12 Questions for Noah Kumin
The Editor of the Mars Review on working with Martin Amis, contemporary definitions of the 'Bohemian' and the 'Bourgeois', devoting one's self as an editor, the supposed purpose of MFAs, and more.
Sitting at my desk at an apartment on the Lower East Side, where I’ve done a good portion of my writing over the past year. It’s very far down East Broadway, away from the hoopla, the haggling Chinese residents and the transient modish right-leaning hipsters. At night it’s quiet, I can hardly hear a thing. But during the day the sound of ambulances and police cars is constant, relentless. To my north are stacks upon stacks of exposed brick multi-story housing complexes filled with lower-middle income residents who’ve been there for years. To my south are housing projects. The ambulances go north, south, east, and west, but the police cars always drive in roughly the same direction.
This city I write in. People are constantly dying or being arrested. New York is seen to much of the world as a financial and cultural hub. But, when you exist here on a daily basis, and when you read the local news incessantly, as I do, you come to realize that here, more than anywhere else, people are constantly, at every minute and even second, dying and being arrested; another way of looking at New York would be to say that it’s the global center of death, illness, societal decay, police corruption, and a unique form of amoral, extensive criminality. There’s also plenty of narcissism. I regularly begin to feel like one of those suburban dads in the movies, where they look at New York from afar as a place filled with meth, fentanyl, anal sex, and ‘creative journalism’; a destination of latent desire, desire that can only lead to one end, which is, of course, death or being arrested. The truth is, though, I’m not one of those dads. I can’t stand tucking in my shirts and I’ve never worn a checkered button down, I’ve never purchased ribs or a Christmas tree and I’ve only once been inside of a Costco. I’m just disillusioned from having spent the majority of my life here.
I’d like to now mention that, among all this brutality, in New York City, there’s regular gestures of good will performed by people at the lowest ranks of status, the people who struggle to pay their rent and their bills and have had many relatives and friends who have died or been arrested. It can sometimes feel like the only pleasure these people derive comes when they begrudgingly assist others, lessening the plight and burden of strangers in a population-dense atmosphere. Just look right or left and you’ll see without trouble that there’s always someone, homeless or not, that needs a great amount of help, and, surprisingly, many of them will receive at least some form of solace, though only short-term. When you continue looking around you’ll see the teachers and home-aids, orderlies and attendants, the people who work good-willed jobs that pay next to nothing. They’re usually people of color who go to work dressed in non-fancy clothes, talking on the phone to someone far away in a sing-song language I never understand. There’s also, when you look, plenty to be found in relation to the aforementioned sectors of finance, tech, arts & culture.
In New York City, the industries of finance and tech are inescapable. Their presence exists everywhere, and their symbols, through billboards and architecture, through well-tailored suits, Instagramable coffee shops, and over-priced over-hyped mediocre dining establishments, permeate the goings on of our cosmopolitan existence. Unless you’re rolling in success, which always is money (see how far ‘spiritual success’ alone will get you here), anything or anyone that represents the world of finance or tech becomes an object of complete resentment and anger. This resentment and anger is not for nothing. Art, whether it be paintings, sculpture, literature or film, is usually intertwined and in bed with all the objects of your anger and resentment, which is to say finance and tech. You begin to wonder why you live here. And then still, among this wondering, people continue to become ill, to die and be arrested. The constant wee-yuuu, weee-yuuu sirens of the ambulances and cop cars, the flickering of helicopter blades, the horrifying cues of all these arrests and deaths, serve as the soundtrack to everyday city life. This is all not to mention the trash and the rats. But on top of the trash and the rats there are the readings and the zines, the independent plays and self-financed book reviews, and you see very well that people are struggling and working and hoping just the same as you are, and this creates a very distinct, one of a kind, New York sense of community, New York sense of identity, and that’s why, even though we’re all free to go live in peace, in nature for around one tenth of the price (that is unless we’re dying or being arrested), we continue to stay, to stay living and miserable in New York, yearning for those bright moments of romance, of transcendence, of meaning and belonging; you are not alone and you never have been. And, besides, you don’t know how to live in nature anyway, nor in peace.
