If you’re curious about the definition of a B-Side, it’s traditionally the name for the flip side of a musician’s album where secondary recordings not included in a the official album are listed. More symbolically, these songs are “hidden gems”—the artistic creations that hold immense value for individual fans despite the fact that popular culture’s attention is drawn elsewhere, to the songs that the radio plays the most.
The concept that B-Sides represent—all that which is often cast aside, yet enduringly important among niche communities—applies to literature, as well. Recently, my thesis advisor from Brandeis University, Professor John Plotz, published B-Side Books: Essays on Forgotten Favorites. As the Editor for this compilation of essays, he was tasked with reaching out to his colleagues in academia and asking them to write about books that, in his words, have been “unjustly kicked to history’s curb, either an outlier from a great writer or an unexpected gem from somebody thoroughly forgotten” (2). Of course, I jumped at the chance to read the fruits of Professor Plotz’s labor, which is a compilation of musings from academics and writers about the overlooked literature that they have come to adore and seek to share with others. It’s not just a review of books; it’s also a form of “meta-reading,” wherein the essayists gesture toward their processes of reading, absorbing, and reveling in these books in addition to reviewing the books themselves.
I am thoroughly indebted to Professor Plotz and each of the essayists featured, for they illuminate a critical part of being a reader that resonates with me. As a bibliophile, I have spent considerable time picking through “Buzz Book” lists, selecting my upcoming reads based on the new releases that major publishers and media outlets are promoting. As an English major and a scholar, I spent my school years immersed in “the always-read books that have have for decades been taught, adapted, and turned into cultural touchstones” (B-Side Books xvi). With that said, I have B-Side Books of my own to share—literature so impactful for me that I wonder why more people have not heard of it.
Below are just a couple of my B-Sides. Like the essayists in Professor Plotz’s book, I hope to illuminate my personal relationship with these literary masterpieces in addition to the reasons why I think you should read them. I hope you finish this post feeling inspired and motivated to give my recommendations a try.
PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon
When I took an Environmental Literature class my sophomore year of college, this book was nestled into the syllabus among famous works by Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, and others. I recall vividly that when my professor asked the class at the end of the semester which book(s) they would drop from the syllabus, virtually everyone singled out PrairyEarth…except for me.
This semi-ethnographic study of a county in rural Kansas is certainly not for everyone. The book itself is 622 pages of densely-packed text; the prose is frequently wanders and rambles, as though literally embodying the journeys by foot and car that the author makes across vast tracts of land. This is what I personally love about the book, though—Heat-Moon’s ability to fashion his writing after the act of traveling, step by step and mile by mile, in one of America’s most under-acknowledged and seemingly desolate regions. Heat-Moon provides awe-inspiring observations of nature’s fierce, fragile, or sometimes unforgiving behavior and punctuates memories of his solo travels with interviews of the county’s various residents, from descendants of Hispanic workers who worked on railroad tracks to the residents whose lives are often upended (then rebuilt) by the cyclical flooding that plagues the region. Just a few chapters of Heat-Moon’s writing reveal that Chase County, Kansas is neither remote nor desolate—on the contrary, it is teeming with life and history.
“Of Plagues and Carnivals,” Flight from Nèveryön by Samuel R. Delaney
I was first introduced to this story collection of Delaney’s while writing my senior thesis. My advisor suggested that I use it as an addition to my argument that fantasy writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien processed the devastating individual and communal effects of illness and contagion through the fantasy worlds that they developed. “Of Plagues and Carnivals” is decidedly more allegorical than Tolkien’s writing—Delaney clearly lays out a parallel between the alternate world of Nèveryön, where a plague is spreading rapidly between homes and along streets; and the AIDs epidemic in modern-day New York City. Delaney fashions an unacknowledged contagion in a fantastical world to drive home the point that in any society, those who suffer with afflictions that are not widely understood may be isolated and stigmatized with the greatest brutality. The human impulse to outcast the threat of “the sick” by any means necessary is one that traverses communities and time periods, yet Delaney also demonstrates how this impulse to reject and remove is closely tied up with class and social status.
I highly recommend giving the two books above a try. I also recommend that you pause and think about those hidden literary gems that prompt you to smile widely and babble with excitement. What underrated book would you fiercely advocate for in a debate about the “best books of all time?” That’s your B-Side book.
