Scholar senior editor Bruce Falconer explain how John le Carré burned the bridge between genre and literary fiction; and learn from Witold Rybczynski how an iconic modern chair was inspired by an ant. Mentioned in this episode: • Bruce Falconer’s review of The Pigeon Tunnel • Our list of 13 “Spooktacular” Books and Michael Dirda’s attempt to out-scare us with a list of his own • An excerpt from How to Travel Without Seeing by Andrés Neuman, published by Restless Books, which offers a glimpse inside the surreal operations of Venezuela’s book...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Take a crash course in Indie Publishing 101 with the founders of Restless Books; hear Scholar senior editor Bruce Falconer explain how John le Carré burned the bridge between genre and literary fiction; and learn from Witold Rybczynski how an iconic modern chair was inspired by an ant. Mentioned in this episode: • Bruce Falconer’s review of The Pigeon Tunnel • Our list of 13 “Spooktacular” Books and Michael Dirda’s attempt to out-scare us with a list of his own • An excerpt from How to Travel Without Seeing by Andrés Neuman, published by Restless Books, which offers a glimpse inside the surreal operations of Venezuela’s book... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

"I am one of a hundred" [ILLU]  Well, we managed to do it. And it only took us nine years, an 18-month hiatus, one lost episode and thousands of fans.   That's right, it's our 100th episode.   We asked you what you wanted to hear for the centenary of the first podcast for Sherlock Holmes devotees, and time and again, we heard from you, telling us to do a retrospective - a look back at our favorite moments from what we've accomplished. We also asked you what your favorite moments are and what you wanted to know from us. Well, we managed to deliver on both.   Our 100th episode gave us a chance to reflect on exactly what turning 100 means, and to dive back into our murky and fuzzy origins. We try to answer some of your queries and we celebrate those who joined us previously before launching into our top memories of the show, as represented in audio clips. Our Gas-Lamp features two readings, including a new one created just for this episode. Finally, we wrap up with a couple of important announcements that you won't want to miss.   We thank Mary Miller for her ongoing and generous support of our program on . Perhaps you'd like to become a patron in honor of our 100th show. If ongoing support scares you, are welcome too.    Additional Thanks We have so many of you to thank — from those of you who wrote in with feedback, to those who provided reviews, created something for us, provided financial support, and of course, those who appeared on the show. It's all been absolutely overwhelming.   So, in no particular order, thanks to: Steve Doyle, Mark Gagen, Steve Rothman, Bob Katz, Andy Solberg, Jon Lellenberg, Dan Stashower, Mike Whelan, Peter Blau, Les Klinger, Bert Coules, Mike Berdan, Michael Dirda, Bob Thomalen, The Baker Street Babes, Otto Penzler, Maria Konnikova, Nicholas Meyer, Evelyn Herzog, Susan Rice, David Harnois, Steve Mason, Rob Nunn, Claire Strum, Peter Calamai, Nicholas Pidgeon, Nick Utechin, Ray Betzner, David Stuart Davies, David Ian Davies, Chris Redmond, Jamie Mahoney, Leah Guinn, Jerry Margolin, David Morrill, Sally Sugarman, Graham Moore, Henry Zecher, Tom Francis, Don Hobbs, Tom Richmond, Tim Johnson, Ken Ludwig, Glen Miranker, Zach Dundas, Bonnie MacBird, Bill Barnes, Roseane McNamara, Doug Elliott, Kerry Murphy, Christopher Sequeira, Erin O'Neill, and Robert Veld.   And extra special thanks to our spouses  Kathi and Mindi, who tolerate this silliness and allow us to interrupt the flow of home life more than we thought they would. Or certainly more than they'd prefer.     Notes 1:37 Welcome and intro 2:25 Someone else is pretty excited 3:19 Other centenary celebrations in 2016 7:10 Milestones can be , featuring 9:32 Our humble beginnings 11:14 Spending time 11:55 I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere - by the numbers 15:49 Multiple IHOSE interview guests 18:10 Your kind reviews 20:24 21:40 You asked for it / your favorite moments 23:29 How it all began 34:24 Remembering our hiatus 41:00 Looking back at our favorite moments 42:25 Mike Berdan on getting involved with Sherlock Holmes  45:12 Christopher Morley on the reality of Sherlock Holmes 48:00 Peter Blau on Edgar Smith 51:38 Otto Penzler gets defensive about his literary doppelgänger 55:23 Fritz Weaver recalls Baker Street, the characterization of Sherlock Holmes, and the importance of Conan Doyle 57:54 Michael Dirda reads from On Conan Doyle 1:01:59 Lara Pulver reflects on her success 1:05:03 Bert Coules on the role of the writer with BBC Radio, the importance of his director David Johnson recognizing the major characters in The Hound of the Baskervilles 1:11:20 Bert Coules talks about casting Michael Williams as Dr. Watson, as opposed to Nigel Bruce 1:14:55 A comic interlude: a halfway decent Jack Benny impersonation 1:20:22 Lyndsay, Ashley and Ardy from the Baker Street Babes play Jeopardy and make Burt's editing job a living nightmare 1:24:06 A flashback within our flashback as Steve Rothman is unruffled and Bob Katz freaks out about Dr. Rosenbach's credentials 1:26:57 Nicholas Meyer recounts how he was invited to the BSI dinner and how he overstepped 1:35:25 Susan Rice shares the story of the afternoon when women were granted membership in the Baker Street Irregulars, together with a recording of Tom Stix presiding at that very event. 1:42:53 The Baker Street Journal 1:45:02 The Editor's Gas-Lamp: a two-fer with "221B" and "A Long Evening with Holmes" 1:50:45 Housekeeping, special thanks and two announcements — listen closely, as we need your feedback     Sponsors This episode includes our two longtime sponsors and we thank them. Please support our sponsors by visiting their sites: The , featuring .  , where you can get a gift subscription for the up and coming Sherlockian.      Would you care to become a sponsor? You can find .   Links: Our Episodes and (Sherlockian 101) : Mike Berdan  : Sherlockian 101  : Peter Blau  : Otto Penzler  : Fritz Weaver : Michael Dirda  : Lara Pulver Episodes and : Bert Coules : The Baker Street Babes : Nicholas Meyer : Susan Rice and Evelyn Herzog : that Jack Benny impersonation : Bob Katz, Andy Solberg and Steven Rothman Leave us a rating or review The  page The      Many more links, articles and images are available in our Flipboard magazine at  , as well as on the  on Google+ (with over 3,700 members), as well as through our accounts on  , , ,   and .     Please , , ,  or  and be kind enough to leave a rating or review for the show. And please tell a friend about us, in any fashion you feel comfortable.   Your thoughts on the show? Leave a comment below, send us an email (comment AT ihearofsherlock DOT com), call us at (774) 221-READ (7323).        

