Anti-Climacus

When I was but a little whippersnap, I was told my family's unofficial motto regarding literature: if you have a favorite book, you haven't read enough. The idea being, as best I understood it, that if you are an active reader who picks books at a certain level of quality, you will never be able to form a stable 'list'; the influx of new books will render that impossible. And a favorite implies stability over time that should be worrisome.

Fast-forward 20 years and a few hundred books. My four favorite novels are: The Brothers Karamazov, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises and 2666. The first three are in order; I'm halfway through a second reading of 2666 that should give me a better idea where it places. All four are major literary achievements in an objective sense, and have accrued personal meanings and resonances that will be hard to displace given any amount of time. I read Gatsby for the first time as a sophomore in high school, Karamazov after my senior year of high school, The Sun Also Rises after my freshman year of college. (2666 was the novel I read as I plowed through the final stretch of my dissertation at 30 pages a week.)

They've all been on the list for ten years or more: they're not going anywhere. When I read a new novel, I am less likely to think about whether it matches up to any of those personal greats (it won't), but where it fits among the next level down. Is On Beauty or The Pale King better or worse than The Trial, or Elizabeth Taylor's Blaming, or Cakes and Ale?

The same thing is true, perhaps more true, with music. My five favorite albums are, in order: Everything Must Go, Exile on Main Street, Automatic for the People, Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), and Rabbit Songs. Hem was 2007; the Kinks were added in 2000; everything else I knew from at least 1997. It's a remarkably stable list, especially given how frequently one listens to albums as opposed to re-reading books. I've listened to Exile hundreds of times: my opinion of it is not going to change; I am unlikely to start hating the Rolling Stones, or suddenly decide that Beggars Banquet is better, after all.

More interesting are the next five or ten albums, which are constantly shifting depending on my mood, life, opinions, etc. Bee Thousand has become a staple, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was important for a year or so around 2008 and has made a big comeback, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain has been on repeat in my car; Rid of Me was up for awhile but has leveled off; Electr-o-pura may have displaced I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One; I might prefer Goo to Daydream Nation or not be able to listen to either.

"Tom Courtenay" and "We Rule the School" are both from albums in that category, both of some measure of personal meaning and, crucially, both quite enjoyable to play on guitar.