One of those bright moments can be attributed to Noah Kumin, Noah Kumin and his project, The Mars Review of Books. I have no doubt he would have named it the New York Review of Books, as that’s where all operations are based, but, well, that name had been taken. I don’t know how many people read it, The Mars Review, or exactly many copies get circulated, or just who in the hell is financing it, but, anyway, I am happy it exists. I read it now and then. In turn I think Noah is happy that I exist, that I do things like this for little-to-no money out of passion, vocation, because, after all, there’s no other reason to do it. Noah Kumin and I watch each other, usually from a distance, exist. And then we nod in acknowledgment and continue with our lives. We both hope to not die or eventually be arrested.
It’s true that one day Noah and I will both die. I hope I’m not the person breaking this news to him. It would probably be for the best to not think too much about that day. To avoid thinking about it, we live in New York, where there’s so much distraction, cruelty and stimulation. There’s Pascal’s famous quote: All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. But it’s not quite true, because I’m able to sit in a room, alone, and write this out, all while listening to the terror of my environment, living in it too. Humanity’s problems go deeper. I love the way the best of books, and the discourse around them, explore these problems. There’s no one quote to explain everything, or solution to solve it all, just a never ending conversation and eternal dialogue, best represented in places like book reviews that continue to march along in an overtly illiterate, moronic period of time.
I’ve come to the conclusion that living in New York is just like joining the Cartel, in that everyone who gets involved ends up in prison or dead. That prison, of course, can be metaphorical; you don’t need a siren to signal it forthcoming. The death, too, can be an apt allusion to a certain way of life. These are just my observations.
*
Bob Dylan says that when someone wears a mask, they’re going to tell you the truth, but when someone is not wearing a mask, it’s highly unlikely. I guess it’s because the mask provides a sense of protection. But what do these truth-tellers wish to be protected from?
Because time has passed, various things have happened. These ‘various things’ are none of your business, but they have led me to simultaneously ruminate and consider (to ruminate is to think deeply, to consider is to think carefully). I was thinking this morning about how much people hate to hear the truth. The truth, which is to say reality, is something that many despise; people don’t want to hear it, yet always purport to love it. They regularly hold truth as the highest ideal (this is incorrect; obviously religion—which is about belief, not truth—is the highest ideal). What’s interesting is how a person reacts to the truth, especially one they don’t want to hear. Notice the way that once a truth is received, in spoken or written form, it tends to immediately become distorted by the receiver. The truth is then, unfortunately, no longer objective; as soon as it’s conveyed, it ceases to exist. The distortion belongs to the interpreter, and then the distortion becomes experience. The person’s supposed truth doesn’t belong to them, not after it’s been shared. When our life is revealed, betrayed to those around us, a great and frightening subjectivity comes to fruition. (And still, somehow, people agree to be interviewed.)
This sudden subjectivity of experience is simultaneously the scariest and most freeing thing about writing. It’s the scariest and most freeing thing about being edited, about getting feedback from confidants, then releasing your work to be digested by the public. The gross, stupid, and malevolent public. Sometime this public surprises me, startles me with delight. They perceive things with extraordinary nuance at the times you least expect it. For a second or two I don’t even care about concepts like truth or experience because I’m so damn fascinated by the public’s reaction, the manner in which they creatively reinterpret what I’ve written or said. Reviewers of books and critics of society are usually the ones who do this best. For a second or two I maintain a great faith in humanity, a belief in the capacity of others.
Noah Kumin mentions, in our interview, how faith, religion comes not from relegare (to bind) but actually from the phrase rem legere (to choose).
