(Formerly Art of Conversation)
I’m fascinated with the role of books in our lives and the place of literature in our culture. Meaning isn’t found in the shallows of life but in its depth, so here at Volumes, we go deep into books to find joy and meaning in reading closely and critically.
Here at Volumes, you’ll read essays that wrestle with modern life by learning from literature — the classics and the contemporary — and culture. We’ll take a close look at a specific book, or deep-dive into a film, or ask questions about the wider culture, and see what they can tell us about how to live well.
Volumes is for people who want to go beyond the last page of the book. It’s for readers who want more from their reading.
I recommend starting with:
Looking Beneath the Surface: Is criticism simply about deciding which books to read, or is the critic looking for something deeper?
On Collecting Books: On how we store books, the library as an anti-algorithm, and finding freedom in the finite.
There’s also Words of Wisdom, a series that zooms in on a passage of writing — an essay, a chapter, a speech — from a great thinker on a specific topic. Then there’s Double Take, which revisits books and films I first encountered long ago. Every month, paying subscribers also receive bonus essays and behind-the-scenes access.
At the end of every month, I publish Notes on a Reading Life, which features some of what I’ve read lately in the pages of physical books and in the digital pages of Substack. Expect short-form pieces written like a letter directly to you, in which I wax ecstatic about a new novel, gush about a rediscovered classic, or wonder about absurdity #481,516 in the growing list of strangeness that defines the modern world.
Free vs Paid
Free
Free subscribers get to read most of the essays as they’re published. These remain free for a month, before they go into the paywalled archive.
Paid
You’ll get complete access to the full archive;
Access to behind-the-scenes material, deleted scenes, and exclusive essays;
Every edition of Notes on a Reading Life, which will be going behind the paywall very soon;
And you’ll have my sincere and undying gratitude for your support. Paid subscriptions keep Volumes going.
Who am I?
The short answer:
I’m Matthew Morgan, an omnivorous reader obsessed with books, entranced by cinema, and constantly thinking about culture.
The longer answer:
There’s a conventional route to becoming a writer that starts with an impressive university and finishes with being published by a prestigious publisher or news outlet. I took a different route.
I dropped out of college to write a terrible first novel. (I didn’t intend for it to be terrible, it just happened that way.) I worked as a carpenter, a kitchen assistant, a cleaner, and a handyman. The whole time, I read as many books as I could — everything from The Divine Comedy to The Human Stain, from Austen to Zola.
I eventually studied for a degree in English Literature while working as a bookseller. The job meant I read even more, and my studies made me a better writer. My degree was pursued in the same intellectually promiscuous manner that I’d lived my life: I studied literature and creative writing alongside evolution and astronomy. I wrote a second book, slightly less terrible though still unpublishable.
I thought about the conversations I loved having about the books I read, and I swerved again, turning my attention to writing the essays that became Volumes. Now, my writing for this ever-growing project is informed by the peripatetic defiance of boundaries that led me here.
If it’s crucial to contemporary culture, or challenging to some convention, or just plain fascinating, I’ll write about it.
My AI Policy
The landscape of Artificial Intelligence is contoured with many hills and valleys where nuances hide out from the casual observer; an informal glance leaves the impression that the land lies flat and clear. What actually constitutes AI is contested.
Some include the algorithms that suggest a video-essay that inspires something I write, or the photo-editing software I use to create the images for this website. Others specifically mean generative AI such as ChatGPT when they discuss the topic.
I do not use generative AI tools for anything I do here. Every word you read is generated by the organic, temperamental, variously successful and failing brain in my head. I spell out my feelings on AI in some detail here:
