Pompidou Section

How many readers will have unsubscribed by the end of this sentence? Two, three, half a dozen? When I wrote an admiring post about Anne Carson in May, I lost eight readers instantly, a not insignificant percentage of my total. Since it’s free to subscribe, this means eight people took the post as conclusive proof that nothing I write will ever be worth reading. Ouch. I sometimes wonder if the best way to build an audience would be silence—coasting on subscribers’ wishful thinking. But the urge to write is irresistible. As is the ambivalent desire for readers.

I’ve been reflecting on the future of this newsletter. Hence this post, exposing its inner workings, like the external tubes of the Pompidou Centre, which put its mechanical systems on view.¹

I am not an especially slow writer—though I occasionally stall—but producing a post every two weeks, with intervening digests of what I’m reading or listening to, takes time. It’s beginning to feel like a job—or better, an unpaid internship. I’…