Having always been an avid reader, lately I’ve felt “ho hum” about most of the new books coming out. Visiting my local library’s “new books” section, I’ve left empty-handed, although I have been on long waiting lists for books by authors such as Whitney Webb and Ed Dowd.
My restlessness isn’t surprising, as beginning in 2020, I stopped listening to the podcasts I had in regular rotation and stopped reading works by my former favorite authors. I flipped to all new voices, finding those people who were up to the task of addressing the demands of the moment. Never in my lifetime have I experienced such a rapid shift in the writers and public voices I was following.
In a recent Substack piece entitled The Death of Culture: How Lies Killed Books, Dr. Naomi Wolf describes wandering into an independent bookstore in Brooklyn and finding that “it was as if the years 2020-2023 simply did not exist and had never existed.” She writes:
The bizarre thing about this moment in culture, is that the really important journalism, and the really important nonfiction books about the history, the racial and gender injustice, the economics, the public policy, of the “pandemic” years — are being written by — non-writers; by people who are trained as doctors, medical researchers, lawyers, politicians, and activists.
And their books are not displayed or even stocked in bookstores such as McNally Jackson.
So there is a massive hole in the central thought process of our culture.
The courageous non-writers have stepped in to tell the truth, because the famous writers, for the most part, can’t.
Or won’t. Or, for whatever reason, didn’t.
This is because the public intellectuals are by necessity, for the most part, AWOL to the truth-telling demands of this time…
Journalism in a tyranny, that is written by state-approved scribes, is always going to be a mess of cliches and obsequiousness that no one wants to read, and that cannot stand the test of time. It vanishes like snow into the cauldron of the future — even as works by the hated, forbidden dissidents who can and do tell the truth — the Solzhenitzyns of the time, the Anne Franks — are like diamonds, that cannot be crushed or lost to time.
It is only these that survive.
What books written today will survive, and are libraries paying attention to them?
Top photo: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1974crop.jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
I think about this all the time. During COVID I returned to reading all the Russian novels I had not read since I was too young when I read them to understand them. Of all the books I think Demons (Dostoevsky) was the best for me. And yes, Solzhenitsyn holds up with a knockout punch. There are books that define an era and over time we have read them reflectively. I scanned the last few years of RUSA's notable books and am not sure which, if any, will stand the test of surviving.
And you are right, "have you read any good books lately?" is now usually best answered with NF. Maybe it is the sensitivity readers at publishing houses who are creating so much noise on the channel that by the time the books get to us they are muted. I've been reading Alan Furst and Pessoa.
For me it was "Notes from the Underground", which I reread again after twenty-five years. And "The Idiot". And in the middle of the night when I can't sleep - Chekhov. (I tried Alice Munro a couple times but found myself fighting sleep to stay awake to finish her stories which was counterproductive).
I did read the Idiot and it was a hard choice between it and Demons--but I was reading a book by Anthony Powell and there were several refs in it to Prince Mishkin. He is probably the FD character I think about the most.
I can relate to your comment about the podcasts. I also have completely changed the list of podcasts I listen to regularly since 2020. I also stopped listening and financially contributing to NPR -- something that used to be part of my daily commute. I just can't stand the sanctimony and smugness that seems to be in every news story there. I wonder if it was always there and I just didn't notice or if it is something that developed in 2020.
Long time NPR listener here as well and I stopped around 2020, too. Maybe it was always there, but I think it became cringey and one-sided. No longer donate or listen.
I too wonder as to what was "always there" vs. what "suddenly developed" in the media I consumed. I am guessing some tendencies I now find objectionable were always there but too a much more subtle degree.
Great picture of Solzhenitsyn - and good choice for picture to this essay. This line, "Journalism in a tyranny, that is written by state-approved scribes..." instantly made me think of the announcement today by NPR that they were no longer going to be present on Twitter because Twitter has labeled them one of the "State Sponsered Media" outlets. Whatever one thinks of NPR, they demonstrably enjoy a substantial amount of Federal funding which makes them clearly "state sponsored". Whether we become a tyranny or not remains to be seen.
