Enlisted
During these Christmas and New Year's days, the media tends to fill itself with lists: the books of the year, the films of the year, the exhibitions of the year, and so on. It's as if, suddenly, when we find ourselves at the end of the year, it's time to take stock, or even somehow 'clean house,' because these lists not only highlight some things, but also silence or forget others, causing them to disappear from the assessments, however provisional they may be.
We need the world to be "edited" for us, with increasing urgency. Faced with the insane proliferation of content (in bookstores, on digital platforms, in the cultural landscape in general…), it is becoming ever more necessary to have arbiters and editors, journalists, critics, and trained professionals who can distinguish certain things from others, thus alerting us to what is truly important. The film awards season (the Golden Globes, the Oscars…) serves to bring order to all the releases made during the year, although even the industry knows that if you want to aspire to a major award, it's not advisable to release a film in June, but rather during the winter nominations.
The same thing happens in the book world: in December, it's highly unlikely anyone will remember a book that came out in January or February, unless it was a huge commercial success and continues to sell (which rarely happens). Needless to say, of the deluge of books released around Sant Jordi's Day, few are now appearing on the year-end bestseller lists, which makes the whole thing bleak and unsettling. It's as if nothing has the right to last, or deserve a second chance, or be rediscovered in the future. Just when a book is due to be read, other waves of new releases arrive, along with new lists, and with the new year, even with the usual lists, the feeling of liquidation and closure intensifies. As if all of this serves more to "liquidate" than to breathe life into or give impetus to things that might be worthwhile. What sense of permanence can a creator have if even their work doesn't stand out at the end of the year? Fortunately, nothing ends up depending on anything specific, but everything is in the hands of a dark chance, or the tastes and inertias that move the world in an ungovernable way.
Anyone who knows how these things work, however, knows that one shouldn't make too much of it; it's all rife with pettiness, self-interest, friendships, and strategically spiteful oversights. Not to mention simple, basic bad taste. Needless to say, culture doesn't operate much differently than any other human endeavor—that is, with its share of mistakes, successes, triumphs, and failures. Although what these lists often reveal is that some people get all the laughs (always, no matter what they do, or blunder after blunder), while others are completely ignored, even if they try their best, or even actually do something right.
