the outlier

some enemies, the rap singers and feeling real

hello,

I’ve had a little holiday. A long weekend in Montpellier was just the ticket and I even wrote up a little guide for paid subscribers…

a guide to Montpellier

Sometimes I fall foul of over-planning my holiday, finding out everything there is to know about the place before I go and then having to resist a checklist mentality on arrival, but this time I achieved the right level of preparedness. You can too with my not too long guide to the place.

If you want all this good stuff and more, consider going paid (an annual sub is 38% cheaper than a monthly one)

the books📖

This week has been one of getting back into the swing of things and making connections.

Tomorrow I’ve got some more ‘classic’ freelance work to do, with a copy project for a fun startup using AI in a niche and sporty manner, and there are various other bits and pieces to finish off like uploading the Superstrengths audiobook to Audible and Spotify Premium which I’ll get done over the weekend.

last weekend in Montpellier

for your interest

some enemies, the rap singers and feeling real

some enemies

A writer I enjoy and recommend, Molly Young, recently released an alphabetised list of her enemies and it amused me to think about my own.

I like the idea that a nemesis sharpens the mind, strengthens the will, urges the individual to a more rarefied level. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the best modern example of the galvanising power of a rival, avoiding the fates of many of their earlier peers who took up partying due to a lack of true competition (see Ronaldinho or Maradona).

Perhaps this could sustain some deeper consideration but here are a few of my enemies, real or imagined:

Branded Clothing. Ever since my friend’s mum said to us, ‘Why would anyone want some guy’s name on their t-shirt,’ I’ve not been able to shake the idea it’s embarrassing. In some respects, I am still a teenager.

Coffee gives me great joy but it’s perhaps the closest thing I have to a dependency. When I barista-ed in Sydney I found myself consuming herculean amounts, the idea of throwing extra shots of espresso away anathema to my finish everything on your plate scarcity mindset. I cut back to one a day, watch it slowly creep up to 5 or 6 and then take it back down. Rinse and repeat.

(if you want a long and involved read on making pourover coffee, I enjoyed this one)

The Internet. Unfortunately I do really like being online. My brother calls it ‘reading the internet’ and some days it does feel like that. I probably should unsubscribe to more things and stop the endless search for more information about everything and nothing but what if the answer is at the next hyperlink?

Podcasts. Most of them are actually quite bad, white noise for supposed grownups to soothe us on our commutes. Nevertheless, I continue to listen and will inevitably do one myself.

There must be more but I’ll hold fire for now. This was fun though.

If you have an enemy that needs vanquishing or that spurred you on to great things, drop a comment!

the rap singers

The literacy decline is more serious than we thought! It’s not only students at elite colleges that are suffering; its latest victim is rap music.

Rap is bad now. I grew up listening to Nas, BlackStar and Kanye amongst others. I loved the unhinged grotesquerie of Lil’ Wayne and later, the nihilism of Future. I still listen to bits and pieces but it’s mostly older stuff because new rap is bad. It sounds bad, it’s more boring and it’s less popular than a decade or so ago.

A tweet last week posited whether rap’s decline is literacy-related. Do these guys not read? Kendrick Lamar is a Pulitzer Prize winner but he’s approaching middle age (elderly in rap terms) and it feels like the newer generation are less literary and more imbecilic.

A kind soul responded to my entreaties on Substack Notes and sent me this beautifully visualised ranking of rappers by the amount of words used in their work. Lo and behold, newer rap shows a pretty stark dropoff in the breadth of its vocabulary. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean these artists aren’t literate. Much of this is probably a response to market trends for simpler music and even Kendrick himself ranks surprisingly low. Clearly just using loads of different words isn’t the whole truth.

My dislike of newer rap music is probably born of my age but perhaps now, aspiration has changed. If the market desires simpler pleasures, that’s what we will get, making it incumbent on us to keep seeking out interesting work in order to keep receiving it.

You are what you eat and if you only eat Lil Uzi Vert, there’ll be no MF Doom for you.

feeling real

Sometimes when you read a book where the characters feel real, you think, Well, maybe they are. That’s a lovely compliment to a book, to think that the characters have come alive as much for the reader as they have for me. That’s my whole ambition.

A couple of weeks ago I saw Sally Rooney say this at the Southbank Centre and while I’ve not discovered an audio recording, you can read a transcript of the interview here.

Whenever I’ve written nonfiction and had people say they can hear my voice in their head, I’ve taken it as the most immense compliment. When I’m asked for writing advice, taking your actual speech, with its natural cadences, idiosyncrasies and even its flaws as a basis, is one of my common tips. Feeling like they’re inside the head of someone real is what you want your reader to do, in fiction or nonfiction, and while it sounds obvious as an intention, it’s not so easy to manage in practice. In fact, for even the most popular novelist, it’s their whole ambition.

a book

Holiday allowed me to finish Any Human Heart by William Boyd (amazon / independents). I foisted this book on our book club, thereby forcing myself to finally read it after being badgered about it for ages by a friend, and I knew little about it beforehand so was surprised to find it’s styled as a collection of journals from a fictional 20th century author called Logan Mountstuart.

Mountstuart makes for amusing company so his journey from pretentious schoolboy to elderly novelist whiling away his final years in the countryside races by, his journey taking in the big events of his lifetime and including a fair few of history’s great authors and artists in walk-on parts. It’s a book with a bit of everything; it’s funny, sad, shocking and meaningful and there’s some wisdom there too, accrued by Mountstuart over the course of his life.

In the end, Any Human Heart is about life and luck, about how ‘you must live the life you have been given’, and it’s a fine way to spend a few hours of yours.

a listen

I’m sorry I keep banging on about Laura Marling but this interview with her is a nice little treat. If you want to remember the fun rap music, then try this classic.

a quote

Tell all the truth but tell it slant

– Emily Dickinson

lastly

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I’ll see you next time.

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