Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol mark Wood Show
Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Christopher's Kalia. Christopher is
Speaker 1: a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he
Speaker 1: writes about arts, culture, and higher education, and he's the
Speaker 1: author of the new book Thirteen Novels Conservatives will Love
Speaker 1: but probably haven't read.
Speaker 2: Hi, Christopher, so nice to have you on.
Speaker 3: Hi, Carol, thank you for having me. It's great to
Speaker 3: talk to you.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: I'm extremely excited about your new book, which I have
Speaker 1: right here. And I have to say that I immediately thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I will have read these thirteen books. I am really
Speaker 1: smart and I'm a conservative, so.
Speaker 2: I am sure I've read these books.
Speaker 1: And as my daughter pointed out to me, when I
Speaker 1: told her I hadn't read any of the books, none
Speaker 1: of them, she said, well, that's why he wrote the book. Actually,
Speaker 1: that is what she's like, if you'd read them, then
Speaker 1: he wouldn't need the book, which is a solid point.
Speaker 1: I thought, she's fifteen and she knows everything. For what
Speaker 1: made you write this book? Is it that people like
Speaker 1: me actually haven't read them?
Speaker 5: Well, people like you, I think conservatives in general who
Speaker 5: like fiction tend to have a pretty limited range.
Speaker 3: I don't mean that as an insult, but that's.
Speaker 2: Just feel insulted.
Speaker 3: But okay, let.
Speaker 5: Me put it this way. People conservatives who love fiction
Speaker 5: talk about great fiction. They talk about the same handful
Speaker 5: of novels, and most of those books are great. I
Speaker 5: think of like nineteen eighty four Bravey World. Everybody loves
Speaker 5: those novels. Yeah, or if you want to get a
Speaker 5: Catholic about it, Brideshead revisited something by Iron Randy Tom
Speaker 5: Wolfe of course, and these are great novels for the
Speaker 5: most part. But I think we limit ourselves. And by
Speaker 5: the way, those are just the English language original ones.
Speaker 5: I didn't even mention the Russians. But we tend to
Speaker 5: limit ourselves when we talk about that handful of novels.
Speaker 5: Because it's great as they are, they're really just a fraction,
Speaker 5: just the tip of the iceberg of great literature that
Speaker 5: touches on conservative ideas and principles. So this book was
Speaker 5: an attempt to expand, you could say, expand the conservative
Speaker 5: canon a little bit. These are all great novels. I
Speaker 5: think you don't have to be conservative to recognize these
Speaker 5: are great novels. But conservatives will recognize the value of
Speaker 5: the principles and ideals expressed in these works, maybe more
Speaker 5: than they would in other works. So while you didn't
Speaker 5: recognize any of the novels I put in there, hopefully
Speaker 5: you would have recognized at least many of the authors
Speaker 5: and say, oh, yeah, yeah, I know Nathaniel Hawthorne, but
Speaker 5: I've never heard of that novel. Or I love Evelinois,
Speaker 5: but I've never read Scoop exactly.
Speaker 2: That's what happened to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it's the idea was not to make people think,
Speaker 5: oh gosh, I really haven't read anything, because I know
Speaker 5: that's not a great feeling. Instead, it's the vibe, as
Speaker 5: the kids say, I'm going for is oh good. There's
Speaker 5: a lot more great books I can read than the
Speaker 5: ones I already knew about.
Speaker 2: What's the most important one on the list?
Speaker 3: That that is a tough question, an unfair question, even,
Speaker 3: I mean, you.
Speaker 1: Made me feel bad for not reading this, get you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 5: The most important one is probably not going to be
Speaker 5: everybody's favorite, but it is my favorite, and that's Waverley
Speaker 5: by Walter Scott, published in eighteen fourteen. Walter Scott was
Speaker 5: the pre eminent novelist of the Romantic period, one of
Speaker 5: the most really the most popular novelist in Europe and
Speaker 5: in the United States too for a very long time.
Speaker 5: But he's just fallen out of fashion, in large part
Speaker 5: because of what his novels were about. His novels were
Speaker 5: about nobility and honor and the importance of tradition. The
Speaker 5: conservative intellectual Russell Kirk said that what Scott did was
Speaker 5: take Edmund Burke's ideas from the reflections of the revolution
Speaker 5: in France and make them more accessible by telling stories
Speaker 5: that illustrate those ideas. Walter Scott just had an enormous
Speaker 5: influence on all of European and American culture and thought
Speaker 5: for a long time, and he's just kind of fallen
Speaker 5: by the wayside for all sorts of reasons. I think
Speaker 5: he's the person I think it's most important for conservatives
Speaker 5: to return to because of I think the greatness of
Speaker 5: his novels and the significance of his ideas.
