The Maris Review, vol 10
How do we make executives be good at their jobs again? How do we make them care about the books, TV shows, music, whatever, that they're in charge of putting out?
What I read this week
Bear by Julia Phillips
There simply aren’t enough contemporary novels that are explicitly about awe above all else. Bear is one of them. The title says it all: if you guessed that a book called Bear is about a bear, you are correct. It takes place on a small island off the coast of Washington State, where two sisters encounter a bear several times over the course of a few weeks and have drastically different reactions. The older sister is enraptured, and the author’s spirited descriptions of that rapture are only a shade or two away from the other, more explicit and more controversial novel named Bear. The younger sister, who is slowly revealed to be an unreliable narrator, is absolutely freaked out by her sibling’s enchantment with this wild, powerful creature with matted fur who smells like piss.
Bear is about a lot of things: the disenfranchisement of the working classes, the monstrosity of American healthcare, the bond between sisters, the glory of the natural world. But what really stuck with me is how Bear is about the singularity of our own points of view, how we all experiences the same world in so many different ways.
Four Squares by Bobby Finger
I’m gonna propose that Bobby is a writer in the vein of Katherine Heiny and maybe even Laurie Colwin: he writes about grief and pain in a way that feels uplifting, probably because he’s also so funny in an earnest but not too-earnest way. So even though Bobby’s second novel is set partially in early 1990s New York City, where tragedy consumed the West Village he writes so lovingly about, it is still a joy.
Here’s my favorite anecdote about Bobby: I saw him at an author’s party sometime in 2013 when he was mostly writing for the internet, and he was so delighted to be there amongst book people. And that night he told me what his favorite movie was (is?): The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I had never heard of anyone I knew loving that charming movie about a bunch of retirees (including Judi Dench and Maggie Smith!) above all others. But it makes sense, especially now in the context of having read two of his books in which he writes about older or elderly people so fondly and generously. Bobby is spiritually 75 years old and has been for a long time. This is a compliment.
On writer’s writers and why we must protect them
I keep thinking about an interview Andrew Wylie did with the NYT in 2023, in which he explicitly calls out the widget-ization of book publishing. I truly never imagined that I would share so many of the opinions with the literary agent known as The Jackal, but here we are.
My sense is that the publishing world used to be run and populated largely by people who liked books and were interested in literature, and now there’s a cohort of people who work in publishing who might be interested in data analytics, and they’re paying attention to spreadsheets and online search terms. Do you find yourself having to communicate differently with those people?
I think that a number of publishing companies have brought in businesspeople to help them in a futile effort to become more distinctly profitable. But it’s comical, because frequently these people don’t understand the difference between selling a widget and selling a good novel. The advantage that they bring to the publishing company is counteracted by the hilarious errors of judgment they make because they don’t know what they’re selling. It tends to be true that the best publishers are people who read books and whose primary understanding of the business comes from what they’ve read rather than from Harvard Business School.
I can’t believe it’s considered innovative to bet on success in the long term, to champion the authors whose backlists will sell forever and ever because their writing is timeless, even if they’re not on Jenna Bush’s radar. Few non-Wylie represented writers get such grace these days. There’s constant pressure to hit the list to get the next book deal.
I was thinking of Wylie a couple of weeks ago when there was a good discussion on Twitter (it still happens sometimes!) about the existence of writer’s writers, the kinds who don’t necessarily make bestseller lists but who are valued by anyone who cares about great writing. Think, your Amy Hempels, your Dana Spiottas, your Helen Oyeyemis (bless Riverhead for making a Big Fucking Deal of each of her book publications). Add more in the comments, if you like. These are the authors we must protect at all cost.
Somehow — I don’t know how! — we have to convince the MBA-wielding CEOs that writer’s writers matter, that quality matters, that endurance matters. I mean, we have to convince all entertainment industry bigwigs that quality matters, but then I think about how David Zaslav absolutely trashed the one cable channel (HBO) whose name was synonymous with quality. How do we make executives be good at their jobs again? How do we make them care about the books, TV shows, music, whatever, that they’re in charge of selling successfully?
I keep thinking of Percival Everett as a case study. His first book with a major publisher will likely appear at the top of all of this year’s big best of 2024 lists. This novel isn’t even his fourth or fifth best. It was all of the decades that Graywolf (his previous publisher, an indie) invested in him, allowing him to take risks and be weird, that made him the juggernaut that he is. How do we make executives see the value in that kind of investment, to see that writers’s writers are the gold bullion of the publishing world?
I have no answers, just a lot of questions and a ton of book recommendations.
New releases, 6/25
I guess I should remind you (or tell you in the first place?) that just because a book doesn’t appear in the photo, doesn’t mean I’m not excited for it. It just means that I didn’t get a physical copy.
Bear by Julia Phillips
see above!
Hey, Zoey by Sarah Crossan
Do Something: Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York by Guy Trebay
The Grief Cure: Looking For the End of Loss by Cody Delistraty
Please Stop Trying To Leave Me by Alana Saab
Practice by Rosalind Brown
Woman of Interest by Tracy O’Neill
Cue the Sun! by Emily Nussbaum
Maris!!! How lovely to read. And just so you know I [perhaps weirdly] prefer the sequel now…
I think about the "how do we make executives care" question daily. Having pitched to execs who deeply care and those who don't give a shit regularly (this is in TV/film), I can say with a measure of gratitude and relief that there still are execs out there who care about good work and want to make it (/publish it/release it), but their voices are less heard than the money.
Last year's WGA strikes were a clarion call about this, and I will always remember going to a membership meeting at the Palladium (where I had danced to Iggy Pop the week before...a memorable two weeks in Hollywood) and Ellen Stutzman opened our discussions by saying "the problem with the business isn't the people in it, it's Wall Street." Slowly, and then all at once, all our media businesses sold to/got in league with/tied their financial successes with a marketplace that demands infinite growth. And slowly, and then all at once, that mindset infected all of these places. But not all of the people! I have some hope around that.
Books and movies both used to operate on a simple formula of: invest in project; release project; market project; (ideally) recoup investment; maybe make more. Rinse. Repeat. Some people and places still think this way, especially in indie film. My hope is that they shine enough light in the darkness that we can find our way to them.