March 25, 2016 Bulletin Poignant Comic Magic By Lorin Stein All illustrations by Jason Novak. As Paris Review subscribers know, every once in a while we serialize a novel. That is, we publish it in sections, usually over the course of a year, with recaps to bring new readers up to date. And we hire the best illustrators we can find—a stable that has included Tom Keogh, Leanne Shapton, Samantha Hahn, and a young “Andrew” Warhol. Over the past five years, we’ve brought you a lost work by Roberto Bolaño, a breakout novel by Rachel Cusk, and, most recently, the winner of this year’s Terry Southern Prize for Humor—a football novel for people who don’t know the rules—The Throwback Special, by Chris Bachelder, with illustrations by Jason Novak. This month, The Throwback Special came out in hardcover—and the crowd, as they say, went wild. The Minneapolis Star Tribune calls it “2016’s first Great Book … A wise, patient examination of American culture.” The Los Angeles Times praises its “poignant comic magic … powerful, intelligent, and entertaining.” And now the New York Times Book Review has weighed in: “Wistful and elegantly written … The Throwback Special conjures the rewarding melancholy of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe novels.” Don’t miss the next great book of 2016, or years to come—subscribe now!
March 18, 2016 Bulletin Paul Beatty Wins National Book Critics Circle’s Fiction Award By Dan Piepenbring Photo: Hannah Assouline Our congratulations to Paul Beatty, whose novel The Sellout won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction yesterday. The New York Times calls The Sellout “a scorching satire that wrenches humor out of painful subjects like slavery, police violence, and segregation”—it was one of our favorite novels of 2015. Last May, the Daily published a conversation between Beatty and Chris Jackson. “I’m surprised that everybody keeps calling this a comic novel,” Beatty said of The Sellout: I mean, I get it. But it’s an easy way not to talk about anything else. I would better understand it if they talked about it in a hyphenated way, to talk about it as a tragicomic novel, even. There’s comedy in the book, but there’s a bunch of other stuff in there, too. It’s easy just to hide behind the humor, and then you don’t have to talk about anything else. But I definitely don’t think of myself as a satirist. I mean, what is satire? Do you remember that New Yorker cover that everyone was saying was satire? Barack and Michelle fist-bumping? That’s not satire to me. It was just a commentary. Just poking fun at somebody doesn’t make something satire. It’s a word everyone throws around a lot. I’m not sure how I define it … I was talking to a friend and she said, Your audience is just a bunch of weirdos. But she meant it in a very positive way. There’s a special kind of weirdo who’s going to appreciate it. At least, I think that’s what she was saying. Read the whole interview here. Congratulations to Paul Beatty and all the NBCC award winners from all of us at the Review.
March 14, 2016 Bulletin The Paris Review in Paris By Dan Piepenbring From the cover of our Summer 1968 issue—now, for a limited time only, not misleading. The Paris Review hasn’t been headquartered in Paris since 1973—a cause of immeasurable confusion over the years. But this week, for once, our name makes sense: our editor, Lorin Stein, is in the City of Light. Though he’s not, to my knowledge, reviewing anything there, he’s speaking at two free events, and we invite our Parisian readers to attend. On Tuesday, March 15, Lorin joins Russell Williams and Nelly Kaprièlian at the American University of Paris for a panel called “Translating Houellebecq.” They’ll discuss the global reception, significance, and challenges of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, which Lorin translated into English last year. The talk will be held in Room C-104, located in the AUP Combes building, at six P.M.; those looking to attend should write [email protected] to register. On Thursday, March 17, Lorin and David Szalay appear in conversation at Shakespeare and Company. Szalay is the winner of this year’s Plimpton Prize, awarded for his novellas Youth, from issue 213, and Lascia Amor e siegui Marte, from issue 215. Their talk begins at seven. We urge our French readership to join Lorin before he returns to New York and The Paris Review resumes its life as a misnomer.
March 1, 2016 Bulletin Our Spring Issue Is Here By The Paris Review Cover by Adrian Tomine. Behold: our new Spring issue, with a cover by Adrian Tomine and a shade of yellow bright enough to bring the thaw. It includes an Art of Nonfiction interview with Luc Sante, who talks about growing up in the New York of the seventies and eighties and his fascination with “the intersection of specific time and place”: This goes back to my teenage years. I would think, Jeez, 1972 feels so different from 1971 … I meant the feeling on the street, the feeling emanated by people, songs, the contents of the songs, what people were wearing. Trying to reproduce that elusive factor—it’s something I’ve tried to write about many, many times, and it’s impossible. I can only do it, kind of, by indirection. But my spelunking in that direction has nourished a lot of my work. Sante contributed our portfolio, too: an annotated collection of the magazine covers, collages, flyers, and ephemera of his youth. And Robert Caro, who has devoted himself to a five-volume life of Lyndon Johnson since 1976, discusses the Art of Biography: Rhythm matters. Mood matters. Sense of place matters. All these things we talk about with novels, yet I feel that for history and biography to accomplish what they should accomplish, they have to pay as much attention to these devices as novels do. You’ll also find James Tate’s final poem, discovered in his typewriter after his death; a story by Witold Gombrowicz never before published in English; the fourth and final installment of Chris Bachelder’s comic masterpiece The Throwback Special; new fiction from Jensen Beach, Benjamin Hale, Dana Johnson, Craig Morgan Teicher, and Anne-Laure Zevi; and poems by John Ashbery, Mary Jo Bang, Erica Ehrenberg, Amit Majmudar, J. D. McClatchy, Morgan Parker, Mary Ruefle, Frederick Seidel, and Cynthia Zarin. Subscribe now!
February 25, 2016 Bulletin Now Online: Our Interviews with Eileen Myles and Jane Smiley By Dan Piepenbring In the halcyon days of September 2015, when the weather was mild and Trump’s candidacy was moderately less terrifying, we published interviews with Eileen Myles and Jane Smiley. Our print subscribers have long since read, digested, and discussed them, and would no doubt greet any mention of them with “That is so two quarters ago”—but now, five long months later, the interviews are freely available to everyone. Read More
January 19, 2016 Bulletin Give Your Valentine Our Special Box Set By The Paris Review Valentine’s Day is less than a month away. Started that love letter yet? You could be forgiven for putting it off: even Roland Barthes felt that “to try to write love is to confront the muck of language.” Luckily, The Paris Review’s archive is full of writers—more than sixty years’ worth—who have already gotten their hands dirty. That’s why we’re offering a special Valentine’s Day box set: it features two vintage issues from our archive (you choose from five), a T-shirt, and a copy of our new anthology, The Unprofessionals—all packaged in a handsome gift box, including a card featuring William Pène du Bois’s 1953 sketch of the Place de la Concorde. (You may have seen it on the title page of the quarterly.) Your significant other will also receive a one-year subscription, starting with our Winter issue. We’ve been given to know that this box set yields results. Just ask this satisfied customer: Last year @amicob sent me a @parisreview Valentine’s boxed set and we fell in love. True story. So buy one: https://t.co/TOshUrrdXq — Catherine Campbell (@TheCatCampbell) January 19, 2016 You can order your box set here—purchase your gift by February 8 to guarantee delivery before Valentine’s Day.