Buy The Mars Review of Books at store.marsreview.org
And other notes from the launch of the MRB
When my focus shifted to the Mars Review of Books several months ago, I stopped updating this. Sorry about that. I’ll get back to posting chapters of The Machine War; or, Ab Urbit Condita weekly (approximately).
In the meantime, you can get beautiful print copies of the Mars Review at store.marsreview.org
I might also do a few posts for paid subscribers only with some behind-the-scenes looks about the Mars Review the context around it. When the New York Review of Books went to press in 1963, they published a single page-length editorial. It was their first, and also their last.
Such silence is enviable. However, today is a different era. I’ve seen all kinds of rapscallions speaking falsely about the MRB and the people behind it. Despite my genial temperament and preference for the high road, I can only go so long without making an attempt to wipe up their mess.
Also, on May 20th, we threw what was, if I do say so myself, an all time great launch party. The place was filled to to bursting with essayists, podcasters, novelists, CEOs, talented Urbit engineers, models, celebrities, thieves, graffiti artists (deepest apologies to our kind host!), DJs, hangers on, hangers loose, hangers out, and, undoubtedly, at least a few guzzlers down and throwers up. I had the uncanny experience of watching a woman outside, whom I had never seen before in my life, tell me she needed to be let in because she was a close friend of Noah Kumin. (Which made me recall the great story “Borges and I.”)
A highly perceptive gentleman mentioned to me he thought it might be an event people would still be discussing decades from now. Not because of the hanging on, loose, and out; but because it had a kind of predictive quality in combining disparate elements that haven’t mixed much in that past but which will mix much more in the future.
Short version: History happens the same way that Hemingway (apocryphally) joked a man goes broke: “gradually and then all at once.” The institutions that act as patrons of the arts have gradually been fraying. New institutions have been building. Pretty soon, we may reach the “all at once” part. (And I think this is what all the silly Brooklyn v. Manhattan stuff is actually a cover for.) So maybe I’ll write more about that. If you’d like to hear about it, shoot me a reply email to let me know.
And do grab a copy of the MRB at store.marsreview.org . It’s a limited edition work of art, and all purchases go directly back to paying the talented writers, designers, editors, and other staff who made this first issue happen.
Wishing you health and happiness, and take care not to cross the East River if you’re wearing the wrong colors,
Noah Kumin
Editor in Chief
Mars Review of Books