January 13, 2015 Bulletin Dear Critics: You Heard It Here First By Lorin Stein Illustration: Samantha Hahn Although Rachel Cusk’s Outline has not been available in hardcover until today, it’s already enjoyed a wild succès d’estime with some of our favorite critics. Last Wednesday, in the New York Times, Dwight Garner called it “transfixing … You find yourself pulling the novel closer to your face, as if it were a thriller and the hero were dangling over a snake pit.” In The New Yorker, Elaine Blair used Outline as the occasion for a trenchant essay on fiction and autobiography: The novel is mesmerizing; it marks a sharp break from the conventional style of Cusk’s previous work … Cusk’s insight in Outline is that, instead of trying to show two sides of a marriage, she might do the opposite: focus on the inevitable, treacherous one-sidedness of any single account [which] surely has something to do with why marriages themselves come apart. In the Guardian, Hilary Mantel described Outline as “fascinating, both on the surface and in its depths.” Bookforum’s Hannah Tennant-Moore called it “lovely … smart, ascetic”; and in the most recent New York Times Book Review Heidi Julavits raved: “Spend much time with this novel and you’ll become convinced [Cusk] is one of the smartest writers alive.” None of this will come as news to readers of The Paris Review—because, starting with our Winter 2013 issue, we published Outline in its entirety, with exclusive illustrations by Samantha Hahn. Here’s a slide show to celebrate the U.S. hardcover publication, and to remind our colleagues in the reviewing business where they can find the most transfixing, mesmerizing, fascinating, lovely fiction of 2016. Read More
December 18, 2014 Bulletin Happy Haneke By Dan Piepenbring A still from Haneke’s The White Ribbon, lovingly altered by Luisa Zielinski. Three simple facts: 1. It’s the third night of Hanukkah. 2. Our new issue features the Art of Screenwriting No. 5, an interview with Michael Haneke. 3. Haneke and Hanukkah are pronounced in very nearly the same fashion. A disinterested observer might chalk this up to mere coincidence. That observer would be correct. Still, you may consider, during these eight nights of gift-giving, capitalizing on the Haneke/Hanukkah near-homonym and presenting your loved one with a subscription to The Paris Review, starting with our Haneke issue—just forty dollars for a year’s supply of fiction, poetry, interviews, and art, including a postcard announcing your gift with a personal message. They make a great present for aspiring writers, who should, in the words of William Kennedy, “read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.” And our thanks to our interviewer, Luisa Zielinski, for sending along the highly appropriate greeting above.
December 16, 2014 Bulletin Happy Haneke By Dan Piepenbring “My students, meanwhile, pitch only the gravest of topics. For them it’s always got to be the Holocaust. I usually tell them, Back off. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You can only reproduce what you read or heard elsewhere. Others who actually lived through it have said it much better than you ever could. Try to create something that springs organically from your own experience. For only then does it stand the slightest chance of being genuinely interesting.” —Michael Haneke, the Art of Screenwriting No. 5 I felt enormously clever writing that pun up there. Then I remembered that it’s already been used—it’s the title of Anthony Lane’s excellent 2009 profile of Haneke in The New Yorker. Tant pis! Even so, my point stands: tonight marks the first night of Hanukkah, and our new issue features the Art of Screenwriting No. 5, an interview with Michael Haneke, whose name is pronounced in very nearly the same fashion. Coincidence? Yes, absolutely, nothing more. And yet. You may consider, during these eight nights of gift-giving, capitalizing on the Haneke/Hanukkah near-homonym and presenting your loved one with a subscription to The Paris Review, starting with our Haneke issue—just forty dollars for a year’s supply of fiction, poetry, interviews, and art, including a postcard announcing your gift with a personal message. They make a great present for aspiring writers, who should, in the words of William Kennedy, “read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.”
December 11, 2014 Bulletin Our Holiday Pop-up Shop Is Coming This Sunday By Dan Piepenbring We’re making a banner and everything. That’s how serious we are. Experts (i.e., us) have found that holiday shopping is altogether more bearable when there’s food and drink involved. Which is why we’re opening a pop-up shop in a restaurant. If you’re shopping downtown this Sunday, December 14, come visit us at Contrada, a cozy Italian restaurant in the East Village at 84 East Fourth Street. From three-thirty to six-thirty, we’ll be there with discounted subscriptions, back issues, T-shirts, and boundless reserves of holiday cheer (i.e., snacks and drinks). We’ll gift wrap anything you’d like to give as a present. Stop by and say hello! If you’re not in New York, you can still get a gift subscription to The Paris Review—just forty dollars for a year’s supply of fiction, poetry, interviews, and art, including a postcard announcing your gift with a personal message. They make a great present for aspiring writers, who should, in the words of William Kennedy, “read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.” Order before December 15 and your gift is guaranteed to arrive by Christmas.
December 8, 2014 Bulletin Visit Our Holiday Pop-up Shop This Sunday By Dan Piepenbring You may have heard that The Paris Review offers gift subscriptions—just forty dollars for a year’s supply of fiction, poetry, interviews, and art, including a postcard announcing your gift with a personal message. They make a great present for aspiring writers, who should, in the words of William Kennedy, “read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.” If you’re shopping downtown this weekend, you can pick up a gift from us in person. For one day only—this Sunday, December 14—we’re opening a pop-up shop at Contrada, a cozy Italian restaurant in the East Village at 84 East Fourth Street. From three-thirty to six-thirty, we’ll be there with discounted subscriptions, back issues, T-shirts, and boundless reserves of holiday cheer (i.e., snacks and drinks). We’ll gift wrap anything you’d like to give as a present. Stop by and say hello!
December 1, 2014 Bulletin Announcing Our Winter Issue By The Paris Review That photo on the cover comes from Marc Yankus, whose subject is New York buildings: “I can feel the brick, I can feel the hardness and the corners of the building … the structure, the monolith, the sculpture, the abstract.” In the Art of Memoir No. 2, Vivian Gornick talks about feminism, bad reviews, love versus work, and coming to terms with failure: I knew I had to stay with it as long as it took to write a sentence I could respect. That’s the hardest thing in the world to do—to stay with a sentence until it has said what it should say, and then to know when that has been accomplished. And in the Art of Screenwriting No. 5, Michael Haneke reveals the imaginative process behind movies like The White Ribbon and Amour—and why there are no “right” readings of his films: I would never set out to make a political film. I hope that my films provoke reflection and have an illuminating quality—that, of course, may have a political effect. Still, I despise films that have a political agenda. Their intent is always to manipulate, to convince the viewer of their respective ideologies. Ideologies, however, are artistically uninteresting. I always say that if something can be reduced to one clear concept, it is artistically dead. There’s also a special triple feature on Karl Ove Knausgaard, with an exclusive excerpt from My Struggle, Book 4; an essay on depression and Dante’s hell; and an exchange with The New Yorker’s James Wood on masculinity and good reasons for writing badly. Plus new fiction by Joe Dunthorne, Ottessa Moshfegh, Sam Savage, and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh; poems from Sylvie Baumgartel, Jeff Dolven, Cathy Park Hong, Phillis Levin, Jana Prikryl, Frederick Seidel, and Brenda Shaughnessy; and a series of aphorisms by Sarah Manguso. Get your copy now. And may we add that a subscription to The Paris Review makes a great present? The recipient will receive a postcard announcing your gift with your personal message. Just select the “gift” option when you check out.