The enduring power of "state of the nation" novels

Did I just find my new favorite book?

I am opening this newsletter with a hot take, so buckle up. I think part of the reason Sally Rooney is popular isn’t for the ideas she espouses or the simple beauty of her sparse prose. It’s because that sparse prose makes the books easy to fly through, post on Instagram, and be done with.

The recent proliferation of celebrity book clubs should be as good an indication as any that reading has become a performance. In a society where millennials are priced out of homes and life’s bigger luxuries, compelled to work jobs they don’t care about just to stay financially afloat, purchasing a book has become an accessible means of cementing your position amongst your generation’s cognoscenti.

Posting yourself reading on social media is the closest you can get to saying “I’m intelligent, by the way,” without actually saying it. In a society that grows ever-dumber by the minute, it’s a means of setting yourself above the hoi polloi by reminding your followers that you’re not always on Instagram or TikTok—just usually.

I say all of this as someone who has maintained a book blog since 2015; I’m hardly innocent. And I do believe that many (if not most) people who have book clubs and book clubs genuinely enjoy reading. I’ve been following Belletrist founder Emma Roberts’ book recommendations since she was posting them on Twitter in 2009; and I’ll count myself amongst the many who both post book recs on Instagram and have had and maintained a genuine passion for reading for their entire lives. Still, I’ve found myself bristling at the current state of the industry (if you can call bookstagram that).

All of these book accounts post the same things: My Year of Rest & Relaxation, Intermezzo, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Bunny, Death Valley, rinse, repeat. It’s Ottessa Mosfegh, Sally Rooney, Mona Awad, and Melissa Broder, a few classic novelists and diarists and very little variety beyond that (typically white women, though Giovanni’s Room allegedly enjoyed a renaissance on BookTok this year—I haven’t read it yet). People read Sylvia Plath not because they’re interested in her, but because they want to tell you they read The Bell Jar (not in person—just via an expertly curated Instagram post featuring a tan, be-ringed hand and a slightly worn cover; and, again, I’ve done this. I’m guilty).