2025 in Rear View
More grist for the content mill
I’m not fond of yearly roundups and retrospectives. Despite their annual recurrence, the form feels divorced from the cycles of nature. There is nothing in the stiff breeze, nothing in the angled sunlight, nothing the scraps of dirty snow piled high onto sidewalks, to suggest the deluge of content closes out the previous year and inaugurates the next. But now is the time for the articles to get reposted, for the podcast appearances to get reposted, for the top tens and the top one hundreds to get posted, for the posting of honorable and dishonorable mentions, along with, always, reminders of exclusive paid subscriber only content.
I don’t begrudge anyone for engaging in the year-end content mill. In fact, I’m neglecting my duty as a publisher—(at least my duties as a publisher who doesn’t have a publicity department)—by not using the occasion to promote the works that I published. In 2025, Paradise Editions published a grand total of two pamphlets, which together consist of less than a hundred pages of relatively large type. Still, I’m proud at having designed and assembled Israel Bonilla’s Phoretics. It doesn’t serve Israel’s work at all for me to adopt some anti-promotional stance, now of all times. I’m on social media constantly. Why should I have scruples about it all of a sudden?
It’s just not my job. As a translator and publisher, I’m a custodian of texts; I do them far more justice when I write procedurally, impersonally, commercially, rather than reflectively: Book A, about Subject B, is now, as of Date C, available through Website D, for Price E. International shipping charges reflect the expense of the service; Publisher not liable for lost packages or duty charges; Thank you for your order.
Speaking of translations, I had a novel by Jean Paul and a short collection of essays by Heinrich von Kleist come out this year. The former was published by another publishing house; the latter was, by most definitions, self-published—both to little fanfare. That was at least half my fault. I was responsible for sending out review copies, for following up with those reviewers, for doing all the other promotional chores. Part of my reluctance to promote stems from the fact that the substantive work on both books is more than a year behind me. They’re the products of 2023, of 2024. Print—especially the printing of translations—works slow.
Why should I begrudge anyone for posting their yearly highlights? I’m glad that Robert Rubsam did. I did happen to read his profile of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a favorite director of mine; I was aware of the article because I talked to him directly about it, before we saw a rare screening of Kurosawa’s 1998 comedy drama License to Live at the Japan Center in New York. Rob’s thoughts on the film helped me clarify my own. But I also found out, through his retrospective newsletter about 2025, that Rob also wrote about the Met’s Caspar David Friedrich exhibition, about Kelly Reichardt’s recent art-heist movie, and about a dozen other things. I had no idea, and I follow the guy, as they say, on all the socials.
The deluge of content never stops; it’s impossible to pick out everything worthwhile that’s trapped in the current. Those yearly retrospectives are like a sluice gate, channeling the suspended ore to where it can be panned out and sifted, while the rest floats on by, out of sight and out of memory. If there was anything in 2025 you might have wanted to read but did not, could not, well, I’m sorry. It really is too bad that we can’t read everything we want, write about everything we want to write about. I plan to do better at this, but that’s a promise about production; when it comes to quality, there can be no guarantees.
