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’m not planning to quit, or to change my writing habits. I’ll continue to scour under the net, writing about philosophy, comedy, books, and more. But I’ve decided to take a step towards the professional.

As of now—or as soon I figure out how—I’m planning to activate paid subscriptions. The newsletter will still be free. What will be paywalled is the archive, which I hope is worth something.

I encourage you to pay for a subscription, even if you don’t consult the archive, in order to make the time I spend on this less fiscally irresponsible—or to express appreciation for the work that goes into it. If every one of you paid to subscribe, it would be alarmingly realistic for me to imagine quitting my job—or going part-time—in order to do more writing, meaning more editions of Under the Net, more essays and books of public philosophy, and perhaps the return of Five Questions, in which I ask philosophers five questions about themselves.

Please share this post, or any post you’ve enjoyed, with potential subscribers, paid or otherwise. I appreciate your support!

1. The metaphor is stolen from my favourite podcast, Three Bean Salad, in which three middle-aged British comedians riff on a topic picked at random from ones sent in by listeners. Among its lovable features is the recurring introduction of new recurring segments, prefaced by original jingles, of which the best may be the Pompidou Section, in which the Beans negotiate the format of the podcast in real time.