Stop being a philistine and read some good books

When I asked

Henry Oliver

if I could be the next Shakespeare, he said "maybe." Maybe! Not no!

So…I’m basically Shakespeare.

Hark!

Classic Shakespeare stuff right there.

Honestly, that’s all I remember from the convo but I fed the transcript into AI and it turned out we talked about a lot of other stuff too:

• the difference between taste and preference (they're not the same thing, ya bozos)

• Why Henry thinks most people avoid reading classics

• Shakespeare's ability to mix high art with people peeing on stage

• How to "enter the dream of the poem" instead of just studying it

• Samuel Johnson: apparently the most important person in English literature after Shakespeare

• Henry’s reading list for philistines (below)

• "We Had FIVE DECADES of Hollywood and You Think Mad Men Is the Golden Age?"

If you’ve always wanted to read the classics but felt like you were too dumb or would get bored too easily, this convo is for you. My fav part besides realizing I was Shakespeare was listening to Henry wax poetic about all these things he loves. There’s really nothing better.

Henry's Reading List for Philistines:

• For first-time Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice ("It's delightful. It's not difficult.")

• For a taste of Tolstoy without the length: The Death of Ivan Ilyich (short but "a little miserable")

• For surprisingly relevant 19th century lit: Fathers and Sons by Turgenev (featuring the nihilistic character Bazarov)

• George Eliot's masterpiece: Middlemarch ("some people think is the best novel written in English" and is "basically a NIMBY novel" according to

  Matt Yglesias
  )

• Recent standouts: Catherine Lacey's Biography of X and The Mobius Strip; Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai ("she's an actual genius")

• For fantasy fans: Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle and the Chrestomanci series

• A 90s gem: Norman Rush's Mating (1991)

• Short and weird: Susanna Clarke's Piranesi