September 3, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Pathologically Shy; Loving The Possessed By Lorin Stein Any reading material for a pathologically shy 33-year-old woman? Who misses sex and fucking and making love and all that? Who even misses blowjobs. Who hasn’t gone out with a man in ages? How do people even talk to each other anymore? I’ve forgotten. —November Whisky Gosh, poor you. Shyness can be so hard. The first book I would read, if I wanted to reconstruct the language of sex and romance, is Mary Gaitskill’s novel Veronica. Or really any of her books. You always get the feeling (at least I do) that Gaitskill is asking herself a question very much like yours. Asking and answering. For similar reasons you might also try Elizabeth Bowen, for example The Heat of the Day. Neither book is cheerful, exactly, but I think they might speak to your condition. Take heart! Read More
August 27, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Advice to a Rhinestone Cowgirl; How Not to Write a Poem By Lorin Stein I’m young, poor, and unemployed in New York. I have no family connections, and my friends are all similarly destitute. I want an inspirational text; are there any novels about sympathetic social-striver types who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without losing their friends and their souls in the process? —Camilla D. Funny you should ask. All day I’ve been walking around with the Glen Campbell song “Rhinestone Cowboy” stuck in my head: I’ve been walking these streets so long Singing the same old song I know every crack in these dirty sidewalks of Broadway, Where hustle’s the name of the game And nice guys get washed away like the snow and the rain … One identifies. As Glen says, there’ll be a load of compromisin’ on the road to his horizon: I worry that this tends to be the case. And even though I know you don’t want me to tell you to read Lost Illusions, you must read Lost Illusions, if you haven’t. It is spooky how often some detail of Balzac’s Paris will remind you exactly of New York—like seeing your own face in a daguerrotype. A very louche daguerrotype. The hero does lose his friends and his soul. Plus his illusions. But you can handle it. I believe in you! (Plan B: Breakfast at Tiffany’s?) Read More
August 20, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Cougar Lit, Gender Confusion By Lorin Stein Is there a story or book that can shed light on whether a woman should sleep with men she doesn’t love or know very well? Younger men, specifically? —A. Chesterfield You’re in luck! This is pretty much the animating question behind French literature of the last two hundred years, starting with Adolphe (no) and ending with The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (yes). No book puts the question more starkly than Colette’s masterpiece, Cheri (yes and no: sex is tragic). Non-French novels have reached some memorable conclusions of their own. Good Morning, Midnight, for instance (sex is tragic: get me a drink), or The Piano Teacher (hell no). (But skip it and see the movie.) Most novels, it has to be said, fall into the no column. The stories of Maupassant give one long resounding yes. You might begin with “A Country Excursion.” This story shocked Tolstoy, with good reason—it is a cannon-blast against the nos. The movie version, Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country, is lighter hearted. And if light-hearted is what you want, check out the Hungarian Stephen Vizincey’s 1965 novel In Praise of Older Women or Mario Vargas Llosa’s linked bagatelles In Praise of the Stepmother and The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (yes, yes, yes, yes, YES). Read More
August 13, 2010 Ask The Paris Review No Sex Please, We’re German; Serendipity Overkill By Lorin Stein In recent weeks I’ve been told by three separate (male) friends that I talk about sex perhaps a bit too freely. What should I read to restore my sense of conversational decency? —Gretchen, Berlin As Daniel Piepenbring observed earlier this week, no subject—not even kittens—is safe in the presence of a thoroughly dirty mind. So don’t bother reading about kittens. Years ago a friend invited me to visit his family in New Delhi. Just before I got on the plane, he called to warn me that his family was broad-minded, relaxed, urbane, good-humored, devoted to Scotch and to gossip—all of which turned out to be true—and all of which might lead me to venture an anecdote about, say, dating, or flirtations, or romantic misadventures. This, my friend assured me, would be a disaster. “My family is not like your family. We do not talk about sex.” Didn’t talk about sex? What did he mean? Would they laugh? Would they change the subject? “They would pretend not to have heard you. They would be shocked.” I boarded the plane in a state of intense dismay. My friend was right: my family can’t get through dinner—can hardly get through Lehrer—without at least one pretty detailed discussion of somebody’s love life. And I would be staying with his family for a week! I had visions of John Cleese goose-stepping all over Fawlty Towers in his doomed efforts not to mention (sorry, Gretchen) the War. But as luck would have it, the books in my carry-on were the Palliser series, by Anthony Trollope. These saved me. Readers of the Daily know my feelings about Trollope. Among his many virtues, he manages to write about intimate family life, intrigue, courtship, and infidelity—without ever raising a blush to the Victorian cheek. I clung to him as a guide. It helped that my hosts spoke an English closer to Trollope’s than to mine. (They were the most genteel people I had ever met.) Every time I opened my mouth, I simply asked myself WWTS. I suggest you do the same. (And/or make a few new friends—you’re in Berlin!) Read More
August 6, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Books for the Subway, Reading at Weddings By Lorin Stein Can you recommend any books that will make interesting people approach me if I read them on the subway? During A Moveable Feast, people came up and quoted entire passages verbatim, and it really enhanced the reading experience. —Alexandra Petri The trick is to choose books that have cult followings, and so create a sense of secret fellowship—but that large numbers of your fellow-riders have actually read. That’s why it depends somewhat on your subway line. As Philip Roth is to the Seventh Avenue trains, so Jonathan Lethem is to the F. For the Q I might carry either story collection of Edward P. Jones (impress your new friend by pointing out that the two collections are linked, story by story) or anything by Lipsyte or Shteyngart. (Each of whom is also beloved on the L.) On the Lexington Avenue line, The Transit of Venus. For the G train: War and Peace, A Dance to the Music of Time, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2666, Gravity’s Rainbow, the complete works of James Michener, etc., etc., etc. Of course, certain writers are good bets anywhere. Thanks to my bike, I have no particular subway, but I will instantly take a friendly interest in anyone I see reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir The Beautiful Struggle, Norman Rush’s Mortals, IJ, anything by Adam Phillips, or the essays of Charles Lamb. Possession of these books is sufficient cause for me to ask which part you’re at. Maybe for others too. All of which is to say: be careful what you wish for. Read More
July 30, 2010 Ask The Paris Review To MFA or Not to MFA, Behaving Like a Gentleman By Lorin Stein To MFA or not to MFA. That is the question. —D. G. It depends on how you feel about putting off the inevitable. That’s what writing programs are for—to give young writers one or two years of camaraderie before they face the market, where writing lives or dies according to whether people will pay to read it. You can learn things in a writing program, of course. It can give you the sanction to spend your days reading and writing, if you need that kind of sanction. More important, it can offer a stipend. This is probably the best thing a program can do, beside helping you to realize if you have no talent. (This service tends not to be advertised.) But I find it hard to believe that spending so much time with other young writers—people so much like you—is good for the spirit, or makes you a more interesting person. Most living writers I admire (and most I don’t) have spent some time either studying or teaching in writing programs. So have I. And some, like the excellent Gary Shteyngart, seem to find them useful. At this point, I think, it’s hard to tell: so few young writers go it alone. Read More