Last year, at the World Fantasy Convention held in Saratoga Springs, a panel was presented on 'Creating the Fantasy Canon'.  The panel description was: There are some books we all agree on as fundamental to the genre, but can we agree on a canon of twenty stories? Our panelists will discuss which twenty books are essential reading for understanding the genre and how this list has changed over time. Jonathan from the Coode Street Podcast was cast in the role of moderator, and the panelists for the discussion were John Clute, Michael Dirda, Yanni Kuznia, Gary Wolfe, and Ron Yaniv. The conversation that unfolded was energetic, thoughtful and entertaining, and even if it didn't resolve the question, it nonetheless was something we at Coode St thought you might enjoy. The Coode Street Podcast team would like to thank the administrators of the World Fantasy convention for permission to present the panel here, and would specially like to thank sound expert Paul Kraus for his hard work on making sure the recording was as good as it is. As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!

More than 30 of the year's Virtual Memories Show guests tell us about the favorite books they read in 2015 and the books they hope to get to in 2016! Guests include Derf Backderf, Anthea Bell, John Clute, Michael Dirda, Matt Farber, Jonathan Galassi, Brad Gooch, Langdon Hammer, Liz Hand, Jennifer Hayden, Ron Hogan, Dylan Horrocks, David Jaher, Kathe Koja, Jonathan Kranz, Peter Kuper, Lorenzo Mattotti, JD McClatchy, Scott McCloud, Michael Meyer, Dan Perkins (a.k.a Tom Tomorrow), Summer Pierre, Witold Rybczynski, Dmitry Samarov, Elizabeth Samet, Liesl Schillinger, Posy Simmonds, Levi Stahl, Rupert Thomson, Irvine Welsh, Warren Woodfin, Jim Woodring, Claudia Young, and me, Gil Roth! Check out their selections at our site!

