The Paris Review

This Sunday, give your mother the gift of great writing—along with our anniversary tote bag. For a limited time, when you subscribe, you get both: the perfect gift.*

*Offer good for US subscribers only.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here at The Paris Review, we have all your holiday shopping covered! And for the youngest Parisians among us, we bring you our adorable onesie, in 100% cotton, with a hand-drawn logo. Your choice of custard or baby blue. Get yours here!

When we announced our special mug offer, cries were heard across the land: We already subscribe! We want to give the mug as a gift! We want two, three, four! Rest easy: the special-edition Paris Review diner mug is now available to everyone, for all your coffee-drinking and gift-giving needs.

One side features our logo in black; the other, praise for the magazine from Newsweek in 1953: “The first really promising development in youthful, advance guard, or experimental writing in a long time.” We at the TPR offices can vouch for it. Supplies are limited. Buy it now!

A few months ago our friend Kirk Miller, of Miller’s Oath, made a small batch of Paris Review ties–twenty-four, to be exact. I bought one. Several members of our board did the same. We have four ties left—one of each! So, as you see, this is a true limited edition. Give one of them to your dad for Father’s Day. Each comes with a free subscription to The Paris Review. Buy one today!

While supplies last.

We’ve been waiting with bated breath for these limited-edition Paris Review Moleskine notebooks to arrive at White Street, and now they have! It’s the iconic notebook we all know and love, stamped with our original logo and featuring a quote on the frontispiece from Dorothy Parker’s 1956 interview. Can you imagine a better stocking stuffer? Neither can we. And we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t already snatched a few for our own personal use! Get ’em while they’re hot—with a year of The Paris Review, it’s a wonderful gift.

When I was in my midtwenties, my apartment acquired a stuffed Canada goose, mounted in full flight. Although this was around the time when taxidermy was becoming obligatory for a certain breed of sepia-toned downtown restaurant, there was nothing ironic about ours, which my then boyfriend had shot himself on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The less said about his hunting proclivities the better—and I’m sure you could say all sorts of obvious things that were later borne out—but I liked that the goose had a provenance, which is a true urban rarity.

We named him Manticore, after the Robertson Davies novel (he was, after all, Canadian) and generally assumed he would be a whimsical addition to the household. How wrong we were. Manticore, it soon turned out, was a dreary and oppressive presence. Somehow, he became indelibly endowed, in our minds, with a humorless earnestness. It started as a joke but quickly took on a life of its own. We imagined him policing our conversations, interjecting superior opinions, and staring down judgmentally with his glassy eyes. Manticore, we somehow sensed, had strong and implacable opinions on matters like universal healthcare and, possibly, 9/11 conspiracies. He disapproved of levity. He would have been heavily involved in experimental theater, if he hadn’t been a stuffed goose. I grew to hate Manticore.

Initially, I’d thought Manticore would be an integral part of decorating schemes, gamely donning scarves and garlands as the season dictated. When I knew him better, this was out of the question—say what one will about the goose, he had a certain dignity. We might strip him of life, we might force him into unwilling cohabitation, but somehow he would maintain the autonomy of the wild.

When the relationship ended, Manticore took up residence in my former boyfriend’s new bachelor pad, where—since it was a studio—he loomed large. I took a certain petty pleasure in imagining the chilling effect his self-righteousness would exact on any romantic prospects. Or perhaps he’d find another woman more to his liking. Manticore, I sensed, had disapproved of me.

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