*
Most interviews with writers or artists are useless. They merely paraphrase the work that has elicited them. They feed advertising and social buzz. As an interviewer, I contribute to this buzz. By nature, it disgusted me. I saw in it an assault on privacy, on the autonomy of readers, who were not sufficiently compensated by the information they were given. What they needed was silence, and what I needed was to move on to something else
*
Dear Noah,
The above is a quote from Philippe Lançon. It’s on the thirty-second page of his autobiography/memoir (what’s the difference?) Disturbance, where Lançon writes of being shot in the face by a group of armed terrorists during the 2015 massacre at Charlie Hebdo. One of the bullets Lançon received completely shattered his jaw, leading to over a dozen reconstructive surgeries, including, of course, bone grafts and prosthetics (Western technology). In addition to the trauma of enduring and witnessing the attacks, Lançon had to grieve not just his previous life, but that of his several colleagues and friends who were slaughtered in front of him. I suppose one should listen, carefully, to what people like Philippe Lançon have to say. They’ve looked right into the void, the very worst depths of hell, and still, they persist, they go on to continue. I have trouble getting off the couch after eating a big meal.
I’ll try to make this public letter not completely useless. After all I’m lucky and grateful to be able to sit and write to you, sweet Noah, as opposed to a memoir of my own gruesome attack. This experience is a gift, the Lançon quote the wrapping paper.
I have a friend named Gady Shemesh that I’d like to tell you about. He’s tall, bald, garrulous and energetic, a film director and jewelry salesman who lives in the sprawling city of Los Angeles; a native of Encino. During a recent walk along the Santa Monica promenade, off windy Ocean Park, Gady admonished me with severity for being so ‘consistently melancholic. A real fucking downer.’ He said I’m too ‘lucky in life’ and therefore don’t have the ‘right’ to wallow in such sadness, endless self-critique, in the act of dwelling on humiliations of the past, possible traumas of the future.
‘Certainly, Gady, there are varying degrees of privilege,’ I responded. But my thoughts contradicted my response: he’s definitely not wrong; I’m such a miserable bastard. (Tucker Carlson, a man I thought I’d never reference, once said one should never listen to what people say but, rather, pay attention to how they feel, because there lies the truth. ) Gady went on to tell me that I should practice something vague called ‘gratefulness,’ which includes acknowledging all the things we have and the fortunate positions we find ourselves in, as opposed to the things we don’t have, the positions we are, somehow, apparently not in, even if we’ve come to believe we deserve it. This letter is me practicing gratefulness.
I’ve never been shot in the jaw by a raging Islamist (good porn idea: the raging SalaFIST). I’m grateful, as well, to Gady for being my friend. And I’m grateful to you, Noah, for participating in this interview. I’m grateful to never have had any close friends who were shot in the face. I’m grateful for never having to recover from being shot in the face. I’m drinking a flat white with coconut milk, sitting at a cafe as I write this out, listening to the sirens go off in the background, knowing that for now, I’m safe and in comfort. God is good (and I mean that in the moderate way).
*
I’ve been in the company of, and in the circumstances of friendship with, (what an odd way to put it) several different women throughout the course of my life. Women, women! Women women women. On several occasions I’ve been told, by some of these women, various iterations of the same idea, which goes something like this: If I haven’t had anyone to settle down with and have kids with by my late 30s, perhaps I’ll call you and you can provide me with some semen, some spunk, get me pregnant, give me some children, the chance of experiencing a beauty denied to so many unfortunate woman, that the beauty of offspring - would that kind of arrangement work with you? Everyone says it in their own way, and no one’s ever said ‘spunk’, but the message is always the same. I wonder each time if this is a common thing for men to hear, or if, perhaps, this is just a ‘me thing.’
I’m not gloating. I also, I should say, don’t take this proposition as an insult. It’s something that exists between an insult and a compliment, the best and most interesting kind of statement. They’re saying, these women, many of whom I care about quite deeply, that I’m not to be trusted to commit, or to provide the safety, financial, maybe even emotional support they require for an adequate partner they’d like to spend a good amount of their lives with; growing, and, sharing various responsibilities, raising children in the most ideal and well-adjusted of environments. I am not necessarily sufficient. But in my genetics, something in my limited capacity for passable intelligence, they see something they can work with. And even if I can’t necessarily be trusted to provide A-level financial support, or consistent reliability, I can give them an acceptable canvas, a template to be adjusted. These women who’ve made these propositions have decided that, it may come to a point, in a dismal dating environment, where they’ll have to shoulder all those aforementioned financial and emotional burdens themselves, or at least with minimum help, and that in regard to spawning offspring, something is indeed better than nothing.
