The Maris Review, vol 56

Maris Kreizman

27 May 2025 — 4 min read

In which I reveal my favorite Oasis B-side and I show off the absurd little pouch I use to carry around my insulin

What I read this week

Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age by Amanda Hess

I'm not the target audience for books about parenting, for very obvious reasons. But I will read anything Amanda Hess writes, and up until now most of it has been criticism of internet culture for the New York Times, and before that, Slate. It's a real thrill when a journalist who has written for publications where so much voice and style has to be shaved down to fit with the larger tone gets to show us what she can do when there are no constraints. In Second Life Amanda gets about as personal as a book about technology can be, taking readers with her through period tracking and conception and genetic testing and birth and baby monitors and the social media pitfalls of early motherhood. It's savvy and journalistic in approach but there is also so much vulnerability here.

I listened to the audiobook version of the book, which Amanda reads herself. I could listen to her talk forever. I want her to record more audiobooks, maybe become a narrator in her spare time? It's that good. Just the way she pronounces the word "Mama" speaks volumes, with a weird blend of condescension and false intimacy as in a brand saying, "We got you, Mama!" or a NICU nurse saying, "You should be producing milk by now, Mama." And she delivers jokes in a perfect deadpan. Here she is on gender reveal videos: "The aesthetic was America's Funniest Home Videos meets terrorist beheading: a fixed camera recorded an anonymized landscape crawling with a support crew of undifferentiated men."

So much of the book is a reckoning with the idea that the "village" as in "it takes a village" doesn't exist anymore, and seeking community online can be all the more isolating. Parents have always been judged for virtually every decision they make; social media has just amplified that judgment to a terrible screech from a chorus of trolls. Add to that the fact that pregnant women are one of the most sought after advertising demographics, and how brands try to commodify every single moment of that experience. It's increasingly tough not to see the world through the filter of the late capitalist American promise that if you buy a bunch of stuff you can succeed in whatever you endeavor, even parenthood.

I'm not a parent but I am a person with a body in 2025, which means that I'm not immune to googling diagnoses and looking for people online who might relate to what I'm going through. Second Life is a good reminder that such searching is fine, as long as we have the presence of mind to look up from our phones every now and then.

Supersonic: The Complete, Authorized, and Uncut Interviews by Oasis

Maybe before I go on I should show you the case in which I keep my insulin, a case that I take everywhere with me always. It explains a lot about me and why I might want to read an Oasis interview book. I love their music, but I also just love their aesthetic: ornery little divas with voices like angels mired in sibling rivalry.

Liam Gallagher is as quotable as some of the best writers of our time, the Mary Oliver of the Britpop world, if you will. Here's a new favorite line from the book Supersonic which is composed of 30+ hours worth of outtakes from interviews for the 2016 documentary Supersonic: "Me? Beautiful, mental, the best one out of the lot of them. I could have multiple personalities, but they are all fucking amazing. Whoever they are they are all fucking great." Truly.

Liam's brother Noel, who once described him as "a man with a fork in a world of soup," is also quite a bard. Here he is (also from the book) on his and Liam's mother: "Me mam's an absolute diamond. I know a lot of people have fucking dickheads as mams, but my mam's cool as fuck, absolute cool as fuck."

Ever since Noel first rhymed "supersonic" with "gin and tonic" I knew I was all in on Oasis, and this book is an excellent confirmation of their magic. There isn't much new information in the book, but you don't come for the plot; you come for the dialog, for the sheer joy of waiting to see what will come out of the Gallagher brother's mouths next. This isn't a book that you need to sit down and read cover to cover, but it's a fun one to thumb through while contemplating which Gallagherisms would look best on a customized baseball cap or a T shirt. I think I'd go with Noel's recent take on AI: “These fucking idiots have clearly got too much time on their hands and too much money that they can afford the technology to fucking piss around doing that for a laugh.”