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 how 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