Twitter?
Maybe I could be more useful here
Of course Twitter has been crucial to my career, and my thinking, and Belt Publishing. And of course I have various thoughts about what’s happening over there now, and what might happen in the coming days and months. I’ve also written about the literary and social value of Twitter times, including this New York Times op-ed from a decade ago.
And yes, of course, I’m utterly fascinated by the drama that is playing out in real time over on that timeline, but I don’t have a take—not yet. Definitely not for how I think it will change publishing, which I try to stay focused upon in this newsletter. I do think that Twitter, and social media in general, has had a longer run than I expected it to, and thus in some ways am eager to see it crash and await what arises (or doesn’t) in its place.
But as those of us who tweet a lot all stumble about, hands over eyes to block the dust and sand, looking for the next oasis, and wondering what our time there meant, I do know that I would never have discovered an uncountable amount of knowledge, and a population of smart people, were it not for Twitter.
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Many, many years ago, back in the day (I can say that! I was on Twitter pretty early), I remember reading a tweet by Alexis Madrigal about his approach to Twitter. “I try to be useful” he said. For whatever reason, that has stuck with me. It was never my goal, to be useful on twitter. (For me, it was about intellectual company and stimulation, something I was sorely lacking elsewhere in my life.) But I do think that my goal for this Substack has always been to be useful.
For months, I’ve thought about how everyone else is doing this “recommending” thing Substack has enabled, that I seem to ignore for no reason I can deduce. I’ve also been thinking about the early days of this newsletter, when I used to do shout outs to books, people, articles, etc. —my form of recommendations. I know that some of the Substacks I most enjoy reading these days are the uses that curate or aggregate stuff from elsewhere, and provide for me a way to find new interesting things—something that twitter used to do for me, but has done less well over the past few years.
So I’m going to resurrect that feature of my Substack, in an effort for it to be useful (again) in a new way: to replace, maybe, a bit of what Twitter has offered us, should it cease to be so soon (or just cease to be).
And so, behold, some recommendations. I’ll do these regularly going forward, and add new categories as I do, I hope these lead you to discover something or someone interesting, and think new thoughts:
A 2022 Book I Loved
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is the best contemporary American novel I’ve read this year—and maybe for the past few years. It has everything I love most in (certain types of) fiction: it’s a page turner so compulsive you have to stay up to finish it; it teaches you about something you didn’t know about before (video games, for me); it plays with genre without being ‘experimental’ (it is basically *all* about different literary forms—trust me!); it is meta in a funny way; and it is a social novel, casting a light on our moment. I sort of adore that it’s a perversely “underground” hit, in that lots of very smart people I know have read it and adore it as much as I do, but it was also was highly touted, with many marketing dollars behind it, and it briefly hit the bestseller list. But the “literati” haven’t written about it much—the tastemakers of a certain kind; it hasn’t received any major awards (yet), and, most appalling, none of the reviews I’ve read so far seem to have understood what the author was doing with this book at all. (I am not a gamer! You do not have to be into video games to read/love the book!). Most reviewers seem to have seen what was packaged as a middle-brow novel and read it that way. And it is not! Read it!
A 2022 Novel I Didn’t Adore
Less Is Lost. I did love Less!. And I appreciate everything the author is doing in this follow-up, and I appreciate so much what the book is doing. But it just wasn’t as good as the first novel, or that good in and of itself, especially—maybe mainly— given the raves it has received. It falls into my “overhyped and overwhelmed” category, where so many contemporary novels land for me.
Some Twitter Accounts I Adore
Aaron Bady @zunguzungu
Tressie McMillam Cottom @tressiemcphd
Zito at @zeets
Amanda Kolson Hurley @amandakhurley
Whet Moser @whet
Stephanie Insley Hershinow @S_Insley_H
Some Substacks I Love
The Tourist
End of the World Review
The Biblioracle Recommends
Washington Review of Books
SHuSH
Some People In Publishing I Look Up To
Julie Fain
Ellen Adler
Christie Henry
Sarah Burnes
Lynn York
Some Presses I Admire
Biblioasis
Hub City Press
WVU Press
Fitzcarraldo Editions
I hope this list is useful! There will be more next week. And if you’re feeling the need to connect with me and others who read this substack more, add a reply to let us know what you recommend (or what you think is gonna happen to the bird app) as well.
I’m teaching an online class in January to help those interested in writing non-fiction books with ideas and proposals. Check it out! Tell your friends!
I could not agree more with your assessment of both those novels.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is my favorite book of the year. I've been shoving it on everyone.