In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda explore Jon Fosse’s Trilogy, the work of a Norwegian novelist and playwright whose spare, musical prose gives voice to experiences that resist ordinary explanation. Focusing primarily on “Wakefulness,” they follow the young lovers Asle and Alida as they wander through cold and rain searching for shelter before the birth of their child, while memories of music, love, rejection, and the past flow through the present. Along the way, Tim and Emily consider Fosse’s use of repetition and stream of consciousness, the story’s echoes of the Nativity, the self-giving character of young love, and the way his writing holds together harsh physical realities with a sense of mystery and transcendence.

Episode Outline

• Jon Fosse’s international reputation as a novelist and playwright and his 2023 Nobel Prize
• Fosse’s use of Nynorsk and the cultural and linguistic world of western Norway
• Trilogy and its three parts: “Wakefulness,” “Olav’s Dreams,” and “Weariness”
• Asle and Alida as young, unmarried lovers searching for shelter before the birth of their child
• Biblical and Nativity echoes in the couple’s wandering, rejection, and need for a home
• Fosse’s fluid treatment of memory, present experience, dreams, and indeterminate time
• Music as the language through which Asle and Alida first recognize their love
• Self-giving love and the couple’s devotion to the good of one another
• The arrival of their son Sigvald and the temporary resolution at the end of “Wakefulness”
• Repetition, limited punctuation, and the musical rhythm of Fosse’s prose
• The fiddle as a symbol linking love, music, family, and generations across the trilogy
• Fosse’s religious background, Catholic conversion, and combination of bleak reality with transcendence

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Giving Voice to the Unsayable: Fosse’s prose attempts to express experiences that ordinary analytical language cannot fully capture. Music, love, memory, grief, and religious mystery are communicated through rhythm, repetition, and image rather than extensive explanation.
• Love as Self-Gift: Asle and Alida’s relationship is presented as more than youthful attraction. Each recognizes love through an increasing concern for the other, and Asle explicitly understands his love through the fact that he thinks more about Alida than about himself.
• Time, Memory, and Myth: Fosse allows present action, memory, and interior experience to move into one another without clear boundaries. The uncertain historical setting also gives the couple’s story a mythic quality, allowing their search for shelter to resonate with the story of the Holy Family without becoming a simple allegory.
• Prose as Music: Repetition functions like a musical refrain, creating a continuous forward movement that Emily compares to the Baroque principle of Fortspinnung, or “spinning forth.” The effect is cumulative rather than episodic, with resolution arriving only after sustained rhythmic movement.
• The Physical and the Transcendent: Fosse keeps his characters rooted in hunger, cold, exhaustion, pregnancy, shelter, and bodily need while simultaneously opening those experiences toward love, beauty, religious symbolism, and transcendence.

Questions & Discussion

• Why does Fosse leave the time period of “Wakefulness” so difficult to determine?
  Consider how the absence of precise historical markers changes the story from a realistic account of one young couple into something more universal or mythic.
• What does music allow Asle and Alida to understand about one another?
  Discuss why Fosse associates their discovery of love with the experience of hearing and creating music rather than with explanation or conversation.
• How does Fosse’s repetition affect the experience of reading the story?
  Consider Emily’s comparison to musical refrains and Fortspinnung. Does repetition slow the story down, propel it forward, or accomplish both at once?
• In what sense does the story resemble the Nativity without functioning as a direct retelling?
  Reflect on the young couple, the imminent birth, their exclusion from respectable society, and their inability to find shelter.
• What makes Asle and Alida’s love different from simple romantic desire?
  Consider the episode’s emphasis on self-offering, responsibility, suffering, and each character’s concern for the good of the other.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• Trilogy by Jon Fosse
• “Nobel Lecture” by Jon Fosse, Nobel Prize, 2023 Nobel Lecture by Jon Fosse
• The Bible, the Nativity narrative, Luke 2:1-21 
• Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach
• Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen
• My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
• Devotchka
• Substack 
• Instagram
• Visit TrueNorth.fm

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda enter the teen years with Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?,” a terrifying story in which almost nothing violent happens on the page. They follow fifteen-year-old Connie from a restless family life and flirtation at a drive-in to a long, increasingly threatening conversation with Arnold Friend at her screen door. Along the way, they discuss Bob Dylan’s influence on the story, Oates’s use of ordinary suburban details to create dread, the dynamics of grooming and seduction, and the ways Connie’s hunger for attention leaves her vulnerable to someone who seems to know far more about her than he should.

Episode Outline

• Adolescence as a life stage caught between childhood and adulthood
• Bob Dylan’s influence on the story and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
• How Oates creates terror through an ordinary suburban setting rather than overt violence
• Connie’s family life, restlessness, appearance, and desire for attention
• The drive-in encounter with Arnold Friend and his first unsettling promise
• Arnold’s arrival while Connie is home alone and the screen door as the story’s boundary
• Arnold’s escalating manipulation, intimate knowledge, and insistence that Connie will leave with him
• The uncanny appearance, movements, slang, and shifting voices of Arnold Friend and Ellie
• The story as a realistic account of sexual predation and grooming
• Cultural expectations, feminine vulnerability, and comparison with “Hills Like White Elephants”
• Clues that Arnold Friend may represent something more than an ordinary human predator
• Comparisons with Flannery O’Connor and closing questions about evil, family, and modern vulnerability

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Adolescence Between Worlds: Connie is neither fully a child nor fully an adult, and Oates makes that instability central to both her longing for independence and her vulnerability to danger.
• The Terror of the Ordinary: The story needs no explicit violence to become frightening; a driveway, a screen door, a family barbecue, and an ordinary summer afternoon become the setting for escalating dread.
• Grooming Through Attention and Certainty: Arnold first approaches Connie in the language of flirtation and romance, then steadily replaces invitation with inevitability, using knowledge, confidence, and implied threats to narrow her sense of choice.
• Desire and Vulnerability: Connie has learned to seek affirmation through appearance and male attention, and Arnold exploits desires that are real even when the cultural forces surrounding them are debated.
• Human or Supernatural Evil: Arnold can be read as a terrifyingly ordinary predator, but his strange appearance, uncanny knowledge, incantatory speech, and refusal to cross the threshold also leave open a more supernatural interpretation.

Questions & Discussion

• Why is the story so frightening when almost nothing violent happens on the page?
  Consider how Oates uses ordinary details, implied threat, repetition, and the slow loss of Connie’s control to create fear.
• How does Connie’s position between childhood and adulthood make her vulnerable?
  Reflect on her desire to be seen as mature, her dependence on attention, and the moments when she still reacts like a child.
• Is Arnold Friend best understood as an ordinary predator or as something supernatural?
  Examine his uncanny knowledge, strange physical details, shifting voice, incantatory language, and reluctance to enter the house.
• How much responsibility does Connie’s family bear for what happens?
  Discuss the emotional distance of her father, the conflict with her mother, and whether greater parental attention could have protected Connie from Arnold’s manipulation.
• Does the story feel more frightening or instructive in 1966 or today?
  Consider how contemporary forms of impersonation, digital intimacy, and AI-mediated relationships might change the way a modern teenager reads Arnold Friend.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?': Joyce Carol Oates
• “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” by Bob Dylan
• “Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan
• “Man in the Long Black Coat” by Bob Dylan
• Beat poetry and the Beat Generation edited by Ann Charters
• “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor
• “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
• The Guardian interview on an AI-chatbot relationship and financial ruin
• My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
• Devotchka
• Substack 
• Instagram

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda close their exploration of childhood with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Part children’s story, part fairy tale, and part philosophical meditation, the book asks readers to recover a childlike capacity for wonder without confusing innocence with naïveté. From the Little Prince’s encounters with kings, businessmen, lamplighters, and geographers to his friendship with the fox and devotion to his rose, Tim and Emily explore how relationships, rituals, responsibility, and attention reveal what matters most.

