What if vampires were the world's original stateless people? Laredo author Ito Romo's debut novella Filth Eaters spans 1,000 years of conquest, migration & survival, with fangs. Read full review🔗🦂:
Vampires without Borders
Spanning a thousand years and multiple continents, the new novel Filth Eaters casts vampires as the world's ultimate stateless people.
theborderchronicle.com
What happens when a (very) small press novel is nominated for a Pulitzer? Max Pearl gets to know Stacey Levine, author of Mice 1961.
Who Are You Stacey Levine? What Happens When a “Deeply Weird,” (Very Small) Press Novel is a Pulitzer Finalist
It was like any Monday morning at Seattle Central College, the community college where Stacey Levine has taught creative writing for fifteen years. Arriving at work, she sat down at her office desk…
buff.ly
"Death, even in a form as shocking to Christian orthodoxy as self-murder, offends the bourgeois mind less than sex.” I read LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL (1960) and detected no lies @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social maxxpearl.substack.com/p/i-read-thi...
I read this 500-page history of American fiction so you don’t have to (but you should)
In Love and Death in the American Novel, Leslie Fiedler argues that our entire narrative tradition stems from our aversion to sex.
maxxpearl.substack.com
"Death, even in a form as shocking to Christian orthodoxy as self-murder, offends the bourgeois mind less than sex.” I read LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL (1960) and detected no lies @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social maxxpearl.substack.com/p/i-read-thi...
I read this 500-page history of American fiction so you don’t have to (but you should)
In Love and Death in the American Novel, Leslie Fiedler argues that our entire narrative tradition stems from our aversion to sex.
maxxpearl.substack.com
I wish every academic would read this excerpt from Josh Kline's interview about his recent essay on artists, NYC & affordability. I have questions about his broader argument, but this discussion of the political implications of jargon vs clear writing is deeply relevant to current state of academia
Amid the ICE invasion of Minnesota predicated on "Somali fraud," a right-wing news site aggressively deployed a similar playbook in Maine—with $$ from some of the GOP's biggest donors My dive into The Maine Wire, anti-Somali hate, and the dark money fueling it theintercept.com/2026/04/08/m...
GOP Megadonor Leonard Leo Is Bankrolling a Website on the Warpath Against Somalis
The Maine Wire presents itself as a plucky upstart fighting for the common Mainer, but it’s fueled by powerful right-wing money men.
theintercept.com
“He’s a man of his time and a victim in his own right, someone whose suffering made him susceptible to the worst values of his era.” In @thenation.com, Max Pearl reviews Manuel Mujica Lainez’s newly reissued novel, “Bomarzo” - www.thenation.com/article/cult...
In “Bomarzo,” the Renaissance Man is a Monster
Manuel Mujica Lainez’s historical novel, a strange biography of a 16th-century duke, leaves the reader wondering if human nature can ever change.
thenation.com
I wrote about jobs: having one, not having one, and how it can be hard to tell which is worse maxxpearl.substack.com/p/when-was-t...
When was the last time you laughed at work?
We all know how bad the hiring rate is. Search Work, a new anthology of writing on unemployment, tries to show what stats alone can’t.
maxxpearl.substack.com
This week on 𝑺𝒆𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓, I wrote about 𝑬𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆, the newly reissued photobook that laid the groundwork for found photography. Compiled in ‘77 by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, it's a portal to an uncanny dimension, conjured with images from government archives. open.substack.com/pub/maxxpear...
Hi everybody. My name is Max. I’m a book critic and this is my newsletter, SEPARATOR, edited by @noahhurowitz.bsky.social maxxpearl.substack.com/p/this-is-my...
This is my blog about books
Welcome to Separator.
maxxpearl.substack.com