NEW BOOK CLUB and Neil Gaiman’s “Chivalry” with H.E. Eduard Habsburg
Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Choosing Mortality Over Immortality
The hosts interpret the philosopher’s stone, phoenix egg, and Hesperidean apple as temptations that lead Mrs. Whitaker toward self-knowledge and mortality.
We have BIG NEWS! We have launched the new Ascend Book Club!
Ascend: The Great Books Podcast has partnered with “The Ascent” here on Substack to transform it into the new Ascend Book Club to offer you the most comprehensive online book club focused on reading the great books and living a beautiful, virtuous life.
You’ll receive the same great content as before but with much more—which now includes:
- Weekly podcast and videos on the great books
- Weekly articles on the great books
- In-depth, detailed pdf guides on the great books
- A monthly LIVE Q&A for supporters
We are also publishing years of articles, guides, videos, and other resources to the new site and organizing them by work and author so they are easy to find—tons of resources on Homer, Hesiod, the Greek plays, Plato, Dante, and more. You could start reading many great books today with the Ascend library.
Check out our new website, the Ascend Book Club, and join us today!
Join our reading group and study the great books with us!
Our next big read is Plato’s Republic this October, check out How to Read Plato’s Republic with Ascend for everything you need to know.
Chivalry with H.E. Eduard Habsburg
Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, Deacon Harrison Garlick and His Excellency Eduard Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and former Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See, discuss Neil Gaiman’s short story “Chivalry.”
Before they turn to the text, Eduard speaks with warmth and candor about his family’s eight centuries of Catholic identity, the vocation of family in an atomized age, his decade in Rome, and an unexpected love of stories that runs from screenplays and Ghibli films to the understated magic of Gaiman.
What follows is a close, affectionate reading of a story in which the Holy Grail turns up in an Oxfam shop, Sir Galahad knocks on a widow’s door for tea, and the most English understatement imaginable meets Arthurian quest. Together they trace Mrs. Whitaker’s loneliness and ritual, the knight’s unironic goodness, Marie’s transformation, the slugs in the garden, the three gifts of youth and immortality, and the moment an old woman quietly refuses what does not belong to her life.
Eduard reads the tale as homage to Englishness and as a call to accept the adventure when it arrives, while Deacon Garlick asks whether that same ordinariness can also flatten what ought to remain extraordinary. It is a warm conversation on the charming short story, “Chivalry.”
Reading Schedule
We are currently finishing SHORT STORY SEPTEMBER! Next week, we will discuss “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Melville, the author of Moby Dick, with two excellent guests. Read it this week and join the conversation!
We’ll then have an introduction to Plato’s Republic on 9.29.26 and launch into Plato’s Republic on 10.6.26. Check out How to Read the Republic with Ascend for everything you need to know.
You can read the great books with the Ascend Book Club!
Join us.
Dcn. Harrison Garlick lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and five children. He serves as a deacon at Holy Family Cathedral and as Chancellor & General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. Follow him on X at Dcn. Garlick or Ascend.
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