Speaker 1: Walter Scott writing it down, going to order all his
Speaker 1: books right after.
Speaker 3: This, Well, don't bother with all of them. They're a lot,
Speaker 3: and they are of varying quality.
Speaker 5: He wrote, I think twenty eight novels over the course
Speaker 5: of sixteen years or so.
Speaker 2: My book's on Evey secondhand, so yeah, like three dollars each.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But Waverley I have here, and then Ivanhoe is
Speaker 5: probably his best known novel that is certainly also worth reading.
Speaker 1: I saw someone yelling at you on X about this book,
Speaker 1: about this is something that's unnecessary right now, and it's
Speaker 1: the last thing conservatives need is to be reading fiction.
Speaker 2: How dare you? What do you say to that?
Speaker 5: Well, I think people like that believe that the only
Speaker 5: real way of knowing anything is to read history or
Speaker 5: political science, or biographies or self improvement books. And I
Speaker 5: think that's a pretty commonly held belief on the left,
Speaker 5: and I think probably especially on the right. And it's
Speaker 5: unfortunate because the value of fiction and of literature in general,
Speaker 5: I would certainly include poetry in this is that it
Speaker 5: offers a different way of knowing. It offers wisdom in
Speaker 5: a way that you can't get through history and nonfiction.
Speaker 5: Most most importantly, or most obviously, it does it with
Speaker 5: beautiful language in a way that most nonfiction writers don't
Speaker 5: really aspire to. And you know, the conservatives especially should
Speaker 5: value the novel because it's not really an old form.
Speaker 5: It's it's only only a few centuries old. But some
Speaker 5: of the greatest creative minds in Western history have expressed
Speaker 5: their ideas and their craft through the novel. So I
Speaker 5: think I think those are important reasons conservatives should should
Speaker 5: read fiction. And certainly I'm not saying you should read
Speaker 5: only fiction, but we need to do a better job
Speaker 5: of recognizing the importance of storytelling. Rodreer a few years
Speaker 5: ago and The American Conservative wrote that, you know, and
Speaker 5: this is a common complaint, conservatives are just bad at storytelling,
Speaker 5: or we don't understand the significant of storytelling. But the
Speaker 5: fact is that myth and stories are how most people
Speaker 5: come to believe things and to cherish ideas. Argument and
Speaker 5: reason and data. Those are obviously important things, but those
Speaker 5: aren't the only way we know things.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite book?
Speaker 3: All around you are just.
Speaker 2: I ask her questions.
Speaker 1: That's right, I'm preparing you for your eventual MSNBC with
Speaker 1: John Mica.
Speaker 5: So well, No, my new favorite book is thirteen Novels
Speaker 5: Conservatives will love, But I have it.
Speaker 2: I haven't read.
Speaker 5: My favorite book that I write about, my favorite favorite
Speaker 5: novel I write about, And there is probably my Antonia
Speaker 5: by Willa Cather, and it is just a It is
Speaker 5: a beautiful novel about I guess you could say the
Speaker 5: immigrant experience and more more broadly, the American dream. The
Speaker 5: title character, Antonia, comes from Europe. She and her family
Speaker 5: from Europe in the late nineteenth century and encounter many struggles.
Speaker 5: She eventually finds her footing, raises a huge and happy family,
Speaker 5: and the person telling us all about her, the narrator,
Speaker 5: is not an immigrant, but he is orphaned at a
Speaker 5: young age, moves from Virginia to Nebraska, and grows up
Speaker 5: with Antonia. Is just in love with her and her
Speaker 5: immigrant peers. But he also is a great emblem of
Speaker 5: the American dream because he goes on from these kind
Speaker 5: of unpromising origins to become a very successful businessman, a
Speaker 5: lawyer for a railway, and he helps really shape the
Speaker 5: United States as we know it out of his love
Speaker 5: for the country that has become. I think my favorite
Speaker 5: novel certainly that I wrote about here.
Speaker 1: So you touched on this a little bit, but it
Speaker 1: is sort of the era of learn as much as
Speaker 1: you can, you know, when you're at the gym, listen
Speaker 1: to a podcast, and always be kind of processing information,
Speaker 1: and there is a sense of like it's wasting time
Speaker 1: to read nonfiction. I'm sorry to read fiction, and actually
Speaker 1: the show has I've touched on it a lot on
Speaker 1: this show because it was my New Year's resolution last
Speaker 1: year to read more fiction. I don't get to do
Speaker 1: it enough. What's important about reading fiction? Why does anyone
Speaker 1: really need it?
