The Maris Review, vol 47

I spent a lot of Careless People interrogating why I found Sheryl to be so much more evil than Mark.

What I read this week

Stop Me If You've Heard This One by Kristen Arnett

This is the book I have been waiting for Kristen to write. She is one of the funniest people I know, and she's written a novel that interrogates how we use humor: as a defense mechanism, as a cudgel, as a distraction, as catharsis. If the sad clown is a well worn trope for a reason, then Kristen has put a new spin on it and introduces us to Cherry, the dirtbag clown (I'm cribbing the adjective from this excellent review of the book). Cherry is a 28 year-old employee of Aquarium Select III where she works to (barely) pay rent, but her true passion is clowning. (I should add, her other true passion is older women. This is a Kristen Arnett book, the characters are gonna be horny!).

Here's a lovely passage in which Cherry explains how so much of her identity is tied to her craft:

"The costume is purely physical. The clown is a persona that takes years to craft, if not decades. You develop it gradually, through trial and error, and by the time you're done, the clown is inside you for good. At any given moment, mine sits waiting inside the clown car of my skeleton, pushing impatiently around my rib cage, wanting out so it can really start fooling around. The clown doesn't care if I'm on a date or attending a funeral. The clown is my id, greedy and impatient and uncaring of the mess it might make in its quest to get off a good joke."

What a joy it is to watch Cherry make messes in all areas of her life, even as she mostly practices her craft at children's birthday parties and carnivals. It's through the mundanities of Cherry's day to day that we get to see not only how Cherry's fights with her id play out, but it's also where we see many of Cherry's blind spots. One of my favorite things in fiction is when the main character, who the reader has had an excellent time getting to know, realizes that they are NOT the main character in their fictional life. They look around at their loved ones and see how, while they were busy developing as characters and building up their own backstories, they neglected to understand that everyone around them is living thier own version of their own life story. Stop Me If You've Heard This does this brilliantly.

I also need to mention how fiercely Cherry loves Florida, and how much of the book is about the importance of claiming queer spaces in a place that's mostly hostile to you. And more than that, it's a book about how to make art on your own terms in a country that is so hostile to artists. This is a Kristen Arnett novel, so it's no surprise that Cherry arrives at an answer in a 7-Eleven parking lot.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Speaking of clowns, here's that book about Facebook that everyone is talking about. It's another win for the Streisand Effect. At a moment when my Facebook ire is at an all-time high, it was a joy to see Meta's attempts to block this book backfire in the best way right to the number one spot on the New York Times Nonfiction bestseller list.

In Careless People Facebook's former head of policy spills all of the lurid details in a really well written and paced account of her time in the trenches. Apparently a lot of the revelations about the moral depravity of the leadership team at Facebook are not entirely new, but lots of what Wynn-Williams revealed was new to me. I really didn't understand how much Sheryl Sandberg was into taking naps with her employees.

I spent a lot of the book interrogating why I found Sheryl to be so much more evil than Mark. Internalized misogyny is a part of it, for sure. But the hypocrisy seems so much worse. I was never a fan of the Lean In movement, but I liked the idea that a powerful woman would not stand for sexual harassment in the work place. So it was galling to learn that Sheryl overworked Wynn-Williams for the benefit of her book. Wynn Williams was pregnant when Lean In was published in 2013, and so she became a sort of spokesmodel for the good pregnant corporate employee, trotted out at various book events and pressuring her to go on a variety of business trips. And yet, after all that, Sheryl disappeared when Wynn-Williams filed her own workplace complaint against her boss, Joel Kaplan, who happens to be a good pal of Brett Kavanaugh.

Meanwhile Zuckerberg is a little dork whose employees know they must let him win at Settlers of Catan. Yeah, that sounds right. I saw the David Fincher film. Zuckerberg joins the ranks of the world's richest people who are not content with their piles of money. He also wants global adoration. We know that. We know Elon and Jeff are there too. They are a scourge.

My only problem with the book, and it's a pretty big one, is that in Wynn-Williams's account she often seems to be the only voice of reason, surrounded by sycophants and yes men who coddle the psychopaths who are in charge. It's hard to stomach. The problem with a whistle blower book is that its very premise means that the author was deeply embroiled in terrible shit, and there is very little coming to terms in this book. There are tons of excuses, but very little self-reflection, ultimately making this reckoning feel as hollow as Zuckerberg's promises to combat fake news.

A Book Media Roundtable

Spoiler alert: I'm one of the five people who know what they are talking about

Alia Hanna Habib is an agent who I respect so much, with a client list out to here filled with some of my favorite writers. I was so delighted to be featured in her newsletter this week. If you like this newsletter you will like hers, I'm sure.

Alia asked great questions of me and 4 other book media savants who I love and admire. Click here to read the whole thing. For a taste, here's how I responded to Alia's question about which book pieces get the most engagement:

I never say no to a year-end list. Lists are imperfect in so many ways and not what I would choose as my primary source of writing, but they get the eyeballs and remind my publishing contacts that I’m still around? Otherwise yeah, I can tell you that author profiles have fallen out of fashion, and that straight reviews are tough to get eyes on unless you’re an Andrea Long Chu or a Parul Sehgal. Trend pieces do tend to work best, but I really don’t want to see book coverage turn into trend pieces or nothing. If I could wish for one thing in media right now, it would be for more publications to train their readers to want to read reviews, to give their books and culture editors the time and the space to develop their writers and do more eccentric coverage. I know that’s risky because clicks rule the world, but I think we lose so much important culture when we judge all content only on their popularity.

New releases, 3/25

Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly by Hannah Selinger

Trauma Plot by Jamie Hood

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge

There Is No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie

Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America by Jane Borden

When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter with James Fox

Twist by Colum McCann

Sister Europe by Nell Zink