The New Era Is Here

The Metropolitan Review Needs You

Jan Peter Tripp, American Dream, 1991, Drypoint etching

We come to you today with great news: The Metropolitan Review is about to welcome its 22,000th subscriber. This is a remarkable number, and one we are greatly humbled by. The outpouring of support for TMR — and for literature and culture broadly — has heartened us to no end. For too long, readers were being underestimated. Book, film, and arts coverage had been radically scaled back at most major publications, and those great, unpredictable, and discursive essays — the sort that could take over an entire issue of the old Esquire or the New York Review of Books — were in awfully short supply. When we launched TMR, we made a simple bet: we could publish wonderful writing and find a readership for it. We could take risks. We could let writers write at length in their own voice. Imagine that!

For just a taste of what we’ve been up to in the last week, read Caleb Caudell on the role of the editor in 2025 or Eleanor Stern on the novels of TikTok and what they say about our culture today. Or, if you’re so inclined, consume 11,500 words from Alexander Sorondo on the life and times of William T. Vollmann. It is, to date, the second most popular piece we’ve ever published. And no other magazine would take it on. We feel blessed — but that’s also insanity.

At The Metropolitan Review, we’ve got major plans. We’re in the process of whipping our first print issue together. That will take time and money. It’s going to look very pretty and you’ll want one. We’re expanding our fiction and poetry sections with editors

Django Ellenhorn

and

Vanessa Ogle

. And cartoons are in the works, curated by our very own

Jason Chatfield

. That’s on top of publishing at least three reviews, essays, and works of criticism per week.

Now, we’ll cut to the chase. Out of our 22,000 subscribers, less than 3% — yes, you read that right — are making paid pledges. Soon, we’re going to need that revenue to get the TMR engine firing. We really appreciate our free readership, but it’s money, sadly, that makes the world go round.

If you pledge $80 for the year, you are guaranteed a print subscription and you’ll receive our first issue when it’s ready. If $80 is too much, you can always pledge $5 a month, the price of a cup of coffee, to support the future of literary culture. We need whatever you can do. We want to keep paying our writers and ensure TMR is sustainable for the long-term. We’re just getting started.

We have no plans, for now, to paywall our writing. Paywalls aren’t fun! But they do increase paid subscriptions. We hope to remain free for as long as possible so anyone, no matter their income, can read what we produce.

To make that happen, we need more of you to subscribe. The $80 pledge is immensely helpful. On Substack, there are people who will pay that much just to read one person. We’re offering much more than that here: you get access to an institution, one we hope will continue to grow.

Thank you so much for what you do and we’ll be back soon with our regularly scheduled programming!

—The Editors