Speaker 5: First of all, a really funny thing happened to me
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks ago. I was up at one
Speaker 5: of my kids Saturday sporting events and a friend.
Speaker 3: A fellow parent, arrived. She had a book. I said,
Speaker 3: what are you reading? And she said, oh, it's just
Speaker 3: a novel.
Speaker 5: And it's almost kind of like this sense that novels
Speaker 5: can only be guilty pleasures. But you know, it was
Speaker 5: not a trashy novel. It was a pretty serious work
Speaker 5: of literary fiction. I mean, nothing obnoxious, pretentious, but it
Speaker 5: you know, it wasn't fluff. And and I've talked I
Speaker 5: in the ensuing conversation, I learned that this woman knows
Speaker 5: a lot about fiction, a lot about the novel, and
Speaker 5: it was We had a great conversation. But I asked
Speaker 5: her about it later. I said, why did you say
Speaker 5: only a novel, right, And she said because that she
Speaker 5: assumes that's what how most people are going to react.
Speaker 5: I think she's exactly right. As you're explaining, you were
Speaker 5: just explaining something inferior about fiction. And that's not a
Speaker 5: new idea. I mean, it goes back to the very
Speaker 5: origins of the novel in Britain, because there, I mean,
Speaker 5: there are a lot of trashy novels, not not every
Speaker 5: work of fiction is is you know, gonna going to
Speaker 5: offer a ton.
Speaker 1: Of money nonfiction trashy books as well.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right too.
Speaker 5: But I think, as I was suggesting earlier, I just
Speaker 5: think immersing yourself in the language as it is used
Speaker 5: by masters, and encountering beauty, those are important things. We
Speaker 5: I think we understate the significance of beauty in particular,
Speaker 5: or in beauty as can be expressed in language. It
Speaker 5: is okay, I mean that that's the point of art,
Speaker 5: is to be in awe of something beautiful and to
Speaker 5: experience wonder that. You know, sensations and experiences like that
Speaker 5: are certainly worthwhile. And I think you know what you
Speaker 5: were describing that the impulse to always learn more, learn more,
Speaker 5: learn more. I think you obviously you get you learn
Speaker 5: about human nature in novels that in a way that
Speaker 5: you can't through other forms of writing. You develop a
Speaker 5: lot of studies show that you develop sympathetic powers, the
Speaker 5: ability to understand other people, to sympathize with other people.
Speaker 5: That doesn't necessarily necessarily make everybody who reads novels good people,
Speaker 5: but it does help us understand each other, and that
Speaker 5: that can be especially important. I think in a democracy,
Speaker 5: when we need we have to engage with other people
Speaker 5: on their level and to sympathize with them than when
Speaker 5: we don't agree with him, I have to we have
Speaker 5: to have good conversations with them. But it's hard to
Speaker 5: read novels. This is really hard to read anything now
Speaker 5: because of all the distractions out there and all of
Speaker 5: the you know you mentioned X earlier or Instagram, Facebook, TikTok,
Speaker 5: you know, you know, the litany and reading or doing it, praying,
Speaker 5: doing anything that it's that takes intense concentration can be difficult. Podcasts,
Speaker 5: for example, are great, great things to listen to when
Speaker 5: you don't really need to concentrate and you want to
Speaker 5: zone out and you know, as you wash the dishes
Speaker 5: or work out, but when you're reading that that really
Speaker 5: needs to be your focus, and we're bad at that. Now.
Speaker 1: It's funny, it's I totally agree with you. When we're
Speaker 1: looking at a piece of art, nobody's like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a waste of my time.
Speaker 5: I could be learning something, right, Nobody goes to the
Speaker 5: National Gallery of Art and thinks, oh boy, why do we.
Speaker 2: Even do this anymore? When I could be learning stuff
Speaker 2: on the podcasts?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: You know what you worry about.
Speaker 5: Well, I worry about I guess along the lines of
Speaker 5: what I was just saying, that we're becoming something approaching
Speaker 5: a postliterate culture. And that doesn't mean we're becoming illiterate,
Speaker 5: but we value we value writing much less. I suspect
Speaker 5: AI is going to present a new kind of threat
Speaker 5: along these lines. I don't think AI is entirely bad,
Speaker 5: but it makes it easier to not write for yourself
Speaker 5: and not really think for yourself. And I worry about that.
