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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.
Wall Street Journal
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
A War Over Heaven and Hell
''Paradise Lost' is, surely, the greatest poem in English,' Alan Jacobs declares in his book on John Milton's masterpiece, 'but it is not lovable.' Few who know the poem would disagree with either assertion. Milton's epic is magnificent, potent and memorable on a scale unmatched in our literature. No other long poem approaches its intellectual scope and sustained genius. Yet no one praises 'Paradise Lost' without adding some cautionary qualification. Mr. Jacobs, a literary critic and professor at Baylor, has written a 'biography' of 'Paradise Lost': a concise, lively and learned account of the poem's creation and reception. This work is part of Princeton University Press's series on 'The Lives of Great Religious Books,' which gives Mr. Jacobs a complicated mission. He must spend more time discussing the poem's afterlife than its creation. He must also examine the poem's theological content more than its literary qualities. The author succeeds because he is both a literary historian and a serious Christian. Few critics find Milton's theology as simpatico as his poetry. For most readers, 'Paradise Lost' is too long, too difficult and too pious. Milton's epic is formidable—10,565 lines of dense and lofty verse divided by Milton into 12 substantial books. Even Milton's sentences are supersize; in the first book, one sentence goes on for 121 words, tumbling down the page in an avalanche of subordinate clauses. Samuel Johnson proclaimed 'Paradise Lost' a work of high genius but added slyly: 'None ever wished it longer than it is.' Milton's language is packed with classical, biblical and geographic allusions. He delighted in Latinate vocabulary and intellectual wordplay. Early readers, Mr. Jacobs reports, had such trouble construing the literal sense of Milton's verse that his publisher required him to write a prose paraphrase for each chapter.
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Appreciation: Dr Denis Sampson
Dr Denis Sampson, the noted biographer, critic and essayist who died earlier this month, was born in Whitegate, Co Clare, but made his home for the last 30 years in Montreal, Canada. Born in 1948, he received his secondary education at Mount Saint Joseph's College, Roscrea, and went on to take a BA in English at University College Dublin. A period working in the Department of Finance followed, during which time Denis also studied for an MA in English from UCD. In 1969, he took up further study in English at McGill University, Montreal, where he earned his PhD. It was then that he began his 30-year teaching career at Vanier College, Montreal, then began and where Denis and his family made their home. READ MORE Although he wrote in many forms, Denis's most notable accomplishments are in the field of literary criticism and scholarship. His deft and thoughtful combination of these two related areas of inquiry was already fully formed in his first book, Outstaring Nature's Eye: The Fiction of John McGahern (1993), a work which is not only a model of criticism but which also effectively pioneered serious research into the mind and art of its subject. Another first followed, a biography of Brian Moore – The Chameleon Novelist (1998). Subsequently, Denis began to sound other strings of his literary bow, most notably in personal essays, many of which appeared in such eminent venues as The Dublin Review and the leading Canadian journal, Brick . These essays may be seen as both a consolidation of the homecoming implicit in Denis's McGahern work and an embrace of the wider world of international experience signposted by Moore. This latter sphere also led to Denis's numerous residences at Canada's internationally renowned Banff Centre, while he also maintained a regular presence as a valued speaker at Irish studies conferences. And in time, Denis's Irish origins and interests found a means of speaking to his Canadian life and work in the memoir A Migrant Heart (Montreal, 2014), a noteworthy contribution to the literature of the Irish diaspora (though, strangely, it still lacks an Irish edition). McGahern's continuing output claimed a good deal of Denis's critical energy, with substantial accounts of late-style McGahern appearing in leading Irish studies outlets. Additionally, the study Young John McGahern: Becoming a Novelist (2012) proved a fitting capstone to Denis's many years of thought and research about a writer whose canonical status Denis helped establish. The theme of becomings and beginnings also prompted Denis's most international book, The Found Voice: Writers' Beginnings (2016). Denis's many friends within and beyond academia found him a genial, open-minded, generous man who had as one of his finest traits a great gift for friendship. An excellent host, first-rate conversationalist, venturesome traveller, and devoted family man, Denis will also be fondly remembered for his genuine interest in his students, his scrupulous attention to their education, and to the helping hand he unfailingly extended to younger scholars. Denis Sampson died on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025, after a long illness at his home in Montreal. He was 77. His wife, Gabrielle, and their children Conor, Robert and Anna survive him, as do three grandchildren.
