The Maris Review, vol 28

"I look at the faces of the sallow and entirely uninspiring so-called media elite and I yearn for any glimpse of optimism that doesn’t involve the proliferation of right wing platforms."

What I read this week

Lazarus Man by Richard Price

I’ve been trying to avoid writing about too many books before their publication dates lately, but I needed this. Fast-paced and utterly absorbing as all Richard Price fiction tends to be, Lazarus Man is perfect for burying your head and avoiding hot takes about the Presidential election on Twitter. But it publishes on November 12, which doesn’t do you much good now, so I’m sorry (if you’re thinking about pre-ordering, you won’t regret it). There are too many authors out there today who write fiction as if they were writing a script, so intent on getting that book-to-film deal that they brush past the book part. Price never does. He has an ear for dialog that is just about unparalleled, capturing a variety of different voices from many walks of life, this time centered around the collapse of a five-story residential building and its aftermath. There’s no crime at the center of the novel, per se, but tell that to the book’s pacing, which whips by as if there was a killer to catch.

Forest of Noise: Poems by Mosab Abu Toha

But for those of us whose heads are not buried in the sand: Forest of Noise is a devastating, beautiful way to sit with the pain of the destruction in Gaza without being inundated by horrifying images on social media. Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet who’s clear-eyed and to the point; he began working on his latest collection before the latest war, then the IDF was bombed his home and he and his immediate family were able to escape to America. I follow him on Twitter, and I watch in real time as he processes the news of what’s become of his extended family. I leave you with a few lines from a poem called “What a Gazan Mother Does During an Israeli Night Air Strike”:

She counts her kids’ ears, mouths, noses, then

looks into their eyes. And, I swear, she smiles.

She sings a night song to bury in the ground the sound of bombs,

to disappear the whirring of drones back into the clouds.

On “the media elite”

Yikes, this was just supposed to be a bitter, wry look at New York Mag’s latest power issue called Can the Media Survive?, about how many fuckups succeed again and again at the tippy top of media companies, and how many talented writers and editors and thinkers they put out of jobs, pawns in a game with no rules. I look at the faces of the sallow and entirely uninspiring so-called media elite (no one looks healthy or happy in their photos, which is a fitting editorial choice by NY Mag, I’d say), and I yearn for any glimpse of optimism that doesn’t involve the proliferation of right wing platforms.

Legacy media is in rough shape and apparently AI Slop Is Flooding Medium, so here I am on Substack, not that Substack feels entirely independent and free (Hamish McKenzie is one of the media elites featured in the NY Mag story). But until that day comes around when we can finally figure out how to do Defector But For Books, you’ll find me here, trying to make up for the money I used to find in my freelance career with my little posts…

But then earlier this week we learned that the Washington Post (and the LA Times, and now USA Today) will not be endorsing Kamala Harris. Not that these endorsements will sway many voters. Not that it matters if they weigh in. It’s that the editorial boards of these papers wanted to make an endorsement, and their leaders didn’t want to. It’s about how I’ve been worried about the people on the ground in media, the freelance writers like me and the lower level staff, and then I realized that the heads of media companies have nothing but contempt for even their top editors.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether pulling your subscription to the Washington Post is a useful form of protest. I get it: we live in capitalism, we vote with our wallets, we’re unhappy customers, the answer is clear. But wait!

The Washington Post is one of the few publications that has been expanding its book coverage, and now approximately 200,000 subscribers are gone. It is difficult not to despair.

But then last night, the owner of the paper, Austin Powers-styled villain Jeff Bezos, wrote an editorial about why he made the correct decision to not make an an endorsement, referring to himself as if he were a journalist or understood journalism in any way. I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to leave, to stop paying for that trash. So much for the so-called media elite.

Jeff Bezos, leveler of the book world, now comes for democracy.

As always, I encourage you to buy books from your independent bookstore and Bookshop.org and Libro.fm. Anywhere except Amazon and Audible. I’m here if you’d like recommendations.

Anyhow, fuck Jeff Bezos

Some of us are feeling a little I told you so….

New releases, October 29

Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality by Lyta Gold

Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim

Masquerade by Mike Fu

The Chronicles of Doom: Unraveling Rap's Masked Iconoclast by S. H. Fernando Jr.

And now for a little intrigue: