Susan Sontag’s diaries reveal a witty fondness for the humble list as a way of conferring value and exploring the realms of her knowledge. Her lists of likes and dislikes have become justly notorious. Here, editor and poet Wayne Holloway-Smith picks up that baton
LIKE
When someone uses an asterisk to denote a typo in a previos WhatsApp message / *previous* / Orange socks / When spring first hits / Fizzy water / Bagels / Fragmentary speech / A nice crunchy bassline / Beverley Skeggs / Tracksuit bottoms / Green cola / Sundays / Footballers who give vast sums of their wealth away (see Sadio Mané) / Nuance / Clove cigarettes / The feeling of having just exercised / Yellow socks / Those massive bath towels you get in some hotels / Freckles / Jumping really high / Cyclists who stop at traffic lights / Neighbours who ‘pop round for a cup of tea’ / Red socks / The thinking of Nuar Alsadir / Maltesers / Orange juice / A truly bad Christian worship song / An incredible piece of liquorice / Sleeping with the window open when it’s raining / Oversized jackets / That weird nostalgia for the ’60s you might get listening to a Beatles song, even though you weren’t born in the ’60s / *even born* / Sharing / A good hug that makes you understand someone truly likes you / A rhyme which has moved through several clauses to before it lands just right / People who are friendly on public transport / Getting angry with my kid at the sense of injustice in a show we are watching together / *alongside my kid* / The feeling of having done the washing up / The feeling of relief at being told ‘you’re completely fine’ by your doctor / Low slung light bulbs / Blue book shelves / Waking up on a Saturday and realising it’s a Saturday / The memory of Ceefax / The humour of Heather Phillipson / Disjunction / Watching any friend get really excited about something / Watching politicians getting owned / Playing but being really rubbish at darts in a pub full of people who are really good at darts and are getting frustrated that they have to wait for you, a rubbish darts player, to finish before they can play because there’s only one dart board / Celebrating others’ success / Bumping into someone you haven’t seen for 10 years and everything kind of being the same / Justin Hinds & The Dominoes / The deal I have struck with an elderly lady, local to me, who slips me her Tesco loyalty card, which sometimes gets me discounted items and always gets her some ‘Clubcard points’
DISLIKE
Rent / Holes in trouser pockets big enough for a phone to fall through (all my trousers) / Black socks / Ready salted crisps / The Conservative Party / People wearing backpacks with only one strap over the shoulder / Sideburns / That smoking causes cancer / Grey socks / Bounty / The gentle creep of neoliberalism into academia / Email / The word ‘volume’ when referring to a collection of poetry / Holes in the heels of socks (all my socks) / Heights / Those lot who volunteered to wear hi-vis vests and police people stopping to socialise in parks during Covid / PE teachers / People who still wear trilbies / Exercise / Slow-moving traffic / Ironing / The Guardian / A socio-symbolic value system, subsidised by a middle-class lens, which arbitrarily apportions higher value to certain social practices and lived experiences and ways of being in the world / Linear narrative / Pins and needles / People who are needlessly mean-spirited / Dog owners who talk to their dogs like babies / Rejection / The way reality TV shows shame their contestants / People who say ‘only joking’ when they were definitely not only joking / The sport of rugby / Grown adult humans who describe themselves as a Hufflepuff or whatever / Transphobia / Those kind of pinky-red trousers that old public schoolboys wear as grown-ups / Train prices / Beige socks / Energy companies / The offside rule – let them all just crack on and score more goals, who gives a fuck / Skiing / Landlords / Dickheads / My nose / Sofas with so many cushions on there isn’t enough room to get comfortable / Instagram vegans / ’50s working-class anti-hero narratives that suggest misogyny is a type of class rebellion / Billy Liar’s ‘passion pills’/ Robots / GWR / Movies over 90 minutes long / Martin Amis / The current lack of fruit and vegetables in most supermarkets / ‘Trickledown economics’/ The limitations of the English language / People who cycle on the pavement / White socks / Teachers who wear ‘zany’ ties / Things that break / Getting up very early / The Daily Mail’s use of the term ‘woke’ / How clever Suella Braverman thinks she is when she uses the term ‘woke’ / Humans with ugly, ugly souls
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