What the Editors are Reading 10/12/2025
Feels like a lot has changed since we put out the last one of these. It’s only been a month and a half but since then we’ve seen a ramping up of American facism unlike any time in recent history. ICE agents are being sent to cities to conduct gestapo raids and place innocent people in purposefully neglected detention centers where they are being denied medicine, healthcare, legal advice, family contact, a safe and clean place to be, and where they are actually dying. All for no other reason than being brown in America. We’re one step away from concentration camps and that’s truly not hyperbole.
Through the veil of “terrorism” political enemies are being murdered in mass. You can now get drone striked for driving a speedboat and it probably won’t be long before extra-judicial killings of vague justification make their way onto land and to a city near you.
Limp peace talks are beginning to take place between Palestine and Israel but it’s hard to take them seriously. It’s clear from what has been offered thus far that Israel won’t be satisfied until they can cleanse the world of the Palestinians either through genocide or forced re-education and we as their benefactors don’t seem too pressed to stop them from doing so.
A new martyr has been presented to or created by the right to re-energize them and our centers of power and influence on the left couldn’t be less interested in doing something to push back. (One can’t help but think about the apt image that on the same day that his home city of Chicago was raided by ICE agents, Barack Obama decided what was most pressing to talk about on his social media was the passing of Jane Goodall.)
I do want to say in the midst of all this, please do not let the dark news surrounding you stop you from trying to help. If you find yourself in a position in which your life and livelihood is not being threatened by the wave of encroaching fascism, understand it as an opportunity to help those who are not in such a position. Send money to those in need in Palestine or an organization dedicated to relief and rebuilding. Join an ICE rapid response group in your neighborhood. Find something you can do to help others and do it.
And, finally, don’t lose sight of what a privilege it is to have a body and mind located at a site of relative peace and safety from which you can embrace and understand the expressions of others. Support your friends. Read their books. Go to their shows. Share their work. It’s something worth cherishing now more than ever.
With that, here is the list. (Also shout out to our guy Frazer for finishing the Appalachian Trail. Come back to civilization we need you to draw some stuff.)
Jenkin: I’m reading my book and also other things that I will get to after I treadmill okay i’m back I was on that thing for like two weeks.
I’m also reading Léon Pradeau’s This is it for like the fifth time. And, Eshleman & Smith’s translations of Aimé Césaire’s Collected Poems. Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners too. I’m dissertating on David Jones’s In Parenthesis and Ishion Hutchinson’s School of Instructions, so I’m reading and rereading those works as well.
I’m listening to Mars Accelerator’s Clouds For Your Y Axis which is probably the best indie rock album of the last 20 years. Easily top 10.
Malik Chatman, Photography Editor
I just came off of reading the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals so I was looking for an easier read this time around.I Came across The Honor of Your Presence by Dave Eggers at my local library and often when choosing a book I feel like there’s always a draw to past events that I hadn’t experienced first hand, however, during the full duration of Covid I was working in person at a residency so to hear about the ways people dealt with isolation peaked my interest.
Spencer Johnson, Associate Editor
I just finished reading Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, a trip of a novel that takes place in Bellona, a fictional American city, in the aftermath of an undescribed concentrated apocalypse. The place attracts all kinds of people who once lived on the margins, finding a home and a life outside of the bounds of “normal” society. I massively enjoyed the read, but can make no claims to understand the novel in all its complexity. As a sort of unintentional followup to Dhalgren, I’m now reading Noam Chomsky’s On Anarchism.
Matt Gillick, Managing Editor
I’m reading the screenplay of Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras. I’ve never seen the movie, and it’s been years since I’ve read a play or screenplay, so I thought why not experience the language without any context. The dialogue is stunning and harsh and almost inhuman, which makes a love story that much more compelling, especially in the fallout of atrocity.
Also, I will shamelessly announce that I got a short story out in Sybil Journal. It’s part of a much larger project I’ve been trying to carve out. Having this section find a home has invigorated me when I’ve been holed up, scribbling away.
Jake Hargrove, Editor-in Chief
I’ve been really enjoying Subliminal Jihad’s Sekret Machine Music podcast series tracing the sus and at times fascist origins of electronic music. I think after watching like two years of IDF guys slaughtering people and raving to Avicii to celebrate the series feels more prescient than ever. The first episode features an excerpt from the personal writings of Leon Theramin (who, holy shit, is wildly interesting) in which he describes his own birth and it sounds like a straight up Pynchon passage.
Sam Robinson just put a book out titled Man with Head Removed that’s a banger. He came on the pod to talk about it recently which is worth listening too.
My good friend Heather Nelson just put out a book of poems called Motherland that’s very good. Heather puts so much effort and time into supporting the writers around her and building literary community so it’s really amazing to see her get this much deserved spotlight. I’m also going to be reading with her in New York October 26th at QED Astoria.
Finally I just finished Seth Harp’s book The Fort Bragg Cartell and it’s probably the best thing I’ve read this year to be honest. There’s been a lot of talk about “when the war comes home” over the last five or so years and, yeah, the war has come home. Seth effectively and efficiently describes the massive intelligence apparatus that supports our special ops branch, explains its roots within the deep state power structure and history, and illustrates the unchecked lawlessness of its practitioners as a “necessary” by-product of that power structure, all while weaving a narrative so compelling it got him an HBO series deal. If you were keeping up with his reporting over the last few you shouldn’t be surprised that this book is incredible but we are definitely seeing the emergence of a very important voice on the literary main stage with Seth Harp here.