In the Current Issue
The Art of Documentary No. 1
By Frederick Wiseman
The Most Unread Book Ever Acclaimed
By Meghan O’GieblynLike the holy books, long novels are more often maligned than read. Critics complain that they are exasperating, or impossible, or not worth the time. But in the history of my reading life, I’ve encountered nothing like the caveat lectors surroundi…
The Daily
Arts & Culture
Amaryllis
By Gish JenOh! to be a real person, with a husband, and a household, and squealing dependents. Or at least to be involved in a sordid affair—in a narrative of some sort, in the sending up of shoots and buds. Instead, Amaryllis Chen Hughes, age thirty-eight
From the Archive, Issue 179
Fiction
Redux: Brooklyn Crossing
By The Paris ReviewEvery week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by signing up for…
The Daily
Redux
from A Thief's Journal
By Jean GenetTwo Criminal Records photographs have turned up. In one of them I am sixteen or seventeen years old. I am wearing, under a jacket of the Assistance Publique, a torn sweater. My face is an oval, very pure; my nose is smashed, flattened by a punch in some forgotten fight. The look on my face is blase, sad and warm, very serious. My hair was thick and unruly.
From the Archive, Issue 13
Miscellaneous
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America Doesn’t Have to Be Like This
By Ilana MasadOn Jill Lepore’s These Truths and the myths on which the United States is built. It didn’t have to be this way. This thought kept blinking through my mind, like a neon sign on a dark street, as I read These Truths, the newest book by Harvard pro…
The Daily
Arts & Culture
She Deserves Everything She Gets
By Dana JohnsonWe are all sitting around the fire pit, talking about how not to get raped. We have advice, opinions, instructions because we are the adults and Gertrude is the kid, and we’ve been to college, so we think we know what we are talking about. She lets us talk at her all night, ruining her graduation present because she’s an exceptional kid, an obedient kid. She’s not an eye roller. She doesn’t text while people are trying to talk to her. She’s not the kind of kid you’ll overhear calling somebody a …
From the Archive, Issue 216
Fiction
Pres Spoke in a Language
By Amiri BarakaPres spoke in a language / “of his own.” What did he say, between the / horn line / s, pork pie hat / tenor tilted
From the Archive, Issue 79
Poetry
A Replacement
By Peter MatthiessenToward the end of the war, a certain Headquarters retreated across the Rhine, leaving behind one officers and a garrison of local conscripts. The officer had asked to be left, yet could give no reason; it was said that he was ill, and there was no time to investigate the matter. The officer sat alone in his office, as if he had fallen asleep while directing its evacuation; a desk and two chairs were left him, and a clean rectangle on the floor where the filing cabinet had been. Before the de…