I am better than nothing, is the gist of what they’re saying. I always end up taking it as a compliment. And, being better than nothing, is yet another thing, like you Noah, that I am grateful for.
*
When I met you, Noah, around one year ago, it was in the midst of a phase, one of your little phases. During this phase you claimed to only be an editor. You disavowed yourself from the act of writing and claimed to not be interested in it.
Several months later I wake up and go on the internet only to find a post, written by you, saying that you’ll be having two books published within the next year or so, books that you say you’ve been working on for years. Well isn’t life just a funny collection of phases that contradict one another.
Perhaps I’m wrong, and you weren’t lying at all. Perhaps you’d already written the books, and had so much trouble getting them published, that you said something like ‘to hell with all that’ and went through a long, cold period where you did nothing but edit. And then, one day, by a turn of good fortune, your agent finally emailed you back to say there’d been some success, that the toil of sitting and writing and editing and struggling was not, in fact, for nothing, and that your long-form work had finally found a home, and, in turn, if the advance payments weren’t sufficient, you’d at least have the chance of becoming immortal, of your published novels standing up to history. People or martians could, and maybe will, remember your name. You’ve never confirmed this story because I’ve never exactly asked. All you told me was that it takes a lot of time and that one needs to be patient, to continue working and be patient. And, in the middle, continue some form of life, which includes relationships and events and experiences and walks, as well as food, stimulants, distraction and hope. It’s the only thing we can do after all. Just don’t stop writing.
Thank you for participating in this interview and I hope we continue to live in parallel worlds for as long as possible, crossing each other’s paths as consistently as makes sense to the rhythm of our very own, particular lives.
GG: Why would the bourgeois be suspicious of the bohemian? Why might the bohemian be suspicious of the bourgeois? Where, in all this, does the petit-bourgeois come in? Perhaps let’s go back to the drawing board: definitions. How would you define, in 2024, in lower-Manhattan, the bohemian, the bourgeois, and the petit-bourgeois? Can you give examples?
NK: Apologies for being difficult, but I don’t really believe these Marxist terms bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie are useful in 2024, in lower Manhattan or elsewhere. In fact I think they’re closer to anti-concepts—that is, categories that actively hinder our ability to understand the world as it really is. I don’t know if we want to get into Marx on the first question, but I could expand later if you want.
I infer that you’re wondering about differing factions at the sort of combustible Lower Manhattan readings or other events we might both attend, I think a more useful set of concepts is Professional Managerial Class (those who work primarily to uphold the dominant ideology and only secondarily for money) vs. grifters (those who work expressly to make money). The dominant ideas in our culture about any controversial topic—sex, race, war—are always changing, and yet, remarkably, at any given time, the PMC generally agree on what we should or should not think about these controversies. Their job is to stay very up to date on what this ideology is and to enforce it, whether they are academics, nurse practitioners, journalists, project managers at Google, novelists, or bankers.
The grifter only has to make money. Often he or she can do so by entertainingly pointing out the strange inconsistencies and sometimes outright malpractice of the PMC class. On the other hand, while being more likely to tell the unvarnished truth, the grifter gives up his or her dignity completely and must put on a continuous song and dance for his or her audience. The grifter is histrionic, loud, tiresome, and constantly posting on social media.
It’s obvious why these two groups of people would resent one another: They have opposite values and aims. And the story of the last 10–12 years is that of the grifter position becoming more lucrative, and even, in some cases, high status, while PMC jobs become comparatively less lucrative and lower status. But it is still of course much better to be a PMC, if one has the stomach for it.
As for real bohemians—people who live only for art and are not engaged at all in either the PMC or grifter rat race—there are so few of them now. I don’t think the PMC or grifters pay enough attention to bohemians to resent them; and if the bohemian is a true bohemian he is not interested in PMC or grifters at all. I was once good friends and roommates with a true bohemian. He refused the use of money, ate food exclusively out the garbage, and generally made a nuisance of himself performing puppet shows on subway platforms using old dolls and the bones of animals he had scavenged. He was one of the more honorable men I have ever known. But it’s hard to keep up that lifestyle. Last I heard he is teaching LGBTQIA+ literature at a private high school, which is decidedly PMC.
