Midway into Maris Kreizman’s witty and engaging I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays there is a telling quote by Anais Nin: “There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”
This vibrant essay collection is a crafted mosaic—as expected with the multifaceted Kreizman, there’s nothing visibly laborious to be seen—revealing fragments of personal truths that resonate, and spark fires. As a well-regarded cultural and literary critic, across a range of media from her celebrated podcast to her current Substack and everywhere in between, one of Kreizman’s literary superpowers is creating an intimate, seemingly effortless setting that draws both subjects and readers in, and this debut collection is a charming reflection of her open-hearted talents. These direct and memorable essays are less about her many professional achievements than personal landmarks—from living with chronic illness to the structural and financial imbalances of publishing, from societal strictures of what it is to be “worthy” to questioning the political status quo—and incendiary awakenings depicting where she is—where we are—now.
Mandana Chaffa
It’s a little daunting to interview someone whose work I enjoy so much, Maris, and deciding where to start about this collection was the hardest part of preparation. If first thought is best thought, let’s talk about being a rule follower, and this assumption that “if I do”—women do—”everything right, then I’ll be rewarded for my hard work.” I struggled with this false narrative for decades in corporate America, along with that twin tyrant: “having to pay your dues.” Your philosophy seems to be less about breaking rules for the sake of it, as opposed to questioning why the rules exist, and who they are meant to benefit. I could have used this advice when I first put on my black skirt suit and heels and elevatored up the glassy skyscrapers!
Maris Kreizman
It’s the most American thing, isn’t it? You too can bypass systemic problems if your boot straps are strong enough! And yes, the conversation is so gendered. I really feel like women of my generation were raised to be good little rule followers. It really hadn’t occurred to me that rule followers would never ask questions that made the people in power uncomfortable.
Mandana Chaffa
Let alone the darker sibling of such mind games: “If I worked hard enough it would all work out. And if it didn’t, that’s because I wasn’t working hard enough.” I really appreciate how you expanded this into the conversation of longstanding chronic illness. The world class self-adjudicating brain, when applied to illness, physical or mental, is ridiculous of course, but the most talented folks I know tend to hold themselves to a standard they wouldn’t expect from anyone else.
Maris Kreizman
There is so much moral judgment about so many things over which we simply don’t have control. Diabetes is especially fraught now, when RFK is discarding medicine and treating chronic illness as a personal failing that could have been avoided with a better diet or whatever. But even before this current insanity, it was a revelation to me when I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided and began to understand how people with illnesses (she was writing about her cancer experience) are told by society that we must be fighters. No one wants to hear, “I don’t want to smile about it because this is difficult and painful and expensive.” But it is!
Mandana Chaffa
Full disclosure: we (too briefly) served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle together, and I’ve been reading your work for longer than that, but even so, so much of the collection—of your experiences—felt new to me. Between podcasts, Substacks, articles, and social media, you live a rather visible life; what I love about this collection is that despite what readers may already know about you, these essays are exceptionally open, vulnerable, intimate, and fresh. Would you talk about that directness, and how you determined what would be included in this collection? Did your focus change from your initial outline to when you were crafting the final product?
Maris Kreizman
Maybe what I excel at is the artifice that I’m an open book online. I have a lot of strong opinions about books and politics, but I keep lots of things to myself. I think the first essay in the book is my most vulnerable: it’s about what it’s like to live with Type 1 diabetes on a minute to minute basis. I’ve always hated to talk about it, but it occupies so much of my brain capacity on any given day. It felt good to write it down. Once I did that, the rest came more easily.
Mandana Chaffa
The title refers to one of the great closing scenes from Mad Men, when Peggy and Joan are sidelined—or sideswiped—after the takeover by McCann. It’s a terrific callback to how freeing it is to say, and mean: I’m no longer participating in this illusory construct. These essays share that kind of arc in your life; what it means—what it demands—to try to belong, and the flash bang of deciding: no more.
Maris Kreizman
Thank you for getting what I was trying to do. Joan was always the worker who put on a smile no matter what, who went with the flow of office politics. She’s known all along that her workplace has one zillion institutional things wrong with it, but she thought she was one of the rare and savvy few who could play the game and win. How freeing it is when you finally give up the lie.
