This week on The Literary Life, we bring you another episode in our “Best of” series with a throwback to one of our 2021 Summer of the Short Story shows. In this episode, Angelina, Cindy, and Thomas talk about E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops.” If you are interested in more E. M. Forster chat, you can go listen to our hosts discuss “The Celestial Omnibus” in Episode 17. Angelina points out how this story made her think of Dante. Thomas and Cindy share their personal reactions to reading “The Machine Stops.” They marvel at how prescient Forster was to imagine a world that comes so close to our current reality. They also discuss how to stay human in an increasingly de-humanizing world.

Past events mentioned in this episode replay:

Back to School 2021 Conference: Awakening

Cindy’s new edition of Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love

Cindy’s Charlotte Mason podcast The New Mason Jar

Commonplace Quotes:

Imagination, in its earthbound quest,

Seeks in the infinite its finite rest.

Walter de la Mare (from “Books”)

from “The Hollow Men”

by T. S. Eliot

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

Book List:

Two Stories and a Memory by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Howards End by E. M. Forster

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison

1984 by George Orwell

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You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

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