A little while back Justin Smith-Ruiu (fka Justin E.H. Smith), who has one of my favorite Substacks, published a piece on cultural strip-mining, where he explores some themes he’s touched on previously, namely, why does it seem like so much of dominant culture is so soullessly derivative? While earlier iterations of “repurposing culture” were quite often invigorating, a lot of what one encounters now seems, in some way, bereft of some crucial components—it feels instead like going through the motions. JS-R suggests that a key difference now is of the human chain of connection that links one piece to another, extending and expanding cultural output in a way that hearkens back to the old stuff without simply being subordinate to it. Even innovation is really given its gravity and context by the old. “Make it new,” goes the saying. It’s a way of playing with forms that goes backward and forward at the same time, always, churning and dancing into new kaleidoscopic statements of what it means to be alive, to be in community, to contemplate the infinite, et cetera and so on. Fall Out Boy’s insipid “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” a bit of strip-mining that JS-R discusses in more detail, doesn’t give us much to work with, there, does it?
Smith-Ruiu concludes by gesturing toward the rise of reaction videos, coincidentally enough for readers of this newsletter, and he does so in a more optimistic way than I have been able to muster, myself: because he thinks it’s great there are channels of viewers out there seeking out old songs and grooving to them. This activity, for him, represents at least some kind of departure or separation from the vapidity of algorithmic cultural strip-mining. And in that spirit, I agree with his optimism (or at least I want to). Though reaction-as-consumption-as-production might be the overall form, it might make sense to distinguish between that form of reaction that emphasizes something surplus to the algorithmic flow, and that form of reaction that simply leans in to cultural strip-mining. Maybe that’s the takeaway from this distinction: even the most algorithm-optimized, “phony” reaction video still aspires to be like the “authentic” one. Put another way, the Applied dons the mask of the Liberal.
It’s in seeking the Liberal, as opposed to the Applied, that I constantly keep my eyes open for interesting things and people.
Here and elsewhere, I’ve mentioned the challenges (as well as the pleasures) of going back—“back?”—and trying to read a lot of the many, many books I feel I should have read at an earlier point in my life, but didn’t. A friend and I joked recently about the weight of constantly thinking we “probably should have” already read this or that book. (Expand the lament to whatever artforms you’d like.) I think it’s easy to recognize, rationally, that this simply isn’t feasible to accomplish. Everyone who cares about culture—“culture?”— has countless major works with which they’re still unacquainted. But the related piece is that some people are anxious about that lack of familiarity, that lack of accomplishment, and other people are much more at peace with it.
Obviously, I’m in the former category, trying to reorient my mind toward the latter.
Even those rare people who seem to have already known “everything,” and are on the cutting edge of whatever new stuff is coming out—including the trendy new re-releases of the proper old stuff—are, in fact, of course, still limited in their voracity. These people might have certain advantages, such as a culturally literate upbringing from childhood, or not having a day job or other responsibilities to take up their time and energy. (Or there may be entire aspects of human life in which they are not nearly as well-developed. Jerry Saltz performs this imbalance humorously—all he and Roberta Smith do is see art shows and write, apparently, and as a consequence, Saltz famously insists he can’t even brew coffee.) Indeed, many people who attain a true level of comprehensive understanding of one or more domains will likely have other trade-offs in their lives.
Meanwhile, Gell-Mann amnesia (as a phenomenon) was succinctly described by Michael Crichton in reference to the polymath physicist Murray Gell-Mann:
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
I’ve sampled around in booktube over the past few years, but if I’m honest, most of the time I’m disappointed. So many of the channels are interested in optimizing for clicks and genuflecting to a chosen social scene, rather than making what I would think of as serious comments or serious connections with others. So there are channels where the bookfluencer talks about “self care” and rolls eyes (world-weary, like they’re Dorothy Parker being clever) when they repeat the line about “lit fic” just being a genre the same as “any other” genre, catering only to “bros.” There are channels where the Very Serious Young Men have their chemex coffee in minimalist apartments, discussing 900-page maximalist tomes. There are channels where the host is a self-conscious Geek-with-a-capital-G, Funko Pops and figurines taking up at least as much space on their bookshelves as books and graphic novels. The vocal patterns and facial expressions and postures of many (not all) of the booktubers I’ve encountered have a depressingly narrow range. I can’t help but feel that there are often more interesting people trapped beneath all this sameness. And I’m perplexed by the way that so many people interested in reading talk about “classics” as a sort of literary genre one can be into—like, I was reading and collecting true crime thrillers in 2023, but in 2024 I’m getting into “classics.” (Really this just seems to mean “books one associates with high school & university reading lists.” Which is funny because, as I understand it, there’s really very little standardization or enforcement of those kinds of lists these days anyway.)
