The Hope Axis #31 James Marriott: The Hope in Great Books
The Times columnist James Marriott joins me to discuss the decline of reading comprehension, the risk-averse publishing industry, the addictive nature of digital media, a new Dark Age of literacy, and why ambitious young people should still pursue writing careers. Hope you enjoy!
You can find the full transcript here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OcM2...
Important Links:
JM’s Substack - https://jmarriott.substack.com/
X Profile - https://x.com/j_amesmarriott
James Marriott at The Times - https://www.thetimes.com/profile/jame...
Show Notes:
00:00 Intro
00:49 Guest Introduction
02:08 Cultural Pessimism as a Source of Hope
06:52 The Death of Ambient Culture
12:58 The Proliferation of Junk Text
16:12 The Last Great Novelists
24:48 Risk-averse publishers remove allusions from Books
28:40 If Dickens Tried to Publish Today
31:45 Can Anyone Read Dickens Anymore?
40:33 The Attention Economy vs. Human Relationships
43:47 Humanities as the Cultural Capital
49:34 The Kafka/Larkin model: boring day jobs enable artistic risk-taking
52:30 Start now, don’t wait for permission
56:24 Pessimistic Optimism instead of a Relentlessly Upbeat Culture
Books Mentioned:
The French Lieutenant's Woman; by John Fowles
The Crimson Petal and the White; by Michel Faber
Wolf Hall, A Place of Greater Safety; by Hilary Mantel
Neapolitan Quartet; by Elena Ferrante
The Luminaries; by Eleanor Catton
Bleak House; by Charles Dickens
Antifragile; by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Arcadia; by Tom Stoppard
A Primate's Memoir; by Robert Sapolsky
Works by Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin, Franz Kafka
Agatha Christie and her classical references
T.S. Eliot, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Sally Rooney