Latest news with #MarisKreizman
Vogue
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Maris Kreizman on Her Fiery New Book of Essays, ‘I Want to Burn This Place Down'
Before her timely, well-researched, and instantly memorable new book I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays came out this week, Maris Kreizman was perhaps best known for her Tumblr blog-turned-book Slaughterhouse 90210 and her literary podcast, The Marist Review. Now, though, she's creating a new and more nuanced name for herself in publishing with a debut essay collection that makes a powerful (and pop-culturally savvy) case for a gradual political and personal shift to the left. Vogue spoke to Kreizman about the move from literary criticism to writing essays, the importance of salary-sharing and collaboration on the assistant level at not-yet-unionized publishers, and releasing a book about the power of socialism immediately after Zohran Mamdani's historic New York mayoral primary win. Vogue: You are, quite famously, a master reader. How does it feel to be read in this new way? Maris Kreizman: Oh, it feels so strange, I think particularly because I know better than most people how many books come out each and every week, and how quickly they go in and out of the spotlight, if they're so lucky as to get the spotlight in the first place. I'm just trying to grab people while I can and enjoy it. What did the research-gathering process for this book look like for you? It was doing a lot of reading, which I was thankfully doing anyway, so that made a lot of sense. It also involved getting more involved; I'm so glad I got to work a little with Mutual Aid Diabetes, and I'm on Authors Against Book Bans now, so I have a little taste of what activism means. Why do you think that we, as readers under capitalism, are so willing to rage at individual writers and at each other, instead of at the institutions that always let us down? It's so funny, because, I mean, part of it is social media, right? It's so much easier to gang up on a person there, but I also think it's comforting to have a face that you can give to a problem that makes it so that it feels like something that is fixable. When you start thinking about institutions not serving you, then it becomes about, Oh, we really have to start fresh.
Associated Press
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: Critic Maris Kreizman charts her political awakening in smart, funny essay collection
Maris Kreizman always loved books and TV. As a self-described ambition monster, she once thought that if she worked hard and played by the rules, she would land her dream job in publishing and live happily ever after with a house, husband, good health insurance and fat 401(k). Well, she got the husband and with him, the insurance. But alas, the rest was not be. In her debut essay collection, 'I Want to Burn This Place Down,' the 40-something book critic, columnist for Lit Hub and erstwhile podcaster recalls a series of mini-awakenings in college and the New York publishing world in the 2000s that shook her faith in the American dream of her boomer parents. 'Common wisdom has it that people grow more conservative as they age,' she writes. 'I'm the opposite, having moved further and further left with every year, growing more progressive as I, a straight cisgender white woman from a middle-class background, learn all the ways the world is rigged in my favor, even as I myself have been severely let down by the status quo.' In the essay 'She's Lost Control Again' she writes with barely suppressed fury about how her lifetime struggle with Type 1 diabetes opened her eyes to the reality of the broken health care system, which 'creates chaos for those without copious economic resources,' forcing people to turn to GoFundMe to pay for their insulin. In a sweeter, more nostalgic register, she reminisces about her great-great-uncle Barney's iconic clothing store in Manhattan and what it taught her about the predatory world of capitalism on steroids. She also considers her relationship with her older twin brothers, with whom she shared a love of cop shows. But while her faith in policing was deeply shaken by the murder of George Floyd and other police abuses, they ended up becoming cops with conservative views. The title of the book hails from the final season of 'Mad Men.' After Peggy and Joan have spent years 'clawing their way to the middle' of their ad agency, it is bought out by a bigger firm whose new owners treat them with sexist contempt. After their first meeting, Peggy asks Joan if she wants to get lunch. To which Joan replies, 'I want to burn this place down.' Kreizman brings that incendiary tone to parts of the book, but others are infused with deep affection for her family, Jersey roots, geriatric pug Bizzy and life partner Josh. If you like her sassy voice, check out an earlier work, 'Slaughterhouse 90210,' which paired passages from serious literature with pop culture images. In these troubled times, it's sure to make you laugh. ___ AP book reviews:
San Francisco Chronicle
30-06-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: ‘I Want to Burn This Place Down' confronts the myths of the American Dream
With a title like 'I Want to Burn This Place Down,' you'd think that Lit Hubcolumnist Maris Kreizman's book of 10 essays would be a scathing takedown of American capitalism run amok and skewering of a country that prizes greed, power and getting ahead over decent values and being kind to others. Add a nearly empty matchbook to the cover — the middle match projected defiantly upward — and you might also presume that the tone of the collection would fall somewhere between cunningly pithy and downright incendiary. On the whole, the book is a meandering yet honest depiction of Kreizman's evolution from being an earnest, if naïve rule-follower enamored with working hard and embracing the American Dream to a disillusioned 40-something who's realized that meritocracy and 'playing by the rules can be futile and demeaning if the game itself has always been rigged.' Kreizman is at her strongest when she's discussing topics close to home — which, coincidentally, are the same ones that may resonate with people of all stripes. As a person with Type I diabetes, the essays in which she deconstructs her fear of living with a chronic disease and someday losing her health insurance or access to insulin at no fault of her own feel equally raw and representative of America's broken healthcare system. (Her methodical cataloging of all the poking, levels-checking, and diet-watching she's endured in 'She's Lost Control Again' provide a convincing backdrop.) In tandem, the pieces that hint at the myriad ways she's felt hoodwinked by the '80s promise of a bright, accessible-to-all future — equal access to a job that brings stability and fulfillment, affordable housing, a dependable income — echo much of the zeitgeist in America these days, no matter which side you're on. 'The American Dream of my parents, and of boomers more broadly, has become less and less attainable for the next generation, and especially for the people who were never intended to dream such dreams in the first place: Black and Brown people, poor people, differently abled people, genderqueer people,' she writes. But Kreizman's essays aren't all home runs. While the points in 'A Series of Unfortunate Salaries' — an essay that reads like a blend of nostalgic remembrances of paying dues in publishing circa the early 2000s (ah, all that faxing and those happy hour vodka sodas) and a laundry list of complaints about the notoriously cheap and elitist publishing world — are all valid (and spot on), there's nothing that revelatory about illuminating the industry's oft-documented shoddy business practices and culture. Other essays, like 'My Dumb Obsessions,' in which Kreizman rehashes old dating strategies, or 'I Found My Life Partner (and My Health Insurance) Because I Got Lucky,' an otherwise charming love letter to her husband, feel either a little light or underdeveloped compared to the rest of the offerings. (I wanted to hear more from Kreizman in 'Having It All Without Kids,' for example.) Still, what unites these thought-provoking, heartfelt essays is Kreizman's clear commitment to dissecting and openly sharing all the ways she's felt let down by the institutions she once trusted — something we can all relate to.
