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