September 6, 2022 First Person Custody By Constance Debré Constance Debré. Photograph by Adam Peter Johnson. Courtesy of Flammarion. Three years ago. We’re at the Flore, sitting outside, rue Saint-Benoît. It’s summer. I’m dipping my black-pepper potato chips in some ketchup. I’ve ordered a club sandwich, he’s having a croque monsieur. He’s my ex. The first man I was with, and until further notice, the last. We’re actually still married because we never got a divorce. We lasted twenty years, he and I. It’s been three years since I left him. His name is Laurent. With our eight-year-old son, with Paul, we do alternate weeks, all civil, we’ve never had any problems. A few months ago I switched to girls. That’s what I want to tell him. That’s the point of this dinner. I picked the Flore out of habit. We met here when we were twenty, it became one of our haunts. I grew up here, I’ve never really lived anywhere else. But I don’t go to the Flore anymore. I quit my job as a lawyer, I’m writing a book, I’ve got the tax people on my back and no cash to my name. It’s a pain, obviously, but it’s not important. So I spit it out, I say, I’ve started seeing girls. Just in case there was any doubt in his mind, with the new short hair, the new tattoos, the look in general. It’s basically the same as before, obviously just a bit more distinct. It’s not as if he never had his doubts. We had a little chat about it, a good ten years ago. I said, Nope, no idea what you’re talking about. I mean I’m dating girls, I say to him now. Fucking girls would be more accurate. He says, All I want is for you to be happy. This, I don’t reply, sounds like a lie but it suits me fine. He’s barely touched his croque monsieur, he lights a cigarette, calls the waiter over, orders more champagne. That’s what he’s drinking these days, he says it agrees with him, that it makes him feel less shitty in the morning. The check comes, he pays, we leave. Instead of going his own way on le boulevard Saint-Germain, he walks me towards the Seine. When we get to my door, he goes to follow me upstairs, as if we hadn’t been separated for three years, as if I hadn’t just told him what I’d just told him. I say no. He says, Have it your way. Read More
September 2, 2022 The Review’s Review On Cary Grant, Darryl Pinckney, and Whit Stillman By The Paris Review Cary Grant in North by Northwest. During the COVID confinement and afterward, I watched around sixty films starring Cary Grant. What a comfort to have him in my mind before I slept. No matter if he is comic or desperate, self-possessed or wounded, romantic or cool, he is ridiculously good-looking and seems never to know this. I love it when he puts his hands on his waist and pushes his hips forward as if about to dive or perform some acrobatic trick. His slim, athletic torso and long arms are always tanned. Sometimes he wears a fine shimmering gold medal around his neck. I love his dark eyes that have not forgotten his youthful suffering. He makes me laugh when he rolls his eyes around with his own special brand of sophisticated nonchalance. Though he isn’t aggressive, he doesn’t seem weak either. I find him buoyantly masculine. I can’t resist watching him. A few days ago, on a flight to Los Angeles, I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s hugely entertaining thriller North by Northwest again. Grant was fifty-five when he made this film and long past his box office peak in the screwball comedies that made him famous. In the Hitchcock film he wears a nice-fitting, light gray suit with a gray silk tie and cuff links. The suit gets dirty, sponged off and pressed, then dirty again. Grant’s hair is a little gray, too. I don’t wear ties anymore, but I would wear a tie worn by Cary Grant. North by Northwest appeared in 1959, around the time that he was experimenting with medical LSD and searching for more “peace of mind,” as he called it. I don’t really know what a great actor is, but I think Grant is sensational. —Henri Cole Read Henri Cole’s recent essay on James Merrill here. Read More
September 2, 2022 First Person Softball Season By Sophie Haigney Summer softball. Photograph by Sophie Haigney. I took over the Paris Review softball team this year because the former captain, Lauren Kane, left the magazine for a big job at The New York Review of Books just before I was hired, and someone noted during my first week that I might be a good replacement because I “like sports” (i.e., I sometimes watch Premier League soccer on weekend mornings). I am not, strictly speaking, an athlete, and had never played a full game of softball; still, wanting to be amenable, I agreed and found myself on the phone intermittently all spring with the New York City Parks Department, trying to get our field permits nailed down. At one point I was arguing with someone about the timing of sunset on a specific day in July. The list of things I didn’t know about softball when the season began in May is long and comical. Among them: Not every field has bases—if you don’t bring them, you might need to use your shoes as second and third. Turf can be very slippery and you should expect bloody knees and have a first aid kit on hand. The play is often at second, and even more often at first. Pitching badly is sometimes actually preferable to pitching well. You can run through first base but not the other ones. You have to shift over in the field when a lefty is batting. You should not attempt to catch with your bare hands, even if it seems like the ball is coming at you very slowly. Right field is actually kind of a chill place to be, except when it isn’t. It all comes down to the quality of your ringers—and sending people shamelessly pleading emails to get them to show up to your games. Read More
September 1, 2022 Culture Diaries Seven, Seven, Seven: A Week in Cambridge, Massachusetts By J. D. Daniels Edouard Godard & Vilmorin-Andrieux & Cie, Les plantes potagères, 1904. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. DAY ONE I sit at the long blond pine table I use for a desk. Nothing happens. Maybe I can make something happen. A few years ago there was a popular self-help book called How To Make Sh*t Happen, never mind that peristalsis is involuntary. I eat some mango slices and a green apple and a banana. I drink twelve ounces of whole milk with a scoop of whey protein. I find a leftover fried artichoke in the fridge, wrapped in aluminum foil. I listen to Michael Gielen conducting Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, but it’s not loud enough. “Have you seen the ghost of John?” we used to sing at my elementary school. “Long thin bones with the skin all gone. Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?” It would be red. My inner life is none of my business. Now I’m listening to Otto Klemperer conducting Bruckner’s Seventh, turned up loud enough that it’s antisocial. Read More