Art is more drugs than sports. It doesn’t make much sense to compare one work to another—except as an exercise to study what you, the audience, the viewer, the reader, find valuable. But that’s not always a comfortable exercise.
Twenty years ago this month (!), I helped to start a silly thing called The Tournament of Books. It was in response to the idiocy of book awards. We knew the system was weird, prejudiced, full of smoke-filled rooms and prone to self-congratulation. At the same time, awards still had value, especially as a way to spotlight interesting things that might go unnoticed.
So, we figured we’d take 20-some favorite novels from the previous year, seed them into March Madness-style brackets, and ask some of our favorite authors and book world folk—and the occasional musician, critic, celebrity, whatever—to read a pair, choose one to advance, and explain why for the online public.
We hosted the first in March. We’ve done it every March since. (Our latest edition launched this week. Here’s more info if you’re interested.) These days, thousands of people follow along, bookstores put up ToB displays, the comments section has been lauded as one of the internet’s better corners of literary conversation—it’s amazing.
But what’s perhaps been most interesting, even beautiful, is to watch the judges grapple with what it means to choose one book over another, as an exercise in getting closer to their taste—what moves them, what appeals, what feels good or provocative, or compelling.
This year, one judge, novelist Rufi Thorpe, laid out her criteria:
Subject: Am I interested in what the book is about?
Is it drugs: Did I lose consciousness while reading it? I’m still chasing the absolute narcotic of the Sweet Valley High books.
Gay: I just like gay things better, I don’t stand behind it, I just happen to like gay things more.
Cerebral: I’m a nerd, I like thinking, I will read a whole book for one penetrating insight.
Characters: I know it’s not popular to say, but I want to like the fucking characters. I can’t be rolling my eyes every other page at their weenie-ish ways.
Plot: As a reader, I’m like a literal minded eight-year-old and plot holes get to me. Going to the movies with me is awful, I’m continually whispering things like, “But why would he do that?”
Does it vibrate strangely? This is the most ineffable category, but also the most important to me. Is the work so singularly itself that it has transcended in some way?
Books can glow, they are planted with beauty, they can make oxygen—and understanding how that works for me, for my tastes, is a question that sends me to other questions. How do I apply my attention? What do I expose myself to? What attracts me more than something else? What arouses my alertness?
One thing I’ve figured out in my forties is that I learn a lot more about myself through relationships—with other people, with art. And “is it drugs” and “does it vibrate strangely” are just so true, at least for me.
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Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly mini-essay from Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ ideas of things to love, plus a monthly dispatch from the road, for some inbox wanderlust ⛰️
Rosecrans is the author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. His most recent novel, The Last Kid Left, was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Titles mentioned in this newsletter are stored on a Bookshop list, which pays a small commission. For more—books, articles, etc—check out rosecransbaldwin.com