Speaker 5: As I was suggesting earlier, if we don't read great
Speaker 5: things from the past, we are cutting ourselves off from
Speaker 5: just an abundance of wisdom and ignorance that is important
Speaker 5: to know too. And the less we read, the poorer
Speaker 5: we will be at reading, and the harder it will
Speaker 5: be for us to be good at it again. And
Speaker 5: it doesn't necessarily keep me up at night. But as
Speaker 5: somebody who really loves reading, I don't want to be
Speaker 5: like then and shaking his fist at the clouds. But
Speaker 5: a lot of the technologies we are gaining are great,
Speaker 5: but we need to be aware of what we may
Speaker 5: be losing if we forget about these older technologies, in
Speaker 5: these older media and these other older forms of entertainment,
Speaker 5: instruction and pleasure.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right
Speaker 1: back on the Carol Marcoit Show.
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Speaker 1: There's always these stories now where kids get to college
Speaker 1: and the professors are shocked at how they've never read
Speaker 1: a book for pleasure, or they don't know how to
Speaker 1: read a full book. They never had to do that,
Speaker 1: never in high school anymore. How do we work around that?
Speaker 1: How do we bring back reading as something people do?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: I have three kids, two of them natural readers, carry
Speaker 1: books around with them. The third one super into sports,
Speaker 1: not really that as interested in reading. How do you
Speaker 1: kind of move that kid towards reading.
Speaker 3: I'm strung me.
Speaker 2: I need to know.
Speaker 3: I need to know too.
Speaker 2: If you figured out parenting advice, I think.
Speaker 5: For parents, it's important to remember that children appreciate reading
Speaker 5: at different ages. I read quite a bit but I
Speaker 5: didn't really love reading until probably when I got to college.
Speaker 5: I read when I was growing up. I read Encyclopedia
Speaker 5: Brown and John Belair's stories, and I enjoyed it, but
Speaker 5: it wasn't necessarily my favorite thing to do. And I
Speaker 5: see the same thing with my kids. There's so many
Speaker 5: other things for them to do. They like reading, but
Speaker 5: it's not their it's not their fault mode. And I
Speaker 5: think that parents just need to be patient and keep
Speaker 5: kind of reminding them that that's an option.
Speaker 3: Give them books.
Speaker 5: Talk about one way I really got my daughter into
Speaker 5: reading was by having her read to me, and her
Speaker 5: reading got so much better over the course of a
Speaker 5: few weeks. And my knowledge of Ramona Quimby really is
Speaker 5: quite aggressive. For yeah, a man approaching fifty. I think teachers.
Speaker 5: I talk to a lot of college professors who say
Speaker 5: the same thing, and I don't blame them for scaling
Speaker 5: back on the reading.
Speaker 2: I kind of blame them.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I blame them a little.
Speaker 5: It is I guess the path of less resistance anyway,
Speaker 5: but especially for lower level classes, I get it. For
Speaker 5: upper level classes, I have much less patience for it,
Speaker 5: but I guess it would a lot of it just
Speaker 5: begins with or maybe begins in high schools or junior highs,
Speaker 5: and policies we're seeing going around the country about cracking
Speaker 5: down on cell phones and schools. I think that that
Speaker 5: would be a big help. But I do think, you know,
Speaker 5: my hunches as a conservative, my my instinct is that
Speaker 5: things like this begin with the family, and it is
Speaker 5: a that's not.
Speaker 2: The answer I was looking for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, you know, but again, I'm struggling with the
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 5: And that's why that's why I'm trying to stick to
Speaker 5: it and trying not to get too frustrated, because you
Speaker 5: never you never really know what's going to hit with
Speaker 5: the with the child, when when they're reading, and what's
Speaker 5: going to take And it is also possible that you know,
Speaker 5: a kid just doesn't isn't going to like reading very much.
Speaker 5: That that's unfortunate. I can deal with it. That's unfortunate,
Speaker 5: But I hope, I hope the child is still possibly
Speaker 5: capable capable of reading something complex, even if it's not,
Speaker 5: but they enjoy what he or she wants to do.
Speaker 1: For funnel right, what advice would you give your sixteen
Speaker 1: year old self, what a sixteen year old Christopher.
Speaker 2: Need to know.
Speaker 5: Well, this advice might sound contradictory, but I think I
Speaker 5: would give two related lessons.
Speaker 3: One is that.
Speaker 5: What sixteen year old Chris is doing as a sixteen
Speaker 5: year old is a foundation for sixty year old Chris,
Speaker 5: and that it's a good time to plant the seeds
Speaker 5: for later in life. And that doesn't mean to take
Speaker 5: everything completely seriously, but to understand the habits I'm developing
Speaker 5: as a sixteen year old will pay dividends down the road,
Speaker 5: and that things like self control, discipline, focus, things that
Speaker 5: I do think I did work on as a sixteen
Speaker 5: year old in school and athletics and things like that.
Speaker 5: They they paid off, and if anything, I could have
Speaker 5: done them a little bit more, but they were worthwhile.
