Deez Interviews: Meet Vulture’s new literary critic who’s got the best dish on the publishing world and also the crossword community??
Happy Thursday, Deezers! This week’s interview is coming at you a lil early with writer and literary critic Molly Young, who recently brought over her newsletter, Read Like the Wind, to Vulture officially. We chatted about her professional reading routine, some spicy publishing world minutiae, and also her side hustle as a crossword constructor! Enjoy (^^and subscribe to the newsletter! It’s enormously good!)
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The interviewee: Molly Young (follow her @magicmolly!)
The gig: Literary critic at Vulture, aka the writer behind Read Like the Wind, a monthly book recommendation newsletter!
OK, so first obvious question for a literary critic: What is your reading routine like??
I wake up at 5 a.m., work out, get fully dressed, prepare a bulletproof coffee, and crack open a book.
Just kidding!! I wake up later than I want to every day and read for a couple of hours at random times, taking detailed notes because I have a bad memory. If I don't take notes I forget what I'm reading in real time. I read between other work tasks, and it feels like a pleasurable break.
Do you have a strict delineation between reading for work vs. reading for fun?
I read everything for fun. I don't read non-fun books. My definition of "fun" is pretty girthy though.
Amidst all the usual book reviews, Goodreads, and a media landscape somewhat awash with literary recs, what kind of role do you envision “Read Like the Wind” playing in readers' lives?
I get all my best recommendations from friends, not Media. So I am hoping this newsletter will operate like an email from a friend.
The nice thing about the format, as Deez Links ~fans~ know, is that a newsletter is opt-in, so the author doesn't have any temptation (as she might on Twitter or another platform) to sink to the lowest common denominator of non-offensiveness or piety. People who don't care about which books I like won't go to the effort of getting it, so I don't have to worry about them. People sometimes email me to let me know that they loathed a book I recommended, which I love—it turns out that having smart and engaged haters is a joy.
Also, the newsletter a place where I can talk about peculiar aspects of the publishing world. For example, when publishers send out advance copies of books, they'll often include a one-page letter from the book's editor or publicist, explaining who the author is (or reminding you if the author is already famous) and providing clues as to what kind of book you are holding. The letter will cite 2-3 aspirationally comparable authors, saying something like "Mr. Author has drawn comparisons to Philip Roth and Tom Stoppard as a gifted humorist" or "Ms. Author draws inspiration from great American writers like Toni Morrison and E.L. Doctorow."
If the last line of the letter is "I look forward to your prominent coverage of this literary event this Fall," it means the author got a huge advance that needs to be recouped. I love sniffing out this kind of industry minutiae.
As the announcement of your hire earlier this fall mentioned, you also have a side hustle as a crossword constructor! What’s that like?
Writing crosswords is punishing because it's mostly a spatial exercise, not a verbal one. What I enjoy most about the Crossword Community (which I'm on the far, far outskirts of) is how eccentric everyone is.
Not eccentric in a "wears statement shoes" way, but in the sense of being deeply bizarre. There's one NYT crossword constructor who operates on—I'm not sure what this kind of schedule is called, but—he'll go to sleep at 10 p.m. one night, and the next night he'll go to sleep at 11 p.m., and the next night an hour later and so forth, which means that at some points during a month he's fully nocturnal. (He lives with a partner who, as far as I know, maintains a normal sleep schedule.)
This is the kind of behavior that is routine among crosswordfolk. I came for the freaks and stayed for the puzzles.
Finally, if there were a mandatory fall 2019 syllabus for young professionals in the media/literary industry, what's one book you'd make a required read?
I'm gonna thwart this question and recommend a book that came out in April of this year, because I haven't read anything better since! It is How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell.
The title is deceptive. It's largely about doing things, but specifically about not #doingthings. I recommend it regardless of whether that distinction makes immediate sense to a reader. It's a hallucinogenic book, in that it is revelatory and self-revelatory, but is written with utter straightforwardness.
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Don’t forget to follow @magicmolly on Twitter, subscribe to Read Like the Wind, and have either an absolutely eccentric or self-revelatory rest of the week!