In terms of pandemic-era journalism, you might check out Journal of the Plague Years, an online publication edited by journalist & book author Susan Zakin. They publish important journalism written by experienced journalists. It is not a "mess of cliches." https://www.journaloftheplagueyears.ink/
No library is paying attention to it, but my favorite, laugh out loud satire is The End of the World is Flat by Simon Edge. I didn't even know (though very obvious now) what exactly in this moment was being satirized, but it's really enjoyable. On another point, I have to agree with the comments questioning how PC everything is that is published, as well as what libraries buy. I think when publishers start publishing again what people want, rather than what the young employees think the public should want and what they feel ideologically obligated to publish, that book sales might then go up.
I just had this conversation around Christmas with a long-time library booster here. He noted that all the books on our new adult book shelf were "super woke." It felt vaguely accusatory, so I showed him the "Booklist" that was on my desk at the time. I explained that this is what is being published and reviewed and that, to a certain extent, the hands of libraries are tied as long as the "professional review" bit is in our collection development policies. The ALA and the publishers may not exactly be engaging in some sort of conspiracy (or maybe they are?), but the effect is the same--one viewpoint is dominating the mainstream.
I think about this all the time. During COVID I returned to reading all the Russian novels I had not read since I was too young when I read them to understand them. Of all the books I think Demons (Dostoevsky) was the best for me. And yes, Solzhenitsyn holds up with a knockout punch. There are books that define an era and over time we have read them reflectively. I scanned the last few years of RUSA's notable books and am not sure which, if any, will stand the test of surviving.
And you are right, "have you read any good books lately?" is now usually best answered with NF. Maybe it is the sensitivity readers at publishing houses who are creating so much noise on the channel that by the time the books get to us they are muted. I've been reading Alan Furst and Pessoa.
The Gulag Archipelago is on my list!
For me it was "Notes from the Underground", which I reread again after twenty-five years. And "The Idiot". And in the middle of the night when I can't sleep - Chekhov. (I tried Alice Munro a couple times but found myself fighting sleep to stay awake to finish her stories which was counterproductive).
I did read the Idiot and it was a hard choice between it and Demons--but I was reading a book by Anthony Powell and there were several refs in it to Prince Mishkin. He is probably the FD character I think about the most.
I can relate to your comment about the podcasts. I also have completely changed the list of podcasts I listen to regularly since 2020. I also stopped listening and financially contributing to NPR -- something that used to be part of my daily commute. I just can't stand the sanctimony and smugness that seems to be in every news story there. I wonder if it was always there and I just didn't notice or if it is something that developed in 2020.
Long time NPR listener here as well and I stopped around 2020, too. Maybe it was always there, but I think it became cringey and one-sided. No longer donate or listen.
I too wonder as to what was "always there" vs. what "suddenly developed" in the media I consumed. I am guessing some tendencies I now find objectionable were always there but too a much more subtle degree.
Great picture of Solzhenitsyn - and good choice for picture to this essay. This line, "Journalism in a tyranny, that is written by state-approved scribes..." instantly made me think of the announcement today by NPR that they were no longer going to be present on Twitter because Twitter has labeled them one of the "State Sponsered Media" outlets. Whatever one thinks of NPR, they demonstrably enjoy a substantial amount of Federal funding which makes them clearly "state sponsored". Whether we become a tyranny or not remains to be seen.
In terms of pandemic-era journalism, you might check out Journal of the Plague Years, an online publication edited by journalist & book author Susan Zakin. They publish important journalism written by experienced journalists. It is not a "mess of cliches." https://www.journaloftheplagueyears.ink/
No library is paying attention to it, but my favorite, laugh out loud satire is The End of the World is Flat by Simon Edge. I didn't even know (though very obvious now) what exactly in this moment was being satirized, but it's really enjoyable. On another point, I have to agree with the comments questioning how PC everything is that is published, as well as what libraries buy. I think when publishers start publishing again what people want, rather than what the young employees think the public should want and what they feel ideologically obligated to publish, that book sales might then go up.
I just had this conversation around Christmas with a long-time library booster here. He noted that all the books on our new adult book shelf were "super woke." It felt vaguely accusatory, so I showed him the "Booklist" that was on my desk at the time. I explained that this is what is being published and reviewed and that, to a certain extent, the hands of libraries are tied as long as the "professional review" bit is in our collection development policies. The ALA and the publishers may not exactly be engaging in some sort of conspiracy (or maybe they are?), but the effect is the same--one viewpoint is dominating the mainstream.
Besides the review journals issue, I do think publishing is being dominated by one particular viewpoint.