the outlier №288
is that the edge and where might they?
I’m Ben Mercer and welcome to The Outlier. This letter covers a lot of ground — taking in my move from pro rugby player to author and online man of letters — with reflections on books, interesting individuals, cross-cultural connections and the odd detour.
The past week has been absolutely packed. I’m pushing at my boundaries a little, saying some yeses, meeting new people and next week, I’m off to a big Creator festival in Cannes for a couple of days.
So there’s much in flux but also, much to be excited about.
In case you missed it
In case you missed it, here’s our the boys book club discussion of Lily King’s Heart the Lover. We speak about its literariness vs its romance-ness, whether it’s a ‘girly book’ and what that means, all the youthful love triangles and trying on of different identities and in the end, whether we liked it or not. I’ll share my thoughts at the end.
And I almost forgot to do this but here are a few warm weather reading recommendations, including my personal big book to read this season, and some consumer goods to keep you cool-ish while you’re summering.
the books📖
So probably most excitingly, I’m doing more writing than I have in a long time.
As ever, there are a lot of concurrent ideas but a couple of them are really compelling to me and very soon, paid subscribers will receive a version of something that’s been bubbling under for a while now. It might be next week or the week after but it will be with you soon.
The other stretch for me at the moment is trying to find funding for the Boys’ Literacy Project. I’ve already had conversations with a few really inspiring people and while I’m optimistic that this endeavour can go ahead, I already think there will be something else related to this space in the mix by the time I get thumbs up or down.
I now have a fundraising deck that I can share if there’s someone out there with ways and means to securing institutional funding. Reply to this if so.
I’ve never raised money for anything before so in a way, this is me learning a new skill. My instinct is always to bootstrap, to do the most with the least, but with this kind of work, cost really is the barrier, not quality or intent. That’s how it appears right now anyway.
Then if I wasn’t busy enough in the day, I’ve had some evening events this week as well so it’s all going on. The Substack guys know how to summer party and while I didn’t end up in a dive bar this year, I did get to eat quite a lot of cake in a rather beautiful garden in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was really fun and interesting to hear how the platform is doing and what other creators are thinking about it right now.
In an equally beautiful place, that’s also someone’s private house so I won’t share the interior, I was invited to the launch of The Wodcast, a new project from Mabel Evans and Benjamin Aston. Their first guests include Elif Shafak, Stephen Fry and Tim Rice (who gave a speech) while in the toilet I spied a signed and dedicated poem from Ted Hughes. The canapés were good here and I’ll share the word I left in their guestbook at the end of this issue.
for your interest
is that the edge
And as you look over the edge you realise there is no further to go. You are at the limit of yourself. From this vantage only the unknown awaits beyond the cliff: this is the perfect high. Then, you feel an urge stronger than anything you’ve experienced before, and the urge says jump.
My friend and former GB swimmer Rebecca wrote this piece about how elite sport means a hungry pursuit of the void and how athletes can spend (and struggle with) the rest of their life grappling with its comparative ordinariness. She should write a book.
The word void signals an overwhelming nothing, an absence, but for me the void has never felt empty. It’s a place of possibility. Rather than shut doors, I’ve always struggled to close off avenues because every new book, place, idea or conversation enlarges the world rather than reducing it. I always want to keep doors open. Or open more.
Rugby opened doors. To people, to places, to languages, to life. The few times I touched the void in performance terms it didn’t feel like an end but like an exploration and similarly reading never helped me escape my life but multiplied it. Each story suggested another way to be, another self I could just see at the end of the next book.
If the void calls to me I don’t hear jump but instead, keep going.
I’ve been at the limit of myself many times but I’ve never trusted it. Stood at the top of the hill after 30 sprints I thought I might collapse but I knew I’d get my breath back. I finished my first book and while right then I was spent I knew I wanted to write more. Exhaustion, certainty and identity always feel temporary. Somewhere beyond there is another room, another country, another version of me I haven’t met yet. It’s partly why I wanted to digital nomad, why I like clothes that resist a set context, why I like the idea of a studio with its constant change and people that I can’t immediately define in a sentence.
But like the athletes and a hero of mine the artist Yves Klein, a man who wanted to disappear into the sky and explored the theme of the void in all kinds of ways, I do find a way to disappear. Reading aloud feels a little similar. For a few minutes I stop performing myself and get to dissolve into another voice, another rhythm, another consciousness. I’m too self conscious to totally disappear into what I’m doing so it’s a sort of amused annihilation, an incomplete leap. So far I’ve always come back.
Because like the knights pure enough to discover the holy grail, if you really touch the void you don’t get to return. Only us incomplete beings get to come home with the tale of what we’ve seen. Perhaps if you look into the void and there’s nothing there then there’s no need to return but I always see something else; another library to explore, another undiscovered country, another story to tell. I’ve never managed to escape myself but found there was more of me to discover.
Every time I’ve seen the edge I’ve flinched. There’s too much to say, not too little. So far, the chronicler survives.
where might they
I realised while compiling The Boys’ Literacy Project material that you could pose the problem as one of identity. Boys are not encouraged to be readers.
A couple of weeks ago I shared with In Progress a clip in which a film director argued that Hollywood has accidentally shrunk its own audience thorugh the MBA logic of identify your biggest customers and overwhelmingly serve their needs. Hence the endless proliferation of superheroes and established franchises like Star Wars and Jurassic Park.
On paper it makes some sense. In practice, it disconnects the casual cinemagoer else from the habit and practice of going to the cinema. I’m one of those people. I’ll make the effort for something unusual or that’s meant to be brilliant, like One Battle After Another or Anora, but I go far less often than I used to.
Books might have a similar issue. English Literature grads writing books, published by English Literature grads, read by English Literature grads.
I realised this week that my project material mashes together influences from unexpected places to present them to teenage boys and ask them, “What about this?’ They’re not used to the juxtaposition and in school visits I regularly explain that books, writing, the arts and professional sport have far more in common than they realise.
So I loved seeing this extraordinary bookshop in Shanghai, designed around the idea of climbing a mountain. Reading as ascent. The pursuit of knowledge intertwined with physical effort. A bookshop that explicitly mashes together sport and literature.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what people might read but isn’t where they might read another interesting question?
a word
Frisson
Etymologically from the French word for ‘shiver’ – a sudden feeling of excitement, emotion, or aesthetic pleasure that produces a physical shiver or goosebumps, sometimes experienced at the edge of fear, beauty or recognition.
lastly
Thanks for reading! My work is made possible by you so if you’d like to support me you can buy my books, hire me to do something or you can become a paid subscriber using the button below.
If you want to help me out for free, you can share this letter with someone who might enjoy it, either on social media or by directly sending it to them using the button.
I’ll see you next time.
I'm not sure I came back really...