What’s Volumes?
It’s a deep-dive into the places where books and life overlap. I also write profiles of people who write books and how those books get written.
Why did the creator of Calvin and Hobbes vanish at the peak of his success? Is Philip Roth an ideal model for a literary life? Did Sylvia Plath know how paragraphs work? Should we stockpile literature in case of a digital apocalypse?
Dunno, but I’ll try to find out. Words happen here.
I’m keeping everything free as we explore the reading life at Volumes.
If you’d like to support what we’re building here, to help keep it going and growing, it’s only £5 a month, or £50 for the year.
Who are you?
My name’s Matthew Morgan.
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. While I did those things, I read all the books 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. I wrote a second book, slightly less terrible though still unpublishable.
I loved having conversations about books with other readers, so I swerved again, turning my attention to writing the essays that became Volumes. Here, I wax ecstatic about a new novel, gush about a rediscovered classic, or wonder about absurdity #481,516 in the growing list of strangeness in the modern world.