Episode Outline

• The Little Prince as a book equally capable of delighting children and adults
• Saint-Exupéry’s illustrations and the contrast between childhood imagination and adult seriousness
• Saint-Exupéry’s experiences as a pilot and the Sahara Desert setting
• The Little Prince’s planet, his rose, the baobab trees, and his love of sunsets
• Encounters with the king, vain man, drunkard, businessman, lamplighter, and geographer
• Ritual, repetition, and the ability to delight in ordinary things
• The fox, “taming,” and the bonds created through love and responsibility
• The discovery that what is essential cannot simply be seen
• Innocence without naïveté and the child’s capacity for wonder
• The Little Prince as a starting point for philosophical reflection

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Childhood and Wonder: The Little Prince sees the world without the layers of seriousness that prevent adults from recognizing its mystery and delight.
• Ritual and Repetition: Repeated actions can deepen rather than diminish experience, allowing ordinary things to become meaningful.
• Love Creates Responsibility: The Little Prince discovers that his rose matters because he has cared for her; relationship transforms something ordinary into something unique.
• The Invisible and Essential: The fox’s wisdom points beyond a purely material understanding of reality toward truths perceived through relationship, affection, and the heart.
• Innocence Without Naïveté: Saint-Exupéry captures childhood as a way of seeing reality clearly rather than simply knowing less than adults.

Questions & Discussion

• What do children see that adults often fail to notice?
  Consider how the opening drawings and the Little Prince’s questions expose the limitations of an overly “serious” adult perspective.
• How can repetition deepen our experience of ordinary life?
  Reflect on the books repeated sunsets and the episode’s discussion of ritual as a way of inhabiting time more fully.
• Why does caring for the rose make her unique to the Little Prince?
  Discuss how responsibility, attention, and sacrifice create bonds that cannot be explained simply by preference or usefulness.
• What does the fox mean when he teaches that what is essential is invisible to the eyes?
  Consider how friendship, love, and meaning challenge a purely material or measurable understanding of reality.
• Can The Little Prince function as a work of philosophy as well as a children’s book?
  Explore how its characters and episodes invite philosophical reflection without reducing the story to an argument or lesson.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” by William Wordsworth
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
• Fear and Trembling/Repetition by Søren Kierkegaard
• The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner
• My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
• Devotchka
• Substack 
• Instagram

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Emily Maeda and Tim McIntosh begin their exploration of adolescence with James Joyce’s “Araby”, a story of youthful longing set against the drab, paralyzed world of Dublin. Tim and Emily discuss the unnamed boy’s intense attraction to Mangan’s sister, the religious and chivalric language through which he understands his desire, and the painful disillusionment that awaits him at the bazaar. The conversation also considers Joyce’s development from the realism of Dubliners to the experimental modernism of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, his fascination with ordinary experience, and the lasting influence of Catholic imagery, ritual, and symbolism on his writing.

Episode Outline

• Adolescence as the next stage in the podcast’s exploration of the human life cycle
• James Joyce’s reputation for difficult modernist writing and the more accessible realism of Dubliners
• The difficult publication history of Dubliners and Ezra Pound’s support of Joyce
• Joyce’s portrayal of Dublin as a drab city marked by spiritual and social paralysis
• The unnamed boy’s intense attraction to Mangan’s sister and the experience of adolescent longing
• Religious, liturgical, and chivalric imagery surrounding the boy’s idealized love
• The journey to the Araby bazaar as a romantic quest that ends in disappointment and disillusionment
• Exotic Eastern imagery and the contrast between imagined enchantment and tawdry modern reality
• Paralysis as a recurring theme across Dubliners, including “The Sisters” and “Eveline”
• Joyce’s literary progression from Dubliners to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake
• Stream of consciousness, Catholic symbolism, and Joyce’s effort to elevate ordinary embodied experience
• Joyce’s conflicted relationship with Irish Catholicism

