The best case you'll read against lists of books

And the best case you'll read in favour.

As soon as you start writing for Substack, Substack starts telling you what to do. One of the things it nags you to do is recommend other writers using its built-in system. Recommendations make good business sense, the guidelines say. Promote writers you enjoy to your audience, and we’ll prompt those writers to recommend you back.

That last part makes me feel sick. You will do what? Naked social climbing, on my behalf? Thirsty wheedling, on my behalf? No thank you! I refuse to join this murky economy of favours. I refuse to draw my readers into these debased games. Speaking of readers, isn’t it onerous, almost cruel, to foist more reading onto you? Aren’t you drowning in text already? Recommending you nothing, nothing at all, strikes me as a kindness in this day and age.

But recently I encountered several people in the wild who made me rethink my position—people who like recommendations. These sunny people made me think perhaps I’m being stubborn. Perhaps a recommendation—pure of self-interest and greasy social climbing—is not such a ghastly thing. The sunny people won me over. So I’m going to recommend you some great writing now.

From the cover of Sally Rooney’s Normal People.

One of my favourite contemporary writers is Sam Kriss of Numb at the Lodge. Kriss is curmudgeonly, boastful and rude to his readers. He’s also laugh-out-loud funny. We live in an era of gross digital exaggeration of how hilarious we’re finding things, typing “lmaoooo” and “🤣🤣🤣” in eerily silent rooms with lips curling slightly at the sides, so I won’t belabour the point. You can read Kriss describing Sally Rooney’s novels as “books for people whose gums come down too low over their teeth” and decide for yourself.

Anyway, in August last year, he wrote a searing tirade against lists of books, following the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century gambit:

The point isn’t to read these books; the point is to have read them. Actually dragging your wet eyeballs over all that scratchy paper is just an awkward chore you have to go through, so afterwards you can ask people at parties if they’ve read The Line of Beauty, and then, before they’ve even had a chance to respond, tell them that you’ve read The Line of Beauty. You’ve read Cloud Atlas. You’ve read Outline. Yes, you would like a medal, thank you very much. You grew up reading books to earn stickers, and now every time you finish one you start looking around for your reward. But of course some of you are bigger and better and more literate than that. So you get to progress on to the second level of the game, where instead of pointing out all the books on the list you’ve read, you point out all the books you’ve read that didn’t make the list, and complain that they should have, because you’ve read them. The list needs to be a more accurate reflection of you.

I read Kriss’s essay at the time, loved it, then forgot about it.

Then a little while ago, I stumbled, entirely by chance, upon a newsletter called Always Historicize What Hurts! and read the latest story in the archive: Does It Hold Up? How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read. It’s a more sedate, academic affair, but ends up building a surprisingly persuasive case for, well, lists of books:

Distraction, on the other hand, is a temporal problem: the profusion of excellent fiction also means that, if we hear about one book we “must read” or simply really want to read, it is quite likely that by the time we are in a position to take action on that book, several other titles have jostled their way to the front of our mind. Critics and the lists they make can provide some support for keeping certain books in our faces: the repetition of a book’s title or author’s name allow readers to circle back to works we already decided we wanted to read but forgot about.

Both pieces are well worth your time in their entirety. I recommend them.