Author of Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books   Interview starts at 15:46 and ends at 42:34   My main attraction to a Kindle is only age-related. If my vision deteriorates enough that I need to make the type bigger, then I could see that it's just a wonderful tool to have. But so long as I can enjoy the books that I have, the physical books, I'll stick with them. I have nothing against them [eReaders]. I believe that what fundamentally matters is stories, poems—people need them. The means that we access them isn't crucial at all.    News “Amazon to Release $50 Tablet as it Struggles to Sell Pricier Devices” by Greg Bensinger at The Wall Street Journal - September 7, 2015 (Behind paywall - copy headline and paste into Google) “What's New Tonight from Amazon—Summary of New Kindles and Fires” at The Kindle Chronicles - September 17, 2015 “Amazon Kindle Voyage 2 to be Released November 2015” by Michael Kozlowski at Good e-Reader - July 9, 2015 “Amazon's Kindle Scout Publishing Platform Expands Internationally” - press release September 9, 2015 “20 Years of Amazon.com Bookselling” by Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly - September 4, 2015   Tech Tip How to type like 1,000 monkeys on a Kindle on-screen keyboard   Interview with Michael Dirda      Reviews of Browsings in The Washington Post, The Minneapolis StarTribune, and Wall Street Journal “Book Shopping with the Best-Read Man in America” by John Lingan at The Paris Review - December 28, 2012 Michael Dirda's reading at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. - August 10, 2015 Twisted Clay by Frank Walford On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle Professor Challenger Premium Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle   Content Books published by Kindle Press based on Kindle Scout reader input Housebroken by The Behrg Eddie & Sunny by Stacey Cochran   Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.    Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Pulitzer Prize-winning book reviewer Michael Dirda rejoins the show to talk about his new collection, Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books (Pegasus Books). We discuss the importance of reading for pleasure, the difference between book-collecting and shopping, the role of the book reviewer (and how it differs from that of the critic), a recent negative review he didn't want to write, why he doesn't read reviews of his work, what his mother said when he won the Pulitzer Prize, and more!

More than 30 of this year's podcast guests tell us about the favorite books they read in 2014! Guests include Maria Alexander, Ashton Applewhite, David Baerwald, Nina Bunjevac, Roz Chast, Sarah Deming, Michael Dirda, Jules Feiffer, Mark Feltskog, Mary Fleener, Nathan Fox, Josh Alan Friedman, Richard Gehr, Paul Gravett, Sam Gross, Rachel Hadas, Kaz, Daniel Levine, Sara Lippmann, Merrill Markoe, Brett Martin, Mimi Pond, George Prochnik, Emily Raboteau, Jonathan Rose, Ron Rosenbaum, Dmitry Samarov, Seth, Katie Skelly, Ron Slate, Maya Stein, Rupert Thomson, and Frank Wilson! Check out the list of books at our site!

Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda rejoins the Virtual Memories Show at Readercon 2014 to talk about the time Neil Gaiman tried to explain Twitter to him, his new project on the golden age of storytelling, what he dislikes about the tone of today's book reviewers, and more! [Also, we remastered our original Dirda podcast from 2012, over here!]