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Adolescence as Idealization and Awakening: The boy’s attraction to Mangan’s sister is more than a casual crush. 
• Desire in a Paralyzed World: The vitality of the boy’s longing stands in sharp contrast to the stagnant Dublin around him. 
• The Collapse of Romantic Enchantment: The bazaar initially seems to promise exotic beauty and an opportunity for heroic devotion, but the boy encounters closing stalls, indifferent adults, and cheap merchandise. 
• Modernism and the Sacred Ordinary: Joyce’s later experimental style can be understood not simply as obscurity for its own sake but as an effort to represent consciousness and ordinary embodied experience more completely. 
• Joyce’s Inescapably Catholic Imagination: Although Joyce criticizes Irish Catholicism, his fiction remains saturated with Catholic symbols, ritual, sacramental language, and patterns of thought.

Questions & Discussion

• Is “infatuation” the right word for the boy’s feelings toward Mangan’s sister?
  Consider whether his feelings are merely romantic attraction or whether the religious, chivalric, and devotional language of the story transforms them into something more significant.
• What exactly does the boy discover at the end of “Araby”?
  Discuss whether his disappointment is primarily about Mangan’s sister, the bazaar, his own vanity, the adult world, or the collapse of his adolescent imagination.
• What does the exotic imagery surrounding “Araby” contribute to the story?
  Consider why the imagined East seems capable of bringing color and enchantment into Joyce’s lifeless Dublin and why that promise ultimately fails.
• Does Joyce’s experimental modernism make ordinary experience more meaningful or merely more difficult to read?
  Compare the accessible realism of “Araby” with the stream of consciousness techniques discussed in connection with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• “Araby” by James Joyce Audible edition
• “Araby” by James Joyce
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• “The Dead” by James Joyce
• “The Sisters” by James Joyce
• “Eveline” by James Joyce
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
• Devotchka
• Substack 
• Instagram

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Emily Maeda and Tim McIntosh explore Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, a psychologically complex ghost story that challenges idealized visions of childhood innocence. They discuss James’s elaborate prose, the governess’s uncertain perceptions, the sinister influence surrounding Miles and Flora, and the story’s unresolved tension between supernatural evil and psychological instability. The conversation also considers how impressionable children can be shaped by the adults and forces around them.

Episode Outline

• Henry James’s life between America and Europe
• James’s elaborate prose and place between realism and modernism
• The influence of psychology and uncertain perception on his fiction
• The Christmas Eve frame story and the governess’s manuscript
• The governess’s arrival at Bly and her idealized view of Miles and Flora
• Peter Quint, Miss Jessel, and the possibility of supernatural corruption
• Whether the governess is a reliable narrator
• The children’s secrecy, intelligence, and manipulation
• The ambiguous deaths and unresolved meaning of the ending
• Parallels with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
• Schubert’s “Erlkönig” as a musical companion
• Childhood innocence, impressionability, and the influence of evil

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Childhood in a Sinister Key: James offers a darker counterpoint to Wordsworth’s ideal of childhood innocence, portraying children as vulnerable, secretive, and capable of manipulation.
• Unreliable Perception: Because the story reaches readers through the governess’s account, every supernatural event remains entangled with her fears, desires, and interpretations.
• The Power of Negative Influence: Miles and Flora suggest how childhood gifts and innocence can be distorted by corrupting adults or supernatural forces.
• Ambiguity as Horror: James creates dread by withholding certainty; readers cannot fully determine whether the ghosts are objectively real or products of the governess’s mind.
• Gothic Inheritance: The isolated country house, hidden history, troubled governess, and mysterious figures connect the novella closely to Jane Eyre and the Gothic tradition.

