April 2, 2014 Bulletin Prized By Dan Piepenbring We’re pleased to announce that two of our stories have been selected by Jennifer Egan for this year’s Best American Short Stories collection: Benjamin Nugent’s “God,” which appeared in issue 206; and “Hover,” by Nell Freudenberger, from issue 207. Their stories will appear in an anthology to be published in October. We also have nine nominees for this year’s Pushcart Prize: David Searcy, “Mad Science,” issue 204 Ottessa Moshfegh, “The Weirdos,” issue 206 Susan Stewart, “Pine,” issue 207 Kevin Young, “Three Poems to Amy Winehouse,” issue 204 Stephen Dunn, “Feathers,” issue 204 Ben Lerner, “False Spring,” issue 205 David Gates, “The Curse of the Davenports,” issue 205 Kate Levin, “Dirty Parts,” from the Daily, July 2013 LuLing Osofky, “Kent Johnson’s / Araki Yasusada’s / Tosa Motokiyu’s “Mad Daughter and Big-Bang,” from the Daily, May 2013 Congratulations to all!
April 1, 2014 Bulletin Give a Warm Welcome to Our Newest Issue By Dan Piepenbring At last! Spring is here, Easter is coming, and, as you can see, the latest issue of The Paris Review has already taken its pastels out of the closet—it’s ready to sally forth into the cherry blossoms. And at its heart are two of our most anticipated interviews. First, there’s Cormac McCarthy on the Art of Fiction: I rise at six and work through the morning, every morning, seven days a week. I find the sun has a forlorn truth before noon. And there’s Thomas Pynchon on his process, his elaborate research for Bleeding Edge, and his depiction in the media: Being called paranoid seems preferable to any number of things. Especially now, with the degrees of access, the ubiquity of cameras—it’s a position that seems increasingly less, well, paranoid. The word that does bother me is recluse. I don’t consider myself reclusive. Plus, an excerpt from a newly unearthed novel by Roberto Bolaño; fiction by Lydia Davis and Ottessa Moshfegh; poems by Frederick Seidel, Anne Carson, and Dorothea Lasky; an essay by Christian Lorentzen; and a portfolio by Salman Rushdie. We humbly assert that it’s one of our strongest issues ever. See for yourself.
March 31, 2014 Bulletin Wanted for July: A Writer-in-Residence By Dan Piepenbring Last fall, we partnered with the Standard, East Village to find a Writer-in-Residence—someone with a book under contract who would get a room at the hotel for three weeks’ uninterrupted work. Our winner, Lysley Tenorio, was profiled by the Wall Street Journal; in January, he installed himself in room 1006 and found much to admire from his window. The whole thing proceeded so swimmingly, we thought: Why not do it again? And so we are. Today through May 1, we’re accepting applications for the next residency at the Standard, East Village, in downtown Manhattan. The residency will last the first three weeks in July; once again, applicants must have a book under contract. Applications will be judged by the editors of The Paris Review and Standard Culture. You can find all the details here. (We’ll answer your most burning question in advance: yes, the room includes unlimited free coffee.)
March 12, 2014 Bulletin Emma Cline Wins Plimpton Prize; Ben Lerner Wins Terry Southern Prize By The Paris Review Photo of Emma Cline by James Williams; photo of Ben Lerner by Matt Lerner Each year, at our annual Spring Revel, the board of The Paris Review awards two prizes for outstanding contributions to the magazine. It is with great pleasure that we announce our 2014 honorees. The Plimpton Prize for Fiction is a $10,000 award given to a new voice from our last four issues. Named after our longtime editor George Plimpton, it commemorates his zeal for discovering new writers. This year’s Plimpton Prize will be presented by Lydia Davis to Emma Cline for her story “Marion,” from issue 205. The Terry Southern Prize is a $5,000 award honoring “humor, wit, and sprezzatura” in work from either The Paris Review or the Daily. This year’s prize will be presented by Roz Chast to Ben Lerner for “False Spring” (issue 205) and “Specimen Days” (issue 208). Both are excerpts from his forthcoming novel 10:04. From all of us on staff, a heartfelt chapeau! (And if you haven’t bought your ticket to attend the Revel—supporting the magazine and writers you love—isn’t this the time?)
March 3, 2014 Bulletin Presenting Our Spring Issue By Dan Piepenbring Our new Spring issue is full of firsts. That fellow on the cover is Evan Connell, whose first novel, Mrs. Bridge, originated as a short story in our Fall 1955 issue. Then there’s our interview with Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men—the first Art of Screenwriting interview to feature a television writer. Weiner discusses the influence of T.S. Eliot, John Cheever, Alfred Hitchcock, and The Sopranos on his work: Mad Men would have been some sort of crisp, soapy version of The West Wing if not for The Sopranos. Peggy would have been a climber. All the things that people thought were going to happen would have happened … The important thing, for me, was hearing the way David Chase indulged the subconscious. I learned not to question its communicative power. And in the Art of Nonfiction No. 7, Adam Phillips grants us our first-ever interview with a psychoanalyst; he discusses not just his writing but his philosophy, and the importance of psychoanalysis: When people say, “I’m the kind of person who,” my heart always sinks. These are formulas, we’ve all got about ten formulas about who we are, what we like, the kind of people we like, all that stuff. The disparity between these phrases and how one experiences oneself minute by minute is ludicrous. It’s like the caption under a painting. You think, Well, yeah, I can see it’s called that. But you need to look at the picture. There’s also our first story from Zadie Smith; fiction from Ben Lerner, Luke Mogelson, and Bill Cotter; and the second installment of Rachel Cusk’s novel, Outline, with illustrations by Samantha Hahn. Plus new poems by John Ashbery, Dorothea Lasky, Carol Muske-Dukes, Geoffrey G. O’Brien, Nick Laird, and the inimitable Frederick Seidel, who will be honored with the Hadada Award next month at our Spring Revel. And a portfolio of previously unpublished photographs by Francesca Woodman. It all adds up to an issue sure to put a spring in your step. Subscribe now!
February 28, 2014 Bulletin Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Prude By Dan Piepenbring We at The Paris Review Daily do not ordinarily see fit to intervene in matters of geopolitics. But the Times brings news too dismaying to ignore: in a ham-fisted effort to tighten national security, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters has intercepted millions of images from Yahoo webcams. And what have they gotten for their troubles? Not sensitive documents, hot tips, or even shifty conversation—just eyeful after eyeful of amateur porn. Worse still, they’re not even turned on by it. “Unfortunately, there are issues with undesirable images within the data,” one GCHQ document reads. “It would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person.” An internal agency survey of 323 Yahoo usernames found that 7.1 percent of those images contained “undesirable nudity.” “Undesirable” our asses! (Which would, if bared on Yahoo webcams, provide only the most desirable foreign intelligence in the world.)