The Siren Call of the Book

The writer's curse

At one time, Ezra Klein announced that he would be writing a book. This was announced, with some fanfare, and little follow up. Time passed, and no word of the book. On his podcast, it was occasionally something of a punchline. If it seemed a bit strained, especially as the weeks piled up into months and the months surpassed the first year, well, can you blame him? But to Ezra’s great credit, he did write a book, and it was published by none other than Simon & Schuster, and for a minute or two there it was even the talk of the town, at least for a certain audience.

It was not a bad book. It was impeccably researched, accessibly written, and entirely forgettable. Indeed, it is not just forgettable, but forgotten; it has not yet been three years since it was published, yet none speak of it. For Ezra Klein, whose success as a writer and a figure in the media industry knows few contemporary parallels, it is, I imagine, precisely the sort of book he dreaded writing, the sort churned out by the hundreds of thousands to adorn the shelves of airport book stores. The kind read in a single sitting and forgotten thereafter except for an interesting nugget or two. The kind that the truly intellectually curious interested in the topic will pass up for in favor of books already written before Klein announced his intention to write in the first place.