Questions & Discussion

• Is the governess a reliable narrator?
  Consider how her attraction to the children’s guardian, her isolation, and her increasingly intense interpretations shape the story she tells.
• Are Peter Quint and Miss Jessel real ghosts?
  Discuss which details support a supernatural reading and which suggest that the apparitions may arise from the governess’s imagination.
• How does the story complicate idealized views of childhood?
  Reflect on Miles and Flora as innocent, impressionable, calculating, or some combination of all three.
• Why is ambiguity so effective in a ghost story?
  Consider whether greater certainty would make the story more frightening or less psychologically unsettling.
• How closely does The Turn of the Screw resemble Jane Eyre?
  Compare the governess narrators, isolated estates, hidden histories, Gothic atmosphere, and threatening figures associated with the house.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” by William Wordsworth
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• The Bostonians by Henry James
• Daisy Miller by Henry James
• The Golden Bowl by Henry James
• A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
• Howards End by E. M. Forster
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
• The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
• The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• “Erlkönig” by Franz Schubert
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot 
• The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
• Carrie by Stephen King
• My Name is Søren Kierkegaard by Tim McIntosh
• Devotchka
• Substack 
• Instagram
• Visit TrueNorth.fm

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Emily Maeda and Tim McIntosh explore Hans Christian Andersen’s life and two of his best-known stories: “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “The Ugly Duckling.” They consider how fairy tales preserve patterns of reality, form the moral imagination, and speak as powerfully to adults as to children. 

Episode Outline

• Hans Christian Andersen’s impoverished childhood and literary rise
• Andersen’s place between oral tradition and modern literary culture
• Jonathan Pageau’s account of how fairy tales endure
• Why fairy tales resist simple moral lessons
• “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and the pressure to conform
• Childhood honesty and the courage to name reality
• “The Ugly Duckling,” suffering, longing, and belonging
• Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt as a musical companion
• Tolkien’s definition of fairy stories
• Whether “The Ugly Duckling” is truly a fairy tale

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Stories Preserved by Community: Traditional tales survive because they command attention, remain memorable, and are passed between generations.
• Truth Without Moralizing: Fairy tales reveal patterns of reality without reducing themselves to obvious lessons.
• The Honesty of Childhood: The child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” sees clearly because he is not controlled by social expectations.
• Longing and Belonging: “The Ugly Duckling” portrays the universal desire to discover one’s identity and find a community where one belongs.
• Literary and Traditional Fairy Tales: Andersen combines inherited folklore with original stories, raising questions about what properly constitutes a fairy tale.

Questions & Discussion

• Why do fairy tales remain meaningful across generations?
  Discuss how oral transmission, repetition, and memorable patterns preserve stories over time.
• Why does everyone pretend to see the emperor’s clothes?
  Consider how fear, vanity, and social pressure can cause entire communities to deny reality.
• What enables the child to speak truthfully?
  Reflect on the relationship between childhood innocence and freedom from concern about status.
• Why is “The Ugly Duckling” so emotionally powerful?
  Discuss how rejection, longing, identity, and belonging shape the duckling’s journey.
• Is “The Ugly Duckling” truly a fairy tale?
  Compare Tolkien’s “perilous realm” with Jonathan Pageau’s emphasis on attention, memory, transmission, and patterns of reality.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Andersen
• “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen
• “Thumbelina” by Hans Christian Andersen
• Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales
• “Beauty and the Beast” variations 
• “Jack and the Beanstalk” variations 
• “On Fairy-Stories” by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen
• Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg
• “Snow White” variations
• “Cinderella” variations 
• Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi and Ann Lawson Lucas
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• The Hans Christian Andersen Centre website
• The Symbolic World with Jonathan Pageau 
• My Name is Søren Kierkegaard
• Devotchka

Description

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Emily Maeda and Tim McIntosh discuss William Faulkner's celebrated short story "Barn Burning." Along the way they explore Faulkner's life, the emergence of stream of consciousness narration, and why “Barn Burning” remains one of the greatest American short stories ever written. The hosts examine the heartbreaking moral dilemma facing young Colonel Sartoris Snopes as he struggles to reconcile loyalty to his father with loyalty to truth, while reflecting on Faulkner's enduring influence on American literature. 