And within booktube, most books under discussion are either focused on a handful of genres (because most readers seem to be into fantasy, romance, science fiction, graphic novels, business & self-help books, etc.), or they gravitate toward new fiction that seems to exist in a space between “beach reads” and “literary fiction”—topical, perhaps character-driven, but still with enough of a page-turner quality that they can be sped through and enjoyed quickly. It’s the printed matter equivalent of bingeable, not-too-demanding Prestige TV.
Even the channels that do tend to appeal to me more, because they cover work I’m more personally interested in learning about or seeing discussed, often still succumb to monotony. As in, everyone’s reading and speaking in blurb-form about the same titles and authors within the same 6-18 month timespan. And that’s fine, but it can feel like people on social media sometimes erase the reasons they’re reading something, and instead it “just happens” to be what they’re trailblazing—when in fact they’re reading it because of some combination of (a) NYRB or Archipelago or Dalkey or some other very cool press put out an edition, (b) a very highly regarded booktuber like Chris Via of Leaf by Leaf was raving about it, (c) it’s on a famous list by a famous modernist author of good books to read. Or something. Anyway, why does it seem like “everyone” has been reading Pedro Páramo this past year or so? (I’m no different, mind you—I read it last summer. But I do admit the main reason I was spurred to read it when I did was because I saw the title pop up in chats in somewhat more concentrated fashion, and I was curious about this influential book and what sounded like—and turned out to be—a remarkable prose style. Even in translation.) For similar reasons, I think, I’m seeing a lot more Guy Davenport attention on social media, when for years he’s been a coterie taste, and enthusiastic mention of his name led to the sound of crickets more often than not. It’s nice to see, but also bewildering for no other reason than the mystery of Why Now?
(Above, a great candid shot of Davenport and Cormac McCarthy, in their younger days, that has been shared a lot recently on social media.)
Why now, indeed? Guy Davenport’s following has been limited over the past few decades in part, I suspect, because not much of his work (short stories, essays, poems, translations) is available online in nice shareable links. The Harpers book reviews he wrote are paywalled now (I don’t know that they always were); you can download PDFs of his books online, sure, but ultimately it seems like the easiest way to get to read Davenport is to acquire a physical book. And what seems like a resurgent online “scene” or interest in books and book culture has been a rising tide that’s helped amplify the late genius. For that, I suppose, I’ll be grateful with qualification: there is now more of a possibility of me running into admirers of his work, or people who think his questions are the interesting kinds of questions, than there seemed to be before, even in a generation less shaped by algorithmic consumption. The emergent wrinkles and calluses in the human sensorium, continuously being molded by our attention economy, also afford novel vantage points and opportunities to uncover hidden worlds.
We muddle along, “but under circumstances existing already,” and sometimes it seems like cultural strip-mining is the sentence of leisure-labor we are compelled to heed. But under all circumstances we can attempt to think creatively, to make it new.
For whatever reason (complete boredom with modern film discourse maybe?) I've also found myself on booktube a lot over the past six months or so. I agree with many of your conclusions, and I find the sameness of it all, much like the sameness I see in film writing or "filmtube" content, disheartening. I have found a few bright lights on booktube (for classics Benjamin McEvoy is a joy and I get my genre fix from CriminOlly who has a wonderful “Disturbing Books” playlist) but most channels are pushing stuff like "romantasy," which holds no interest for me, or talking about trendy TikTok authors and Booker Prize nominees over and over again. In this day and age, when we all have an incredible wealth of resources at our fingertips, there seems to be very little desire for exploration. People seem hellbent on following trends, fitting in and joining prevailing choruses instead of finding their own voice and following their own passions. I suppose it’s always been that way, but it feels particularly odd when there are so many avenues of exploration available. Every time I visit social media these days I’m struck by the sameness of it all. The same voices getting attention, the same films being written or talked about over and over again or the same music, books, etc. It’s become deadly dull and seems to go hand-in-hand with the prevalence of insular thinking. People are closing themselves off and limiting their reach. Maybe it’s fear? Pessimism? I don’t know but I find it increasingly strange.
I've barely dipped a toe into BookTube, but the compulsive quest for content is pretty bleak. (Also, so many "why Colleen Hoover is the worst writer ever" videos!) I started watching one channel because I thought his individual book reviews were fairly insightful, but he posts joyless "how to get through four novels in a week" videos, with references to Goodreads competitions, constantly. Have you found any exceptions for the rule?