Can you summarize, based on some of your previous work, the relationship between the Romantic Lie and Novelistic Truth? What does this have to do with the divine? Can you give an example of moments or periods in your life where you were touched or affected by the divine, I.e., as you say, ‘the divine spark’? What, exactly, does this have to do with theology and phenomenology?
So that's from René Girard's first book. I read it a long time ago. Girard goes through the novels of Stendhal, Dostoevsky, and Proust, and shows how these novels are about their protagonists discovering that their desires are not unique as they once thought (the Romantic Lie) but rather are conditioned (this revelation constitutes Novelistic Truth). (This makes a pun in French.) You can see the same pattern also in other major novels—Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, for instance. The flowering of the realist novel seems to come out of this desire to push back against what we would today call main character syndrome. Anyway, I thought it was a clever thesis. And so I extended it to an analysis of the internet, which often makes humanity as a whole look very stupid—or at least sheeplike. My point is that we should take this news of our own stupidity in stride, and not kill the messenger.
Any healthy, thriving literary/arts scene has rivalries, and I think these rivalries are integral for the production of art that’s any good, any worthwhile. Who are your rivals and why? What would say to this rival if you’d really want to get under their skin? Further, what, in your opinion, makes your work stronger, more vital, more necessary, than the work of your rival?
I don't have a rival that I know of, although it would be nice to have one. I could stand to have a few more enemies at least. Lack of criticism makes me paranoid. No one has ever written to me to say "this is how you're wrong in your approach with the Mars Review" or anything like that, although I know there must be people who think I'm wrong in the way I go about it. I receive a huge amount of encouragement from intelligent, discerning people in my own sphere—but I worry I'm in a bubble. Or maybe the Mars Review really is the best thing out there and everyone else is crazy and wrong.
Is there a fictional or non-fictional literary character that you’d love to fuck? If so, who and why? If not, how come? You don’t want to fuck anyone who’s not real?
I liked Daisy Miller alright. Scarlett Johanssen in Lost in Translation. The cartoon femme fatale from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I don't know.
You received an MFA from NYU. Aside from the benefit of being advised by legendary figures such as Martin Amis, would you say there’s any benefit for a blossoming writer to pursue an MFA? Does it annoy you to see so many people say it’s a waste of time? On the contrary, do you think an MFA is indeed a complete waste of time and money, that writing is a talent that comes naturally and can be practiced through sheer repetition, not through paid-for courses and workshops? Is there any right answer to this longwinded question?
The good MFA programs will often pay you, not the other way around, so in such cases it's not a waste of money. For me it wasn't a waste of time either. It's nice to be around a cohort of people who are as delusional as you are and who believe in the importance of literary fiction. It's nice to win the approval of a few well-known authors, if possible. It's nice to be forced to be critical and to force others to be critical of you. Do many people still care about the MFAs? I think the general criticism of them is stuck in the 1980s, when Gordon Lish's MFA-inflected style had become de rigeur in all the big magazines and people were worried about the general influence of this style. But now no one reads fiction in the magazines anyway. When I got my MFA I didn't have the sense that there was a preferred way of writing among my professors or fellow students. If MFAs are in any way an impediment to the writing of good fiction, this is dwarfed a hundred times over by the problems of general illiteracy and the ideological tendencies of publishers and the reading public. So I don't think anyone should worry about MFAs.
You told me recently, and I’m paraphrasing, that you write less now because editing (The Mars Review, freelance editing for other authors) in its entirety, has become your work of art. This is a fucking shame, I think, because, as the readers of this interview can already see, you’re a great writer. Can you explain this rationale? Do you think it might be a form of resistance?
