Every 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 Redux newsletter.
PHOTO © OLIVIER ROLLER (DETAIL); MANUSCRIPT IMAGE COURTESY OF GALAXIA GUTENBERG
This week at The Paris Review, we’re writing about reading, and reading about writing. Read on for Enrique Vila-Matas’s Art of Fiction interview, Kate Zambreno’s short story “Plagiarism,” a piece of fiction by Chekhov called “What You Usually Find in Novels,” Gevorg Emin’s poem “The Block,” and a portfolio of Richard Prince art from 1978.
Interview Enrique Vila-Matas, The Art of Fiction No. 247 Issue no. 234 (Fall 2020)
The kind of writer I like best is the one who has, at some stage, been a critic, and who at a certain point realizes that if he really wanted to honor literature he must immediately himself become a writer—step inside the bullring and prolong, by other means, what was always at stake in literature.
Detail from a Richard Prince piece, 1978.
Fiction Plagiarism By Kate Zambreno Issue no. 228 (Spring 2019)
I’m not saying it was the exact same text—her small, lyric monograph and my novella-length essay. For one, her book was more conceptually focused, while my essay drifted too much and was too much about me. Still, the similarities were uncanny. Had I unintentionally plagiarized her, or had she unintentionally plagiarized me?
Fiction What You Usually Find in Novels By Anton Chekhov, translated by Peter Sekirin Issue no. 152 (Fall 1999)
All the characters are unremarkable, yet sympathetic and attractive people. The hero saves the heroine from a crazed horse; he is strong-willed and he shows his strong fists at every opportunity. The sky is wide, the distances are vast and the vistas are broad, so broad that they are impossible to understand . . . this, in short, is Nature. Friends are blond. Enemies are redheaded.
All the characters are unremarkable, yet sympathetic and attractive people. The hero saves the heroine from a crazed horse; he is strong-willed and he shows his strong fists at every opportunity.
The sky is wide, the distances are vast and the vistas are broad, so broad that they are impossible to understand . . . this, in short, is Nature.
Friends are blond. Enemies are redheaded.
Poetry The Block By Gevorg Emin, translated by Diana Der Hovanessian Issue no. 57 (Spring 1974)
For two months I have not written a word. My voice, a low grumble, disturbs our quarter like the rumble of the millstone which having nothing to grind grinds itself.
For two months I have not written a word.
My voice, a low grumble, disturbs our quarter
like the rumble of the millstone which having nothing to grind grinds itself.
Art From None By Richard Prince Issue no. 73 (Spring-Summer 1978)
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