James Marriott and the Death of Civilization

Obviously, this is mostly about the literacy crisis, whether we understand it properly, whether it is happening in Spain, whether the PISA data supports James’ thesis, and so on. I began by asking James Marriott how things might work out for the best…

OLIVER: So the book is about the reading crisis and the risk it poses to liberal democracy. I want you to tell me, what is the most likely optimistic outcome? You might think that the odds of everything going well are very low, but if we do scrape through, what will it look like?

MARRIOTT: That’s such a good question, and nobody has ever asked me that question before. Seeking optimism from me is a unique idea. I think the most likely optimistic outcome, as I think so often in history, is stagnation and more of the same, and things don’t change.

We also talked about AI as a transmission of liberal democracy, a means of distributing James’ own work, and things like that. At the end, we had some fun about literary critics and Shakespeare which is much more civilized that arguing about the literacy crisis.

MARRIOTT: Yes, I’m keen to read The Winter’s Tale, and I’ve got it, actually. It came in my little set.

OLIVER: I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, and then you can read Northrop Frye’s book about it.

MARRIOTT: Yes.

OLIVER: Which would be James Marriott–coded.

MARRIOTT: Yes, good. I am very biased towards things that are James Marriott–coded.

The Frye book I had in mind was A Natural Perspective. James is also going to read A.C. Bradley and we might record another podcast about that. Bradley being one of the greats.

Transcript

HENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to James Marriott. James is a Times columnist, a Substacker—he writes Cultural Capital—and he has a new book called The New Dark Ages. James, welcome.