Martini Shot
Long Reads
Rob's reading The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time, and it's a very long book, but not as long as a lot of these TV shows people keep talking about, and at least in the book, stuff happens on every page.
By Rob Long • • 3m ListenIn David Lodge's novel Changing Places, he introduces the reader to a game called Humiliation. It's pretty simple. A bunch of literature professors get together and admit, in turns, to having not read some indisputable classic of literature. The player who hasn't read more classics than his or her colleagues is the winner -- in other words, the least well-read literature professor takes the prize, so the game manages to pit a people's ego and careerism against their natural competitiveness. In the book, the guy who hasn't read Hamlet wins the game. But then he also gets fired...