Episode Outline

• Introducing William Faulkner and his place in American literature
• Faulkner's years in Hollywood and remarkable writing habits
• The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Faulkner's Nobel Prize
• What stream of consciousness writing is—and why it changed literature
• Comparing Faulkner with James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Cormac McCarthy
• Summary of “Barn Burning”
• Abner Snopes and one of literature's worst fathers
• Colonel Sartoris Snopes' moral dilemma between family loyalty and truth
• Foreshadowing, symbolism, and Faulkner's narrative technique
• Why “Barn Burning” remains one of America's greatest short stories
• Closing discussion: Faulkner's place among Hemingway, O'Connor, and Fitzgerald

Key Topics & Takeaways

• The Human Heart in Conflict with Itself: Faulkner believed literature should reveal the deepest moral conflicts within the human soul, a principle perfectly embodied in young Sarty's struggle between family loyalty and justice. 
• Stream of Consciousness as Literary Innovation: Emily and Tim explain how Faulkner adapted William James's psychological concept into a revolutionary narrative style that mirrors the movement of human thought rather than orderly narration. 
• Childhood's First Moral Crisis: “Barn Burning” portrays the painful moment when a child begins to recognize that those he loves are morally flawed and must decide whether loyalty can survive truth.
• Economy Within Complexity: Although Faulkner's prose appears sprawling and difficult, every image and detail contributes to an extraordinarily precise structure that rewards careful rereading.

Questions & Discussion

• Why is Sarty's decision so emotionally difficult?
  Discuss how children experience divided loyalties when family love conflicts with moral truth.
• How does stream of consciousness narration change the reading experience?
  Consider whether Faulkner's style helps readers inhabit a character's mind more authentically than conventional narration.
• What makes Abner Snopes such a memorable literary villain?
  Reflect on how Faulkner develops Abner through action and implication rather than lengthy explanation.
• Why do difficult works often become more rewarding over time?
  Discuss how rereading “Barn Burning” or The Sound and the Fury reveals patterns, symbols, and emotional depth that may be missed initially.
• Is William Faulkner America's greatest novelist?
  Compare Faulkner with writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, or Cormac McCarthy, considering literary influence, artistic innovation, and enduring significance.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner
• The Hamlet by William Faulkner
• The Portable Faulkner, edited by Malcolm Cowley
• Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech by William Faulkner
• The Principles of Psychology by William James
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Messiah by George Frideric Handel
• The Christopher Perrin Show
• Devotchka

Description

In this episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Emily Maeda and Tim McIntosh begin their season on the stages of life with William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." They explore the Romantic movement's response to the Enlightenment, Wordsworth's vision of childhood as a uniquely perceptive stage of life, and the poem's claim that children possess an awareness of transcendent realities adults gradually lose. Along the way, they discuss poetic form, the influence of Neoplatonism, and whether nature can restore our vision of the eternal.

Episode Outline

• Opening quotation from Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
• Introducing the Romantic poets and their response to the Enlightenment
• Why William Wordsworth stands apart from Byron, Shelley, and Keats
• Nature, imagination, and the Romantic vision of reality
• Understanding the ode as a poetic form
• Close reading of the poem's opening stanzas and the "problem" of lost glory
• Childhood as humanity's closest glimpse of eternity
• The poem's Neoplatonic vision of memory, nature, and immortality
• The enduring beauty—and philosophical tension—of Wordsworth's vision
• Reflections on Gustav Klimt's Baby and George MacDonald's "Baby"

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Romanticism as a Response to the Enlightenment: Wordsworth and the Romantic poets challenged the Enlightenment's emphasis on reason, science, and mechanism by recovering imagination, beauty, emotion, and nature as ways of knowing reality.
• Childhood as a Window into the Eternal: Wordsworth argues that children possess an intuitive awareness of transcendent realities that gradually fades as adulthood, habit, and worldly concerns reshape human perception.
• Nature as a Sign Rather Than an End: Nature is not itself divine but serves as a reminder of humanity's deeper origin and ultimate destiny, awakening "intimations of immortality."
• The Beauty—and Limits—of Wordsworth's Vision: The hosts admire the poem's profound beauty while recognizing its strong Neoplatonic influence.
• Poetry Shapes Our Imagination: Wordsworth's poem has profoundly influenced modern understandings of childhood, innocence, and human development, demonstrating literature's lasting cultural power.

