Celine Nguyen is an Emerging Critics Fellow for the National Book Critics Circle

why are so many of the software people I know suddenly obsessed with literature

Many of you will already read

Celine Nguyen

who writes

personal canon

. Of all the people who write criticism on Substack—those who are Substack originals, as it were—Celine is one of my favourites. Congratulations, Celine! Her whole piece is well worth reading, all about what criticism is and is not. It includes this.

If STEM disciplines have, supposedly, won the war against the arts and humanities, why are so many of the software people I know suddenly obsessed with literature and films? Why is it that my groupchats full of programmers and product managers and designers light up whenever there’s a new Andrea Long Chu review? Why are tech people starting Robert Caro and Roberto Bolaño book clubs? Why are they getting NYRB Classics mailed to them every week?

Also this:

But I increasingly feel that my social role for writing personal canon is—and this is going to sound very lofty—to expand the market for literary criticism.

Hear, hear!

Unlike most critics, Celine has worked in software and understands that part of the world from the inside. She taught herself to love literature by reading Proust. Great things are coming from her during this fellowship, I’m sure. Subscribe now if you don’t already.

how to expand the market for literature (and literary criticism)