Hello and welcome back to hardcore literature.

How are you doing today? I hope you're doing well.

I come to you on a crisp autumn morning, the smell of the previous evening's bonfires

still lingering in the air, and though it has been cold and dark and bleak the last few weeks with a bit of rural English rain thrown in there too.

This morning we have a ray of golden sunshine, illuminating the grass and the trees and flowers outside.

It's beautiful. And today, we're talking about how the great books saved my life indeed

how the great books can save yours perhaps a rather extravagant title but without

deep reading great literature I'm not quite sure where I would be so today

we'll start by clarifying what we mean by save a life, what we mean

by the great books, and then we'll launch into a conversation about sympathy, suffering, and

empathy, the different aesthetic traditions, memetic, pragmatic, expressive, fluid versus

crystallized intelligence, reading symbolism,

and the life-given value of Shakespeare, Emerson, Hugo, Austin, Dostoevsky, Hardy, Proust, and many

more. And before we jump into the conversation, I want to say a huge thank you for you. You who are listening to the show

and reading along, everybody who has sent heartfelt messages to me, you have inspired this show.

And all the wonderful lovers of literature in the Hardcore Literature Book Club at patreon.com forward slash

hardcore literature. I am deeply grateful to have you here with me today. Now, let's dive in.

Why are we talking about this today? We're talking about this because the great books are one

avenue to finding meaning, to sustaining meaning, to draw

nourishment from these works when you're at your most low. What these books can do for you

is incredible and I know because they have saved me over and over again and what do we mean

when we say save a life if we're speaking literally we mean actually it saves you from ending

...