Make The Metropolitan Review Possible
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Remarkably, it’s been nearly one year since The Metropolitan Review launched. In that short span of time, we’ve published the criticism, essays, fiction, and poetry that you can’t stop talking about. We’ve featured a news making interview with one of the titans of 20th-century journalism and an investigation into one famed writer’s final quest to publish what had been his unpublishable novel. Without your readership, none of this would be possible. Meanwhile, we’ve shaken up the world of literary criticism itself.
Before 2025 turns to 2026, we wanted to present you with our five most popular pieces. Each one is special in its own way. And each is a reminder of what TMR does differently than anyone else.
Here’s the deal: to receive our inaugural print issue, which is headed to our printer in just a few days, you must become an annual subscriber today. For just $80 annually, you get access to all of our online pieces and three print issues, beginning in 2026. You will also gain free admission, while supplies last, to our one-year bash to celebrate the print issue in February.
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Without further ado, here are TMR’s top five — the pieces that no one could look away from.
Would You Rather Have Married Young?
Lillian Fishman, author of the critically-acclaimed Acts of Service, is one of the best writers we have right now. It is a treat to have her write for TMR. It’s always tricky to write about the depths of sexual desire, and Fishman walks the line with both honesty and class.
The Last Useful Man
About halfway through Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise goes for a run on a treadmill. The treadmill is on the USS Ohio, a submarine manned exclusively by implausibly attractive people. One of those people is not who they seem: a cultist, radicalized by the Entity, the f…
The Last Contract
A few years ago, the novelist William T. Vollmann was diagnosed with colon cancer. The prognosis wasn’t great but he went ahead with the treatment. A length of intestine drawn out and snipped. It was awful but it worked. The cancer went into remission.
Kill the Editor
Twelve years ago, editors at The Paris Review held an open Q&A session on Reddit. One user asked how many unsolicited submissions the magazine receives on average in a period. The editors said around 15,000 a year. In response to a related question, they also disclosed that they rarely accept…