Questions & Discussion

• How should literature be organized around the stages of life? Discuss whether childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age provide a helpful framework for reading the classics, or whether another organizing principle might be more illuminating.
• Why does Wordsworth believe childhood possesses a clearer vision of reality than adulthood? Consider whether children genuinely perceive the world differently or whether adulthood simply changes what we notice and value.
• How did the Romantic poets challenge Enlightenment thinking? Discuss whether imagination, beauty, and emotion should complement scientific reason or serve as an alternative to it.
• What role does nature play in Wordsworth's poem? Reflect on whether experiences in nature can awaken spiritual awareness, memory, or wonder in ways modern life often cannot.
• How should readers respond to the poem's Neoplatonic ideas? Consider whether appreciating the poem's beauty requires accepting its philosophical assumptions about the soul's existence before birth.
• Why has this poem remained influential for more than two centuries? Discuss how Wordsworth's understanding of childhood continues to shape modern ideas about innocence, education, and human flourishing.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" by William Wordsworth
• Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• As You Like It (including the "Seven Ages of Man" speech) by William Shakespeare
• Baby by Gustav Klimt
• "Baby" by George MacDonald
• Devotchka

Description

In this opening episode of Season 3, Emily Maeda and Tim McIntosh unveil a last-minute change of plans, shifting from a season on politics to an exploration of literature centered on the stages of human life. Together they build a reading list spanning childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, debating classic short stories, novellas, poems, and plays that illuminate each season of life. Along the way they discuss the unique strengths of the short story as a literary form, the challenges of selecting representative works, and why some of the greatest classics continue to reward rereading.

Episode Outline

• Why the season shifted from politics to life
• A new format: shorter classics, poems, plays, and novellas
• Building the Childhood reading list
• Choosing stories for Adolescence and Youth
• Debating literature about Marriage, Parenthood, and Adulthood
• Selecting works on Aging, Death, and the End of Life
• The value of rereading great short stories
• Reflections on the short story as a distinctly powerful literary form
• Preview of the first episode: Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality

Key Topics & Takeaways

• A Season Organized Around the Stages of Life: Rather than studying a single theme, the hosts organize Season 3 chronologically around childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age.
• The Short Story as a Great Literary Form: Poems, short stories, novellas, and plays allow readers to encounter great literature without the commitment required by massive novels while still offering extraordinary depth.
• Great Literature Rewards Debate: Much of the episode consists of friendly disagreement as Emily and Tim defend favorite authors, stories, and literary traditions while refining the final reading list.
• Many Stories Defy Simple Categories: Some works naturally belong to more than one stage of life, illustrating how the best literature speaks across multiple seasons of human experience.
• Reading Broadly Across Traditions: The final selections intentionally include classical, Russian, American, British, Scandinavian, and modern writers to represent the richness of the Western literary tradition.

Questions & Discussion

• How should literature be organized around the stages of life? Discuss whether childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age provide a helpful framework for reading the classics, or whether another organizing principle might be more illuminating.
• What makes the short story uniquely powerful? Reflect on how brevity, concentrated storytelling, and memorable endings allow short stories to achieve effects that longer novels often cannot.
• Should literary anthologies prioritize famous works or overlooked masterpieces? Consider the hosts' debates over well-known classics versus lesser-known stories deserving wider attention.
• Why do some stories become even richer on a second reading? Discuss examples where knowing the ending actually deepens appreciation rather than diminishing suspense.
• Which works would you nominate for each stage of life? Compare your own literary canon with the hosts' selections and identify titles you would add or replace.