Mandana Chaffa
That Mad Men scene, the entire series, also underlines the limited choices even contemporary women are allowed. Are you a Peggy or a Joan? A Ginger or a Mary Ann? A Betty or a Veronica? STEM or the arts? Binaries that seemingly suggest opportunities, but are actually restrictive. Or as you wrote: “What am I if I don’t fall into a neat little category of women’s roles in society?”
Maris Kreizman
Yes, and I think in the past decade or so, especially for us bookish types, the question has been “Are you a mother or an art monster?” Thanks, Jenny Offill! (Just kidding, it is not her fault that her fictional character’s dilemma struck such a chord with so many women.) Certainly I wish that our choices were spectrums, not binaries. In the book I write about how deciding not to have children has made me an outlier, even in the year 2025. I want us to be past this point, but it’s so clear we’re not.
Mandana Chaffa
Thematically, this collection covers a range of cultural and political ground, but one umbrella I adored is how much of a love story it is. Or several love stories. Certainly about you and Josh, and you and Josh and Bizzy (RIP), but also about your passion for the arts, for community. You might still want to burn certain places down, but only to create a different kind of creative, restorative, truer edifice.
Maris Kreizman
I don’t want readers to get the idea that my collection is only about anger (although I do understand that the very brilliant and provocative jacket cover might imply otherwise!). There is so much I love and want to fight for. I want to live in a world where community is valued, where art is valued, where we care about other people and their welfare.
Mandana Chaffa
Maris, though you don’t spend much time noting your achievements in this collection—if at all—you’re undeniably accomplished across all the tentacles of being a literary and cultural critic, and have employed just about every vehicle I can imagine. What are you interested in pursuing now? With whom or what do you still want to collaborate?
Maris Kreizman
I love this question because I ask it myself all the time. I know that I always want to be doing something in the book world, but I understand that the shape of that world keeps changing and I’ve gotta adapt. I would love to be employed full time again (editor? critic?), but jobs in books and media are few and far between. So I will continue to make my own way with my newsletter and with freelance pieces. The dream would be to create a new literary site with a variety of the freelance critics I’ve met over my career. When my book tour is over I’m going to start thinking about it. Stay tuned…
Mandana Chaffa
“Being a warrior is the only socially acceptable way to deal with debilitating illness. Prioritizing health over work still feels mildly transgressive.” This is perhaps one of the most exhausting expectations for anyone who is ill: all of these war-like exhortations—fighting, never surrendering—all of which negates the human need for moderation, in health, in wealth, in work, in pleasure. That’s another structure that your work, and this collection, sets fire to. How much would it have helped to be allowed—encouraged—to lead your life this way earlier?
Maris Kreizman
I can’t even imagine it, to tell the truth. I had been ill in my adolescence and when I got better I was desperate to never feel that way again. I would do anything not to feel that way again. So much about hustle culture, at least for me, is about trying to gain some control over the course of my life. What’s worse is my parents never pressured me, and so I can’t even blame them for my neurosis! I had internalized all of the lingo about illness all by myself, and so I became my own worst drill sergeant. I’m not sure I was ready, as a teenager, to hear that I didn’t have to try so hard all the time.
Mandana Chaffa
“I’m not even an art monster,” you write, and that was perhaps your most startling statement. Do you not consider yourself an artist? I have to push back on that, and wonder what you consider artistic, and why you wouldn’t consider your work—oral, literary, otherwise—as part of such engagement?
Maris Kreizman
Oh, I’m artistic for sure! I may even call myself an artist. But when I think of an Art Monster I think of someone who lives and breathes art and prioritizes their work above every other thing in their life. I’m too interested in balance to be a true and official Art Monster. I’m at my peak when I can write a bit and read a bit every day but have plenty of time to be there for my friends and loved ones, go for long walks with my dog, do some volunteering, and yes, even settle down with a glass of wine or two in front of the television. I think that my life is richer for it, even the parts when I’m simply enjoying the latest season of Drag Race.
NONFICTION
I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays
By Maris Kreizman
Ecco
July 1, 2025
