Let’s start with a poem:

Everybody Tells Me Everything
Ogden Nash

I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.

Just when you think
that at least the outlook is so black
that it can grow no blacker,
it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news,
because there has never been an era
when so many things were going so right
for so many of the wrong persons.

I actually am not going to comment on it, other than to say if you represent the estate of Ogden Nash please don’t sue me for reposting this poem. I came across it by accident this week and it felt timely. It would probably feel timely most weeks.

We are gearing up for AWP, March 4-7 in Baltimore. At least six Malarkey authors who will be on site, including Joshua Trent Brown, author of The Walls Are Closing In On Us and winner of the award for book title that most accurately describes the collective mood. This is Trent’s first novel, and it comes out officially on March 3. One of the reasons that Malarkey exists is because it felt like so many of the wrong persons were getting very nice book deals while actual writers, artists who had devoted themselves to a craft, were being ignored. Last year, a book that we had accepted got snatched up by Penguin, and I would like to make it clear that I think it’s stupid that that has only happened one time. About half of our books should have been snatched up by Penguin, leaving us to focus on really out there, bizarre, random stuff, books that are too weird for mainstream publishers. The Walls Are Closing In On Us is one that should have been snatched up. Trent describes this book as a Southern odyssey; I think that’s a good description, probably good jacket copy. To me, it’s a book that captures the reality of what we call America, the way you can be whoever you want to, the way you can slide between stations and cultures, but only for so long; it’s a book that captures the way you’re not really as free as you’re told, and the way we’re never free of our history.

This, now, is a blatant plea for preorders. We obviously need to sell copies, and it’s a nice idea to preorder because you can score a signed copy, so there’s a win-win, but there’s something more; it’s something that can read as a gimmick but is also something I do believe: preordering a book is an act of faith, especially when you’re looking at an indie book. You’re putting your faith in the press to deliver, to not fall apart or disappear between the day your place your order and the day the book is supposed to come out. Faith in the government, to not cancel mail, which sounds absurd but look at the news these days (once a day if you can handle it). Faith in the writer, whom you may not be familiar with at all, but the Kent Wascom blurb sold you and now your faith is in him. Maybe it helps to know that we’ve sent thousands of books through the mail and only a handful have ever gotten lost (and we replaced them). Maybe it helps to know that two of the three blurbs for The Walls Are Closing In On Us compare the book to Train Dreams. Maybe it helps, too, that you can get 20% off with code FAITH at checkout, through the end of the month.

End of spiel. Thanks for reading. Please take care of yourself and look out for your neighbors.

Preorder The Walls Are Closing In On Us

Praise for The Walls Are Closing In On Us

“Mournful, epic, revelatory: The Walls Are Closing in On Us tells the life of one man scaled against a world and time more richly drawn than any I've read in years. Brown writes with uncommon grace, weaving a tapestry of memory and regret so real you can feel it in your bones. This has the wonder and sorrow of Denis Johnson's Train Dreams and the raw power of classic Southern fiction. A sweeping evocation of a lost time and a forgotten life.”

-Kent Wascom, author of the Washington Post’s and NPR’s best book of the year The Blood of Heaven

"With traces of Paul Harding's Tinkers and Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, The Walls are Closing In On Us is a moving novel about racial tensions, segregation, and coming of age in a rapidly changing America. This is a book that examines not only the soul of a man but—perhaps—the soul of a nation."

- Austin Ross, author of Gloria Patri

“Joshua Trent Brown delivers something special with his debut novel, The Walls Are Closing In On Us. Part Donna Tartt, part Thomas Wolfe, wrapped in a Stoner-esque search for purpose... This remarkable novel grips you and makes you hope for another page waiting with every turn. Without doubt, the best book we’ve read this year.”

-Dan Russell, author of Poor Birds & editor of Grit Quarterly

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