The Paris Review

We were saddened to hear of the death of legendary Indian photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta last week at fifty-eight. As Geoff Dyer wrote in issue 200, with Dasgupta’s work, “we are in the realm of dreams and memories—­exactly whose is never clear.”

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We are sad to learn of the death of David Rakoff, at forty-seven, after a long battle with cancer. Rakoff’s essays and contributions to This American Life include what must be the most melancholy humor writing of our time, or else the funniest melancholy writing. Even at his most arch, Rakoff wrote with an undertone of kindness that made his fans love him. Many of his readers will feel that they have lost a friend.

 

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“The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be.” —The Art of Fiction No. 50

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“I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. You don’t know—you haven’t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the top of your lungs shout and listen to the echoes. I learned a lesson years ago. I had some wonderful Swedish meatballs at my mother’s table with my dad and my brother and when I finished I pushed back from the table and said, God! That was beautiful. And my brother said, No, it was good. See the difference?

Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad—you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.”

—Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203

“When your life is half over, I think you have to see the face of death in order to start writing seriously. There are people who see the end quickly, like Rimbaud. When you start seeing it, you feel you have to rescue these things. Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.”

—Carlos Fuentes, The Art of Fiction No. 68

It is with great sadness that we note the death, at eighty-three, of legendary writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak. In books like Where the Wild Things Are, Outside Over There, The Nutshell Library, The Sign on Rosie’s Door and many more, Sendak defined childhood for many of us.

Last September, we ran this interview with Mr. Sendak; his inimitable wit, wisdom, and legendary cantankerousness came through loud and clear.