January 21, 2011 Ask The Paris Review Writers and Their Libraries; Fashion v. English By Lorin Stein I love reading authors talking about their own reading experiences—it seems like such a beautiful way to understand how and why they write. I recently read Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting,” and I was wondering if you could think of any similar essays about the private libraries of great writers. There’s a long tradition of writers writing about their libraries. Some of the first modern essays—by Michel de Montaigne and Sir Francis Bacon—are on that very subject. Among more recent publications, you might enjoy Anne Fadiman’s collection Ex Libris or Larry McMurtry’s Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. The trouble with people writing about their libraries is, well, every writer has one. It’s like writing about your left hand. Or your M.F.A. program. But McMurtry is a special case. If he had never written Lonesome Dove or The Last Picture Show, he would be famous—at least among collectors—as one of the country’s most respected dealers in used and rare books. When he writes about his library, he always has something interesting to say. Read More
January 14, 2011 Ask The Paris Review Excellent Dialogue; A Dubious Seduction Strategy By Lorin Stein I would love to read a book with really excellent dialogue (as in, clever but recognizable as spontaneous human speech). I feel that reading good dialogue will both make me a better conversationalist and save me a lot of head banging in my living room. (The most recent occasion for self-abuse: “‘I think I’ll go to the store now,’ she said, ‘I’d like some whole-wheat crackers.’”) —Anonymous Good dialogue has never saved anyone from either head banging or self-abuse, as far as I know. If anything, I think, good dialogue tends to teach us how little it resembles real speech. Real speech deals with whole-wheat crackers. That’s what it’s for. Dialogue deals with whole-wheat crackers only if those crackers tell a secret—if they reveal something about the character speaking. In this sense, dialogue is closer to lyric poetry than it is to expository prose. It does more work in less space, and it tends to deal in repressed or unconscious knowledge. Since readers of “Ask The Paris Review” are probably tired of seeing me recommend the novels of Henry Green, I suggest Philip Roth’s Deception, anything by Richard Price or Virginia Woolf or the great pioneer of dialogue, Jane Austen (yes, she depresses me, but she uncovered the possibilities of the form), or Ivy Compton-Burnett or Don DeLillo or Ann Beattie or Raymond Carver or Elmore Leonard or Eudora Welty … The fact is, most great writers have great ears. We may not think of Henry James as a master of dialogue, but his novels nearly always turn on the ambiguities of invented speech. And this tends to be the case. Read More
January 7, 2011 Ask The Paris Review Which Translation of Proust Should I Read? By Lorin Stein Boy Reading, Ned Anshutz, c. 1900. I am preparing to tackle Marcel Proust’s mammoth, his tomb of involuntary memories and I cannot decide on a translation. Should it be the original English translation by Moncrieff? Or the revision of Moncrieff by Kilmartin? Or the revision of the revision by Enright? Or the new translation that begins with Davis and continuous with six different translators? I prefer a translation that is as close to the original as possible, without the translator attempting to “update” the language for modern readers, without inserting words that the writer would have never originally used. Which translation should be trusted when it comes time to read the mammoth? —Manuel Garcia For Swann’s Way, you can’t really go wrong. All of those translations are wonderful. My favorite is Lydia Davis’s. It sticks very close to the French, which I think you will like. And I think you will like Davis’s sensibility: she is no vulgar updater. On the other hand, the Scott Moncrieff translation may appeal to you because it’s contemporary with the original. In fact, Proust’s French is often more modern then Scott Moncrieff’s English. The anachronisms are all in the other direction. I can’t vouch for the new translations of the later volumes. My advice is to read Swann’s Way in the Davis translation, then switch over to Enright. It will also be fun for you to compare Davis to Enright every once in a while. You’ll hear the difference right away. Read More
December 17, 2010 Ask The Paris Review First Rejection; Call of The Wild By Tim Wu He’s back, by popular demand! Tim Wu’s culture diary was such a hit with our readers that we asked him to answer our advice column this week. —Lorin Stein A quiet kid in my introductory English class approached me the other day with a batch of his poetry. He wants to be a writer and asked for “an honest appraisal” of his work and chances. Of course, the poems are awful, but I would hate to discourage him. How should I handle this? Easy question. You cannot lose. Tell him, honestly, that his poems are awful. That scarring pain of first rejection is the greatest gift you could give to an aspiring writer. It being Christmas, consider the agony your very own myrrh and frankincense. “I read your poems. They are awful.” With these simple words, you have the rare chance to create a lifetime’s worth of writing fuel, a resentment that can be relied on for years. Or, in the words of Notorious B.I.G.: “This is dedicated to all the teachers who said I’d never amount to nothin.’” My husband wants to go camping. I, to put it mildly, do not. It is cold, it requires physical exertion, and neither of us are so young anymore. Can you recommend a book that will satisfy his Boy Scout fantasies without destroying our marriage? Read More
December 10, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Promiscuous Reading; My Christmas Wish List By Lorin Stein I have this compulsion where I read the first one hundred pages of a book, and then stack it on my bedside table. I never finish them—call me promiscuous. But I feel guilty not finishing books! What do you advise? —P. There’s nothing wrong with not finishing a book. Samuel Johnson, surely one of the great readers of all time, claimed to feel guilty because he almost never read a book to the end—but still, he didn’t. Finish them, I mean. Why should you read a book just because it’s there, or (worse) because you read it yesterday? Completism is the bugbear of actual reading. There are books even by some of my favorite authors that I have never looked at and never plan to. If you really love Henry Green’s Loving, why should you have to read Living? And, really, how many second acts redeem a slow act one? I say, enjoy your promiscuity and keep reading new things. (But better make space on your bedside table!) Read More
December 3, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Baseball Leaves Me Cold By Lorin Stein I’m dating an athlete—more problematically, he’s a great watcher of sports. I was raised on football, so I have no problem screaming at the television with him when pass interference doesn’t get called, but baseball and basketball leave me cold. Are there any good books on either sport—I do love a weepy sports narrative—that I could read to pique my interest? I’m tired of asking my boyfriend to explain the designated hitter to me—as, I’m sure, is he. —M. K. Dear M. K., We at The Paris Review Daily—okay, I, Lorin—know diddly about sports. So we decided to … um, bunt? Hand-off? Bring in a couple of pinch hitters? You get the idea: Your question has been referred to our two Paris Review Daily sports correspondents, Will Frears and Louisa Thomas. Thus Will: If she wants to understand her boyfriend and the pitiable nature of his condition, she should read A Fan’s Notes, by Frederick Exley, or Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby. The really good baseball books are The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn; Ball Four, by Jim Bouton; and pretty much anything by Roger Angell. I can’t think of a good basketball book, but for the true weepy sports experience, watch Hoosiers. If the boyfriend is a soccer fan and she wants to dazzle him with her technical know-how, then Inverting the Pyramid, by Jonathan Wilson, is a must-read. And Louisa: Jim Bouton’s Ball Four won’t explain the designated hitter, but it will tell you what “beaver-shooting” is, and it will make you laugh. Gay Talese’s “The Silent Season of a Hero” barely visits a ball field, but it will make you ache for Joe DiMaggio. If your boyfriend is a statshead, read Michael Lewis’s Moneyball to demystify sabermetrics. (Plus, it’s always satisfying to read a story in which the men in charge hadn’t a clue.) John McPhee’s A Sense of Where You Are, about Bill Bradley as a Princeton basketball player, is in awe of its subject, but so am I. To learn the rules, try Wikipedia. Have a question for The Paris Review? E-mail us.