Secret Life of Books

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - the name of a classic song by Iron Maiden AND a decent-ish poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s the latter that’s under the microscope in this episode. Written in 1798, in a haze of opium smoke and revolutionary fervor, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a long ballad poem describing the supernatural curse against a sailor who shoots an albatross. There’s a ghost ship, angelic spirits, a zombie crew and many unforgettable lines, including ‘water, water everywhere nor any a drop to drink’.In this episode Sophie and Jonty look at the road to Rime, following Coleridge’s flirtation with anarchism, friendship with William Wordsworth and a particularly unpleasant case of diarrhoea. In so doing, he wrote some of the greatest poems about fatherhood ever (Frost at Midnight) and the orgasmic Kubla Khan. Sophie does a pretty good job of explaining the complexity of poetical meter in this deceptively simple poem, while Jonty commiserates with Coleridge’s travails as a fellow mouth-breather. -- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast-- Follow us on our socials:youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.socialSupport the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

Sophie and Jonty find themselves a few sandwiches short of a picnic this week when they take on their first Australian classic book, the legendary “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” This 1960s masterpiece achieved global fame with Peter Weir’s hit film in 1975. And it has lost none of its edge with the passage of time. The intrepid hosts of SLoB discover that the joke’s on them – descended as they are from the white colonial families that Joan Lindsay set out to skewer so mercilessly. With riffs aplenty on Cath and Kim, Sir Les Patterson and other touchstones of Australian culture, Sophie and Jonty drop the “citizens of the world” act and connect with their Australian origins. And in the serious bits they talk about what’s really going on in this surrealist bush-gothic masterpiece, discussing the secrets behind Lindsay’s Picnic. These include Australian independence from Britain in the year the novel was set and the referendum on First Nations sovereignty in the year the novel was written, as well as the painting in the National Gallery of Victoria that inspired the 70 year old Lady Joan to put pen to paper.The episode is recorded in advance of the publication of the first full biography of Lindsay, and a provocative new Sydney Theatre Company production of Tom Wright’s stage play, directed by Ian Michaels who has been hailed as the “most exciting director of his generation.” Both coming in February 2025.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast-- Follow us on our socials:youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.socialSupport the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

Let’s Twist Again! Not the dance, of course, but Charles Dickens’ incendiary second novel, which he began writing at the tender age of 24. With Oliver Twist, Dickens found his voice  - a style simultaneously intimate and epic, funny but terrifying, exaggerated but true to life. Millions fell in love with his characters, shared their misfortunes and triumphs, and had their eyes opened to the plight of society’s outcasts.   To write it, Dickens drew on his own experiences as a child of London, including the year he spent as a child labourer in a factory, mentored by an older boy called Bob Fagin. He also filled it with the outrage he developed as a parliamentary reporter, watching the great and good fail to tackle inequality in Britain.  In so doing, he created some of the most beloved (and hated) characters in literary history - the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Nancy, Bill Sykes. He invented the first detective double-act Blathers and Duff (move over Starsky & Hutch - these guys beat you by a century) and captured London as no writer had before, earning the approval of none other than Queen Victoria. Her verdict: ‘excessively interesting’. Join Sophie and Jonty as they discover that the real enemy isn’t the criminal underworld, but ‘the system’ (Dickens’ term), come to grips with the awful, snivelling and bullying Mr Claypole (not Jonty, but Noah - one of Dickens’ most despicable villains), and - for reasons only passingly related to Oliver Twist - reveal the cruel nicknames they were tormented by at school. Hardly Oliver levels of suffering, of course, but enough to nurse a lifelong grudge.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast-- Follow us on our socials:youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.socialFurther Reading:Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Oxford Worlds Classics, 2003.Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/02/charles-dickens-life-tomalin-reviewThe Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, 2022.https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Charles-Dickens-Handbooks/dp/0192855719/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37E72VMAQVSUI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.fnQOHbtdzGpLOEmAFjoj_ZVCVdw3tuuFEQoIP7ARHHsV064k9gkbHPU4h28v-qyvW4yRvrCvFpmelrkipRpWwgshRB_XB7vEVsyre-sBfgzzWjLdSt56PCWjL-p6A4cQ1jxHS24BLyNGp83L-sQQ4w.YGLIBW2Rlqa2PI2jK3jo9TG-I-QLDmBgFobMjHbeH84&dib_tag=se&keywords=Oxford+Handbook+charles+dickens&qid=1733096684&s=books&sprefix=oxford+handbook+charles+dicke%2Cstripbooks%2C360&sr=1-1Lee Jackson, Dickensland: A Curious History of Dickens' London, 2023.https://www.amazon.com/Dickensland-Curious-History-Dickenss-London/dp/0300266200/ref=pd_lpo_d_sccl_1/133-3551518-8907113?pd_rd_w=z2d83&content-id=amzn1.sym.4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_p=4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_r=KFQPNN521TYGS56SRCWV&pd_rd_wg=XOtzg&pd_rd_r=48fe60bb-dd16-45f4-b1a6-5cd7577619b1&pd_rd_i=0300266200&psc=1Judith Flanders, The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, 2015.https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-City-Everyday-Dickens-London/dp/1250068266/ref=asc_df_1250068266?mcid=789f73a5e274313391651fd60922739e&hvocijid=8362640346023649414-1250068266-&hvexpln=73&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=692875362841&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8362640346023649414&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007527&Support the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.

The Odyssey - where stories began. Probably written down around 7th century BC - give or take a few centuries either way - by somebody or somebodies who may or may not have been called Homer. Leaving aside these mysteries, what is the Odyssey really about, why is it so violent and why is Odysseus himself - the lord of the lies - such an unlikeable hero? Who better to navigate this intellectual Scylla and historical Charybdis than the world’s best-loved classicist Mary Beard? Sophie and Jonty listen in admiration as Mary describes discovering The Odyssey aged 14 - a self-proclaimed swot with aspirations to be scruffy and cool (or, in Sophie’s parlance, a ‘dag’). How it - or at least the several incidents in which Odysseus’ wife Penelope is told to shut up and go to her room by her own son - inspired Mary’s best-selling book Women and Power. And how the whole poem, which begins with the word ἄνδρα (man), is a riff on toxic masculinity millennia before Andrew Tate was even in a twinkle in Zeus’ eye. And listen, pithy mortals, to Jonty as he repeatedly mangles Ancient Greek names, particularly the ‘Laestrygonians’, to Sophie as she - for the first time in this podcast - tries and fails to make a convincing link to The Reformation, and to all of us as we advocate the benefits of an oil rubdown every evening.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkyoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.socialFurther Reading:Emily Wilson, trans, The OdysseyMary Beard books:Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard (Profile Books, 2019)Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations by Mary Beard (Profile Books, 2013) The Parthenon by Mary Beard (Harvard University Press, 2002)Support the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.