Thank you. In some ways the role of editor suits me perfectly because I find the process of actually setting my thoughts down in words excruciating, but I quite like the process of tidying the words up and making them straightforward and pleasing to the ear. You're probably right that it's a form of resistance, but this is no time for psychoanalysis. In any case I've been writing a fair amount this past week since our reading at KGB. The story I read is something I wrote about ten years ago, and then frantically revised in the hours leading up to the reading, after August (Lamm) told me that she never reads from her novel at readings, and picks stories that are particularly well suited to being read aloud. Which is probably obvious, but sometimes I'm late to understand these things. Anyhow, I'm writing about the same character I read about at KGB. He no longer works in an office. Now he writes JavaScript for his laptop job from his renovated loft in Red Hook. He's had his Rabbit is Rich moment. I'm having a grand old time writing it.
Can you tell me a bit about where you grew up, how you grew up, and how your childhood formed you into the man you’ve become? Further, how would you define childhood in relation to adulthood? What changes, what’s lost, what’s gained?
I grew up in New Hampshire. Our state motto is "Live Free or Die." That's all there is to it, really.
I’m suspicious of scenes within all sectors of art. At first they’re cool, alive, and then, inevitably, given human nature, no matter how punk or fringe, they turn into a fiasco of politics and group-think. Do you think this is happening right now in the downtown literary/theater world? If so, how? Moreover, how can an artist manage to stay on the periphery of a scene, to be in it but not of it, reaping the benefits of community and connections without falling into the traps of group-think within art?
The problem is that, due to network effects in the internet age, the power of publicity has outstripped the power of the product itself, so that the publicity or 'scene' around a product is always in danger of swallowing it up. I don't know what the solution is.
August Comte says humans are spiritual animals, this is the human impulse, to be religious and spiritual and express it through ritual and through dogma. How would you define your own sense of morality? Moreover, how can someone build a sense of morality that doesn’t stem from monotheism, or for that matter, from any structured religion? Is that possible? Further, can morality be something that’s individual, or is it always counterposed against a sense of the collective?
Robert Graves claims that the etymology you'll find in the dictionary for religion—religare, to bind—is actually false. He believes it's from rem legere: to choose a thing, i.e. the right thing. This is what we need priests and poets for: to choose the right thing under given circumstances. Here’'s the full passage, beginning with the last full paragraph on pp. 477.
Vladimir Nabakov said there are two kinds of people, those who can sleep and those who can’t. He found people who slept well somewhat plebeian, complacent. What’s your relationship like with sleep? In your sleep, what manifestations of reality come to fruition? How does it then affect your day, your life?
I've always had a hard time falling asleep but blessedly am able to stay asleep for a while once I've done so. I don't like to talk or think about it too much lest I become the sort of person who can't stay asleep. Scott Fitzgerald's essay about insomnia is one of the most terrifying things I've ever read. My dreams are usually silly anxiety dreams or nightmares about being on the wrong side of the law. But on a few occasions I've had what certain aboriginal tribes refer to as "Big Dreams"—these are dreams that are not run-of-the-mill; I think in the societies where these dreams exist only shamans or chiefs are allowed to have them. These dreams obviously corresponded to nothing I had seen on earth, and I am glad I remembered them.
Do you think polyamory is a realistic ideal? What about monogamy? How might polyamory and monogamy be related to capitalism? Which one, would you say, is more capitalist? How?
I used to have strong reactionary feelings about all this but as I grow older I care less and less. No one really knows what to do about love and sex, which at least gives us something to talk about.
When you produce a work of art, who are you speaking to? What is it that drives the need for self-expression? Is this something an artist should know about themselves?
I'm talking to myself but throwing my voice a bit so that other people might think that I'm talking to them. I don't generally feel the need for self-expression. Maybe that's uncommon among writers, I'm not sure. What drives me is I'll have a sensation or an augury or whatever it is and I'll want to lock that sensation or augury or whatever it is in place with words, and then I feel compelled to fiddle with the words until I've got the sensation or augury or whatever it is locked in place to my own satisfaction. Sometimes the sensation or augury or whatever it is can be locked down in the space of a poem, sometimes it takes a story, and sometimes it takes a novel. Something like that.