Suggested Reading

Childhood 

• ”Ode: Intimations of Immortality” by William Wordsworth
• “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner
• The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen
• The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• “The Happy Prince” by Oscar Wilde
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• The Pupil by Henry James

Adolescence & Youth

• “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot
• As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden
• “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
• “The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway
• “Araby” by James Joyce
• “A & P: Lust in the Aisle” by John Updike
• “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
• “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O'Connor
• The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
• Trilogy by Jon Fosse
• “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

Adulthood

• “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol
• “Sonny's Blues” by James Baldwin
• “A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver
• “Babette's Feast” by Karen Blixen and Isak Dinesen
• “A Father's Story” by Andre Dubus
• Fidelity by Wendell Berry   https://amzn.to/4wriZpN
• “Pray Without Ceasing” by Wendell Berry   https://amzn.to/4wriZpN
• A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
• Incident at Krechetovka Station by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Old Age & Death

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
• “The Dead” by James Joyce
• Tenth of December by George Saunders
• “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro
• Wit by Margaret Edson
• Fidelity by Wendell Berry   https://amzn.to/4wriZpN
• “The Swimmer” by John Cheever

Description

In this special year-end episode of Hot Takes on the Classics, Tim McIntosh and Emily Maeda share their five favorite reads of 2025. Moving from plays and poetry to memoir, philosophy, theology, neuroscience, and historical fiction, they reflect on the books that most shaped their thinking this year. Along the way, they discuss stage design and historical drama, political memoir, levitating saints and historiography, divided brain theory, mystical theology, and poetic devotion. They also ask an intriguing question: Which of these contemporary works might endure as future classics? The episode closes with a preview of next season’s theme—short narratives exploring the milestones of human life.

Episode Outline

• Introduction to the “Top Five Reads of 2025” format
• Discussion of the “Top Five Reads of 2025”
• Preview of next season: short stories and short narratives across the arc of life

Key Topics & Takeaways

• Literature and Performance Across Time: The Lehman Trilogy demonstrates how stagecraft and direction can elevate historical narrative into sweeping theatrical art, while Herbert’s The Temple shows how poetry functions as an architectural whole rather than isolated lyrics.
• Autobiography vs. Memoir: Dorothy Day’s A Long Loneliness offers a straightforward recounting of lived experience, in contrast to more literary memoirs like Augustine’s Confessions. The distinction between recounting and artistic shaping becomes part of the interpretive conversation.
• Mysticism and the Limits of Modern Materialism: Carlos Eire’s They Flew challenges historians to take seriously supernatural claims recorded in early modern sources, raising questions about empiricism, testimony, and belief.
• The Divided Brain and Cultural Imbalance: Ian McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things argue that Western culture overprivileges left-hemisphere abstraction at the expense of right-hemisphere wholeness, intuition, and poetic knowledge.
• Devotion and Incarnation: Simone Weil’s Waiting on God and George Herbert’s The Temple exemplify deeply incarnational spiritual writing—faith expressed through attention, humility, and beauty.
• The Question of the “Future Classic”: Throughout the episode, the hosts consider which of their contemporary selections might endure. While older works like Kierkegaard and Herbert are already canonical, authors like Franzen, Fosse, and McGilchrist raise the question of long-term literary legacy.

Questions & Discussion

• What makes a book feel “classic” rather than merely contemporary?
  Consider whether clarity of moral vision, stylistic excellence, cultural influence, or thematic universality determines lasting status.
• How does rereading change a book’s power?
  Reflect on whether returning to a familiar text (like The Temple) reveals layers missed in earlier readings.
• Is intuition a legitimate form of knowledge?
  Drawing from McGilchrist’s work, consider how intuition functions in your own decision-making and whether it can be trusted.
• Can contemporary fiction capture generational change convincingly?
  Discuss whether multi-generational novels like Crossroads can successfully portray cultural shifts across decades.
• Which of these books do you think will still be read 100 years from now?
  Identify one title from this episode and defend its potential longevity.

Suggested Reading & Resources

• Devotchka
• The Lehman Trilogy by Stefano Massini
• Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
• The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard
• Trilogy by Jon Fosse
• Waiting for God by Simone Weil
• The Temple by George Herbert
• The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
• They Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire
• The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGilchrist
• The Matter with Things by Ian McGilchrist
• The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie 
• The League of the Lexicon
• Classical Academic Press