Henry Oliver

1 week ago | commonreader.co.uk | Henry Oliver |Matthew Yglesias |Patrick Collison |Patrick et John Collison |Hollis Robbins

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. I wanted to speak to (who writes ) because of his recent posts about Middlemarch and his new habit of reading classic novels. After seeing ’s tweet about reading great fiction, Yglesias decided to spend less time scrolling the internet and more time reading the great works of the nineteenth century. He now spends several hours a day reading—and several hours a day not watching Netflix.

2 months ago | schooloftheunconformed.substack.com | Charles Dickens |Ruth Gaskovski |Henry Oliver |Paul Kingsnorth

I am saying then, that literacy - the mastery of language and the knowledge of books - is not an ornament, but a necessity. It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgement of ourselves and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow.

Dec 3, 2024 | miltonkeynes.co.uk | Henry Oliver

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Nov 19, 2024 | libertiesjournal.com | Henry Oliver

When the anti-republican Action Française group wanted to incite a revolution against democracy in Paris in 1934, they chose to perform a “freely” translated version of Coriolanus, Shakespeare’s 1608 play about a tragic Roman tyrant. Coriolanus has plenty of useful material for the demotically agitating translator. Audience riots ensued. Both the socialists and the fascists were appalled by the play’s apparent favor of conservatism. Shakespeare, of course, was not so crude.

Nov 19, 2024 | commonreader.co.uk | Henry Oliver

If you’re interested in this, you might be interested in the book I am working on. In his recent interview with Dwarkesh, Gwern said this,You could definitely spend the rest of your life reading fiction and not benefit whatsoever from it other than having memorized a lot of trivia about things that people made up. I tend to be pretty cynical about the benefits of fiction. Most fiction is not written to make you better in any way. It's written just to entertain you, or to exist and to fill up time.