Speaker 5: And then conversely, to also remember that you're only sixteen
Speaker 5: and you've got decades ahead of you, god willing, and
Speaker 5: that the things that seem like really big deals are
Speaker 5: not big deals. That's I think everybody, everybody who everybody
Speaker 5: probably in their twenties realizes this.
Speaker 3: But the things.
Speaker 5: That seem like crises, the things, the huge embarrassments that
Speaker 5: seem like things people will will remember forever, really aren't.
Speaker 5: And you can overcome falling flat on your face and
Speaker 5: having things that you thought would happen not happening. You
Speaker 5: just have to learn how to adjust, pivot, you know,
Speaker 5: whatever term you want to use, and look forward to
Speaker 5: the next challenger or ambition.
Speaker 2: I love that. I've loved this conversation.
Speaker 1: It did make me feel bad that I don't read enough,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to try to rectify it right away.
Speaker 5: And here, Kerl, I don't think you should feel guilty,
Speaker 5: by the way, because you do. I do feel guil
Speaker 5: You have a lot of on your plate. I don't
Speaker 5: feel guilty.
Speaker 2: I you know, I swear.
Speaker 1: It actually is a theme on here where I talk
Speaker 1: a lot about how I don't read enough fiction and
Speaker 1: how that makes me feel bad.
Speaker 2: And I read a lot of nonfiction. I read a
Speaker 2: lot of nonfiction, you know, just for our work.
Speaker 1: And but fiction makes me feel good and it makes
Speaker 1: me a better person, more interesting person.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: That's why I really I saw this book. I saw
Speaker 1: that you wrote thirteen novels Conservatives of Love, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to read it because I absolutely relate to
Speaker 1: the message that fiction improves so much about our experience
Speaker 1: in this world.
Speaker 2: And again that comparison to art. Was it for me?
Speaker 1: You know, no one's mad at themselves for going to
Speaker 1: the museum. We're mad at ourselves for reading a book
Speaker 1: on a beach. You know.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question? Can I se on
Speaker 3: the table? What is your favorite novel? Man or one
Speaker 3: of them?
Speaker 1: Just so it's funny, you said nineteen eighty four and
Speaker 1: you said Brave New World where the Russian third the
Speaker 1: kind of what I consider the trio the zemyatins we
Speaker 1: we in Russian, I think is like the undervalued triplet.
Speaker 2: In that container. So I love that book.
Speaker 3: I need to check that one out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, I think it could have easily made your list.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that check.
Speaker 5: They stay on the lookout for thirteen more novels conservatives
Speaker 5: will love.
Speaker 3: I love it well, if.
Speaker 5: Any of your listeners or you really like dystopian fiction,
Speaker 5: I include The Children of Men by P. D.
Speaker 3: James.
Speaker 5: This one novel from I think nineteen ninety two, just
Speaker 5: a superb look at what happens when humans stop having
Speaker 5: children and in a depopulating world. How that changes what
Speaker 5: we want from government, how much control we're willing to
Speaker 5: seed to the government in exchange for security and comfort
Speaker 5: when there's no longer really any hope for a future,
Speaker 5: any ambition beyond our own lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we're heading into that direction.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, we'll try.
Speaker 1: To be optimistic. Yeah, and does here with your best
Speaker 1: tip for my listeners on how they can improve their
Speaker 1: lives read.
Speaker 3: I mean you saw this coming, right, Yeah?
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 2: I think that that is the great a great, great answer.
Speaker 5: Don't don't feel guilty about reading great fictions. As you said,
Speaker 5: it makes you feel good, and I suspect that the
Speaker 5: one reason people distrust it.
Speaker 1: But like, I don't want to feel good, I have
Speaker 1: to exactly, No, it's got to be I need to eat,
Speaker 1: be eating my broccoli.
Speaker 5: Know that great fiction is a source of wisdom, classic
Speaker 5: fiction novels that people have been talking about for centuries.
Speaker 5: That's that's the case for a reason. That doesn't mean
Speaker 5: you'll like every classic that's certainly not the case. But
Speaker 5: but chances are you will find not just beautiful writing,
Speaker 5: but real truths about the human can date, condition, and
Speaker 5: human nature. And that is that is a kind of knowledge.
Speaker 5: It's not a fact necessarily, but it is still a
Speaker 5: type of knowing and wisdom.
Speaker 2: I love it. Thank you so much, Christopher Scalia.
Speaker 1: Check out his book Thirteen Novels Conservatives will love but
Speaker 1: probably haven't read.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Christy.
Speaker 3: Thank you Carol. It's been a pleasure.