2 Books for Rebels

Dear readers,

Nowadays, nothing is more conventional than defying convention. Everyone from tech billionaires to hack politicians claims to be a rebel, a contrarian, a disruptor, which might mean that nobody is. Ostentatious badassery is a played-out pose. True resistance is rare and doesn’t always announce itself as such. The most radical slogan in literature might belong to Melville’s Bartleby: “I would prefer not to.”

In that spirit, I lately find myself rejecting florid dramas of opposition in favor of modest gestures of refusal — acts of subversion motivated by impatience, or a plain indifference to the way things are supposed to be: the blithe insouciance of a servant upending the assumptions of her masters; the cunning of peasants bamboozling the royal tax collector. I recommend these books to stiffen your spine in the face of what and whoever wants to stifle your spirit, usually while telling you that it’s for your own good.

—A.O.

“Cluny Brown,” by Margery Sharp

Fction, 1944

Cluny Brown is not cunning or crafty; she doesn’t even think of herself as a rebel. The orphaned 20-year-old niece of a London plumber, Cluny is guileless, openhearted and supremely self-confident. She doesn’t do what is proper or expected, but what makes sense at the time, whether that is unclogging a sink, walking a dog or falling in love, first with a pharmacist and then … but I won’t spoil it.