"...my little bookshop at the corner..." [EMPT]  When we have the opportunity to sit on a couple of sofas and interview some of the most erudite and interesting Baker Street Irregulars of our time, we take it. And it seems that the BSI Weekend serves as just the spot to do that. Two years ago, we had an opportunity to do just that with Michael Dirda (ref. ), and we were again afforded that opportunity this year. On January 16, 2014, we had the great fortune to find an upstairs room in The Players Club in Manhattan, where we plunked our microphones down in front of Ray Betzner, BSI ("The Agony Column") and the esteemed Susan Rice, BSI ("Beeswing"), ASH ("Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen") and got them to wax poetic about the great Sherlockian and bookman, Vincent Starrett. While many people are familiar with the names of Edgar Smith and Christopher Morley when it comes to early Irregular history, Vincent Starrett may not be as widely known. He was certainly very well known in his own time, and particularly in his city of Chicago. His contributions to the world of Sherlock Holmes were immense, and his own magnum opus  is probably the most well known. But what else was known of this man? How did he become such a great scholar of Holmes? What of his professional life? What mysteries within his own personal life and commitments kept him from attending all but the first BSI Dinner, despite his death some 40 years later in 1974? Our interview subjects delve into all of these topics and many more as they help us explore the multifaceted bookman Vincent Starrett. We hear from Vincent himself in the opening strains of the show and we close not with a Gas-Lamp, but of a reading of his touching poem "221B." Both of these are available on , available from the Wessex Press, our sponsor. Listener comments are back (thank you!), both written and audio, and we give those some airtime. Finally, we have a special item - an article that Starrett wrote for The Observer, the catalog from Oppenheim's from Autumn 1929, titled "Fashions in Fiction" - that is available as a bonus item only for listeners who have downloaded our , our , or our . Links: Ray Betzner's new website:  - including ""  - 75th anniversary edition, edited by Ray Betzner (Wessex Press) An excerpt from  (BSI Archival History) "" in The Golden Book Magazine - available to one lucky collector (Amazon.com)  (via the Internet Archive)  (Hypable) Our  and  site aggregate lots of content for your enjoyment. Please  and be kind enough to leave a rating or review for the show. And please tell a friend about us, in any fashion you feel comfortable. Your thoughts on the show? Leave a comment below, send us an email, call us at (774) 221-READ (7323) or use the Speakpipe app right here on the site. Connect with us and other interested Sherlockians on  on Google+, ,  and . And of course, our  is a nice collection of links, articles and images. And above all, please let our sponsors know that you heard us rant and rave about their excellence during the programme:  and . Image credit:  --

Michael Dirda discusses Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, at the 2012 Library of Congress National Book Festival. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=5830.

Pulitzer-winning book critic Michael Dirda joins us to talk about the role of negative reviews, the value of book reviews in the internet age, breaking out of the genre ghetto, his path into Book World, and more! [This one is a re-mastered edition of the Oct. 2012 episode.]

This week we're joined by Pulitzer Prize award winning critic Michael Dirda to discuss his new book on Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Gene Wolfe and the golden age of story. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda recently reviewed Keith Roberts' magestic novel, Pavane, in The Washington Post, describing it as a fix-up novel, a term coined by the late A.E. van Vogt. The review sparked a conversation about fix-ups, what they are and where the term comes from, and how terminology forms in the SF field. It's digressive, unresearched, and un-factchecked, but at least it's not talking about awards. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

The winners of the 2011 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest received their awards during a ceremony at the Library. The program included a talk, "The Thrill of the Hunt: The Serendipitous Pleasures of Book Collecting" by Michael Dirda. Speaker Biography: Michael Dirda is senior editor for "The Washington Post Book World." He taught world literature at the university level and worked as a free-lance writer, translator and editor before joining "Book World" in 1978. He is recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism and is author of "Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=5358.

One of the great benefits of being a member of the Baker Street Irregulars is that we get to meet a lot of interesting and famous people. Chief among them are the literati, such as Michael Dirda, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for the Washington Post, who makes his living by writing about the literati.   In this case, Michael himself is the author, having been tapped by the Princeton University Press to contribute to their "Writers on Writers" series with the volume . In it, he takes us through Conan Doyle's life and writings - many of which may not be familiar to the Sherlock Holmes fan - and gives us a perspective on many of them through the Canon.   Burt and Scott had a chance to sit down with Michael at the Players in New York City during the 2012 Baker Street Irregulars Weekend - marking the first time our podcast has been recorded with the two hosts together in the same room.   Rather than give you an Editor's Gas-Lamp in this episode, we asked Michael to read something from his own work.

The 2011 Mencken Memorial Lecture,  "The Literary Journalist in the Era of H. L. Mencken: Vincent Starrett, Christopher Morley, and Clifton Fadiman," is presented by Michael Dirda, book columnist for the Washington Post.Michael Dirda received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. A graduate of Oberlin College, he received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell University. Dirda is the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book and Classics for Pleasure. His latest book, On Conan Doyle, will be published this fall by Princeton University Press. Recorded On: Saturday, September 10, 2011