May 5, 2014 Bulletin John Jeremiah Sullivan Wins James Beard Foundation Award By Dan Piepenbring Photo: PatríciaR, via Wikimedia Commons Congratulations to our Southern editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan, who’s been honored with the James Beard Foundation’s MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his essay “I Placed a Jar in Tennessee.” The James Beard Foundation awards are presented “for excellence in cuisine, culinary writing, and culinary education.” “I Placed a Jar in Tennessee” appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of Lucky Peach; it tells the story of Kevin West, who has recently discovered, or perhaps rekindled, a family passion for home-preserving and pickling. If the title strikes you as familiar but unplaceable, fear not, for I have done your googling for you—it refers to Wallace Stevens’s famous poem “Anecdote of the Jar,” first published in 1919: I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion every where. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.
April 29, 2014 Bulletin Going, Going … By Dan Piepenbring May 1 is the last day to apply for our writer’s residency at the Standard East Village, in downtown Manhattan. As our Writer-in-Residence, you’ll get a room at the hotel for three weeks’ uninterrupted work. The residency runs for the first three weeks in July; applicants must have a book under contract. The applications will be judged by the editors of The Paris Review and Standard Culture, and you can find all the details here. But hurry!
April 27, 2014 Bulletin Before You Watch Mad Men Tonight By Dan Piepenbring Matthew Weiner, in film school, 1990. “I realized that if you could write, you could have complete control.” Read The Paris Review’s interview with Matthew Weiner, which appears in our latest issue and is, as of today, available in its entirety online. (If you bring it up with your friends and they’re like, Yeah, I read that two months ago—what rock have you been living under, it’s probably because they subscribe to The Paris Review. But so can you.) Weiner discusses the writers who’ve influenced him: I don’t make lists or rank writers. I can only say which ones are relevant to me. Salinger holds my attention, Yates holds my attention. John O’Hara doesn’t, I don’t know why—it’s the same environment, but he doesn’t. Cheever holds my attention more than any other writer. He is in every aspect of Mad Men, starting with the fact that Don lives in Ossining on Bullet Park Road—the children are ignored, people have talents they can’t capitalize on, everyone is selfish to some degree or in some kind of delusion. I have to say, Cheever’s stories work like TV episodes, where you don’t get to repeat information about the characters. He grabs you from the beginning. And his early dalliance with poetry: INTERVIEWER What were your poems like? WEINER Pretty funny, a lot of them, in an ironic way. And very confessional. A lot like what I do on Mad Men, actually—I don’t think people always realize the show is super personal, even though it’s set in the past. It was as if the admission of uncomfortable thoughts had already become my business on some level. I love awkwardness. And the origins of the Mad Men pilot: Four years after I’d started working in TV, I wrote the pilot for Mad Men. Three years after that, AMC wanted to make it. They asked me, What’s the next episode about? So I went looking through my notes. Now, imagine this. At this point it’s 2004—I’m writing for The Sopranos—and I go back to look at my notes from 1999 … but then I find this unfinished screenplay from 1995, and on the last page it says “Ossining, 1960.” Five years after I’d abandoned that other screenplay, I’d started writing it again without even knowing it. Don Draper was the adult version of the hero in the movie. And there were all of these things in the movie that became part of the show—Don’s past, his rural poverty, the story I was telling about the United States, about who these people were. And when I say “these people,” I mean people like Lee Iacocca and Sam Walton, even Bill Clinton to some degree. I realized that these people who ran the country were all from these very dark backgrounds, which they had hidden, and that the self-transforming American hero, the Jay Gatsby or the talented Mr. Ripley, still existed. I once worked at a job where there was a guy who said he went to Harvard. Someone finally said, You did not go to Harvard—that guy didn’t go to Harvard! And everyone was like, Who cares? That went into the show. It’s the perfect primer for tonight’s episode, and it’s available in full here.
April 24, 2014 Bulletin The Deadline Approaches By Dan Piepenbring A reminder: until May 1, we’re accepting applications for a Writer-in-Residence at the Standard, East Village, in downtown Manhattan—you’ll get a room at the hotel for three weeks’ uninterrupted work. The residency will last the first three weeks in July; applicants must have a book under contract. The applications will be judged by the editors of The Paris Review and Standard Culture. You can find all the details here. Bonne chance!
April 23, 2014 Bulletin Vote for the Daily (or Else) By Dan Piepenbring A still from Lyndon Johnson’s notorious “Daisy” attack ad, 1964. You may not have known it, but The Paris Review is nominated for two Webby Awards: one for best cultural blog and one for best “social content and marketing” in arts and culture. The winner of the People’s Voice award is determined by popular vote; the deadline is tomorrow at 11:59 P.M. We’re honored by the nomination and we hope we can count on your support, but we’re not one to beg for votes—we’ve run a clean, dignified, gentlemanly campaign, free of pandering, slandering, smears, and slurs. But what has that gotten us? Four percent of the popular vote. Fuck the high road: we’re going negative. Read More
April 15, 2014 Bulletin Read Zadie Smith’s Story from Our Spring Issue By Dan Piepenbring Not pictured: Miss Adele, the corsets. Zadie Smith’s story “Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets” appears in our latest issue, and we’re delighted to announce that, as of today, you can read it online in its entirety. But “Miss Adele” won’t be gracing the Internet in perpetuity; it’s only available while our Spring issue is on newsstands. Subscribe to The Paris Review and you’ll have constant, round-the-clock, 24/7/365 access to this story and a wealth of others, anytime, anywhere, anyhow—digitally, in print, and perhaps in media yet to be invented. “Well, that’s that,” Miss Dee Pendency said, and Miss Adele, looking back over her shoulder, saw that it was. The strip of hooks had separated entirely from the rest of the corset. Dee held up the two halves, her big red slash mouth pulling in opposite directions. “Least you can say it died in battle. Doing its duty.” “Bitch, I’m on in ten minutes.” “When an irresistible force like your ass … ” “Don’t sing.” “Meets an old immovable corset like this … You can bet as sure as you liiiiiive!” “It’s your fault. You pulled too hard.” “Something’s gotta give, something’s gotta give, SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE.” “You pulled too hard.” “Pulling’s not your problem.” Dee lifted her bony, white Midwestern leg up onto the counter, in preparation to put on a thigh-high. With a heel she indicated Miss Adele’s mountainous box of chicken and rice: “Real talk, baby.” Read the whole story.