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.
January 4, 2016 Bulletin Speaking Unprofessionally By The Paris Review Attention, procrastinators! This is your last chance to get a free copy of our new anthology of emerging writers, The Unprofessionals. Want to learn more? See below for a talk with our editor, Lorin Stein, and contributors Emma Cline, Kristin Dombek, Cathy Park Hong, Ben Nugent, and Jana Prikryl. Thanks to BookCourt for letting us tape their conversation. Read More
December 7, 2015 Bulletin Aesop and The Paris Review By The Paris Review A concentrated treatment to reinvigorate intellect and imagination. How to Use Read attentively from cover to cover at least once; repeat as desired. For best results, pair with a responsible intake of red wine. Ingredients Erudition, insouciance, concision, onomatopoeia, allegory, exposition, allusion, anastrophe, synecdoche, metaphor, ekphrasis, irony, verisimilitude, euphony, assonance, litotes, caesurae, alliteration, metonymy. What to Expect Aroma: ink, paper Product texture: smooth, substantial Feel: stimulated, transported We recommend pairing this stimulating read with application of a facial cleansing masque. Read More
November 27, 2015 Bulletin Holiday Sale: Gift Subscriptions Get a Free Copy of The Unprofessionals By The Paris Review They were made for each other. Starting today, if you give your favorite reader a subscription to The Paris Review, we’ll include a free copy of our new anthology, The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review—a $16 value. Elle calls The Unprofessionals “a cri de coeur against literary credentialism, mixing short stories, essays, and poems by established writers such as Zadie Smith, Brenda Shaughnessy, and John Jeremiah Sullivan with work by lesser-known scribes ranging from their midtwenties to midforties.” The Atlantic calls it “a dispatch from the front lines of literature.” We call it the best stocking stuffer of 2015. Gift subscriptions for a year of The Paris Review—the best in fiction, poetry, essays, and art—are only $40. Buy yours before December 10 to guarantee arrival before Christmas! (And don’t be afraid to get one for yourself.)