Last week my wife and I were talking about books and she noted, with dismay, that some snoots look down their snout on those who purchase and listen to audiobooks. Baffles me. Like many our friends, Melissa drives a lot and she whizzes through those maligned audiobooks—her choice of reading, since we met in 1989, is the most eclectic of anyone I know, moving from non-fiction accounts of African wildlife, pharmaceutical addiction, the history of Trader Joe’s and the travails of Appalachian residents—and is absorbed by most of it. (Right now, on our patio, she’s reading Fredrik Backman’s My Friends, the best novel of 2025 in my estimation.)
At one time, as the hastily-arranged bookshelves on the three floors in our house show, she was never without a hard cover or paperback (for vacations, airline flights and day-to-day life), but times change. Like most who spend a lot of time with books, she doesn’t makes boasts, it’s simply a pleasurable part of her life. There’s no “I couldn’t live without my books” air to her.
I bring this up because last week I read a New York Times “Guest Essay” by Yarimar Bonilla, a 50-year-old professor of American Studies at Princeton University, and while her grandiosity was irritating, it also made me wonder about the general quality of academics today—not for the first time—since the article, “The Subversive Joy of BookTok,” wasn’t well-written, and not just because the unpardonable surfeit of cliches. (A longtime peeve: isn’t it time writers, particularly those whose income is partially dependent on producing what’s now called “content,” delete the word “deeply” from their vocabularies?)
She writes: “As a teen I devoured [red flag!] books, and my library card was my most prized possession. In college, I passed the slow hours of my part-time job at a hotel gift shop lost in works of magical realism—where ghosts lingered, kitchen spices conjured heartbreak and love defied the laws of nature.”
I haven’t a clue what that tortured last sentence means. I’ll send a copy of Dylan Thomas’ Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog to the first reader who can decipher it. I had a library card growing up—hardly unusual—for the branch in Huntington, New York. I hung out with friends there, or my dad when he came home early from work. It wasn’t my “most prized possession”: just an ordinary fact, like my bank passbook, subscriptions to The Sporting News, Boy’s Life, Fusion and Rolling Stone. I’m not a commie and don’t imagine no possessions, but it’s difficult to narrow down. Maybe the pocket knife I bought in Munich in 1972 or the Minolta camera I inherited when my dad passed away. Or the clay ashtray I swiped from a bar in Mexico City in 1975.
Bonilla allows that she stopped consuming so many books—I’d guess even those where kitchen spices were prominent—once in graduate school and beginning her professional career, an understandable “passage” as the forgotten Gail Sheehy, ersatz psychologist for the Upper East Side, once wrote. But after Trump was elected last November the Princeton professor, horrified, and eventually numbed by “doom-scrolling” social media that “fueled my anxiety,” gave way to BookTok, “where people gush about novels that supposedly altered their brain chemistry, or that they wish they could inject directly into their veins.”
I’d never heard of BookTok, because I don’t Tok, and from Bonilla’s description have no itch to check it out, but who can look down on anyone who gets excited about novels, new or old? And after “doom-scrolling” Bonilla’s essay (but not injecting it directly into my veins), I do give her credit for writing, although badly, about literature, whether stimulating, trashy or unmemorable.
The accompanying photo, in my mom’s backyard at her wedding reception—all of her five sons heartily endorsed the nuptials to a wonderful, mild-mannered fellow, whom she felt necessary to explain “will never replace your dad”—on a hot New Jersey summer day. By the way, Rob, the groom, was a musician, who as a teenager in the 1930s played live with blues bands in Chicago to earn money and hone his craft. The only white guy on stage, he hung out with the others after shows, and on some occasions smoked reefers with them.
Three of my brothers are pictured, and I’m to right of Uncle Pete, for some reason wearing a bandana. Could be I thought it was a smart accessory to the hand-me-down pinstriped suit, and a psychedelic tie I lifted from a college roommate. It was a long, festive weekend, and I’m certain that at various points, most of those assembled discussed new and old books. Just a part of normal conversation.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Lorne Michaels offers The Beatles $3000 to appear on Saturday Night Live; Bruce Springsteen is escorted by security guards off the premises of Graceland; Cliff Richard's I’m Nearly Famous is released; Paul McCartney’s atrocious “Silly Love Songs” is a huge hit; Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison; Family Feud debuts on ABC; Reese Witherspoon is born and Martha Mitchell dies; Anne Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter, Renata Adler’s Speedboat, Jeffrey Archer’s Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less and William F. Buckley’s Saving the Queen are published; Johnny Miller wins the British Open; Italy defeats Chile for the Davis Cup; Harold Wilson resigns as the UK’s Prime Minister; The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Tony Auth wins the Editorial Cartooning Pulitzer; and C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” is the top country hit of the year.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023