A Year of Bolaño: Announcing Our Spring Issue
February 9, 2011 | by Thessaly La Force
Spring is almost here—and so is our spring issue! It’s an especially exciting one: We will be publishing Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich—our first serialized novel in forty years—with original illustrations by Leanne Shapton.
This is a first edition like none other—a collector’s item, and a chance to discover Bolaño’s famous lost novel almost a year before it appears in book form. For those of you who aren’t subscribers, we are offering a celebratory discount subscription (25% off the cover price domestically; offer good until March 15). Your subscription will also bring you new work by Lydia Davis, David Gates, and Jonathan Lethem, as well as interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Bret Easton Ellis, Yusef Komunyakaa, and much more …
The spring issue features:
A rare interview with Janet Malcolm:
When journalists remember that the interview is a special sort of encounter, and withhold some of their natural friendliness, they don’t lose anything by it. The subject doesn’t notice. He wants to tell his story. And when the journalist retells the story in a way the subject cannot anticipate, he doesn’t feel like such a rat.
A long-awaited interview with Ann Beattie:
My students make fun of me for saying, I’ve read this carefully now, and you’ve written it carefully—too carefully. The phone never rings, people get to talk for four pages without interruption. We’re used to daily life being the fire truck coming by with its deafening siren. To put that siren in fiction—and not at the convenient moment, but maybe a minute before the convenient moment, or way after the convenient moment—is a kind of acknowledgment to the reader that you’re aware there’s another life out there that’s out of control.
Plus …
Fiction by Joshua Cohen. Photos and prose by Édouard Levé. An essay on cave archaeology by our Southern editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan. Poems by Clare Rossini, Linda Gregerson, Stephen Dunn, and Chris Andrews. Ancient kabbalist verse translated by Peter Cole. A collage portfolio curated by Pavel Zoubok.
Chris Shores | February 9, 2011 at 10:44 am
I’ve been meaning to subscribe for quite some time, and now I have no excuse. Well played, Paris Review.
Angela | February 9, 2011 at 10:54 am
I love the “Paris Review.”
Time for me to subscribe, again.
MG | February 9, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Sigh, more Bolaño hype, when will it run its course?
I’m already a subscriber and so will read the “famous lost novel” with an open mind and hope for the best, but I believe Bolaño’s exotic and romanticized life story is the source of the current fascination with him rather than the quality of his writing.
Mike | February 9, 2011 at 5:58 pm
MG:
Read 2666.
Lorin Stein | February 9, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Dear MG,
Are you sure you mean “hype” — as in, hyperbole? It strikes me as hard, and a little bit unfair, to say that a writer has been overpraised until you’ve read his or her work.
Mike suggests 2666. Maybe for sentimental reasons, I would suggest BY NIGHT IN CHILE. It’s very short. And it’s the first work of Bolano’s that I read. I knew almost nothing about him at the time, but the book struck me as absolutely original. You might also want to begin with LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH. Bolano’s short stories will give you an idea of his preoccupations and of his real authority — and you will forget what some publisher or critic wrote about his life.
Thank you for writing in.
Lorin
MBS | February 10, 2011 at 9:04 am
Needless to say, I am flabbergasted and thrilled by the new issue. Janet Malcolm?? How awesome.
Tulkinghorn | February 10, 2011 at 1:58 pm
You may have missed the interest in this new novel in the world of people who play strategy board games… (The protagonist is a gamer.)
You can start here (an on-line forum devoted to the game played in the book) and follow the links. Wonderful reactions from an unusual place.
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/497047/the-third-reich-a-novel-by-roberto-bolano
mary lee | February 10, 2011 at 2:58 pm
More Bolano? Too good to be true. My all time favorite is The Skating Rink, followed by Savage Detectives. If I weren’t already a subscriber, I’d subscribe!
Adam | February 10, 2011 at 6:19 pm
Ah, just seeing the word Spring makes me happy.
Lawrence Jones | February 12, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Can’t wait for the Spring issue. Paris Review is a fabulous publication.
Theo Hakkert | February 14, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Better learn Spanish – or Dutch. The Third Reich has already been published in a Dutch translation.
Radek | February 17, 2011 at 11:43 pm
I wish somebody would be that excited to publish my crap one day lol
Bob | February 18, 2011 at 11:35 pm
Very excited. I subscribed immediately and am waiting anxiously for the spring issue to arrive in my mailbox. Can anyone tell me when I will receive it?
Jared Lowe | February 21, 2011 at 1:57 am
I’m more than excited for Bolano’s last novel but I’m just as upset with the fact that IT’S HIS LAST NOVEL.
Tiffany | March 3, 2011 at 12:08 pm
What is the publication date for this issue?
Bob | March 14, 2011 at 10:01 am
Just received the spring issue two days ago and read Part I of Bolano’s The Third Reich. Enjoyed it immensely. Only wish I didn’t have to wait 3 months for the next installment. Now I know what it was like to be a reader of Dickens or Thackeray in the 19th century…