January 6, 2014 Bulletin Our New Year’s Resolution: Spend More Time with the Kids By Dan Piepenbring As truisms go, “They grow up so fast” is a doozy. Take it from us. A mere fifteen years ago, when The Paris Review was a sprightly forty-five, we looked on in wonder as McSweeney’s took its first steps in this world, a mock eighteenth-century gazette from the outskirts of Silicon Valley. At moments we glimpsed a younger, friendlier version of ourselves, if we’d been born in a small nonsmoking city where people did graphic design. We laughed at their jokes. We admired the typesetting. We even paid a couple of visits to their pirate store. What can we say? Time did its thing. We remained on the East Coast, McSweeney’s on the West. As the years passed, we begged off various ballet recitals, countless soccer games, and at least one fiction reading that had an acoustic guitar component. We were an absentee elder sister. No more! With a new year upon us and McSweeney’s entering its headstrong teenage phase, we want a second chance: at the ripe old age of sixty, we’re spending more time with the kid. All month long, we’re offering a subscription deal in conjunction with McSweeney’s: you can get both magazines for just $75, a 20 percent savings. Because it’s 2014, and you don’t have to make the same mistakes we did. You can have it all: the interviews, fiction, poetry, art, essays, humor, and translations that make us proud to be in the same business.
January 6, 2014 Bulletin, Our Daily Correspondent Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes By Sadie Stein Dear friends, There are going to be some exciting things happening here at the Daily! For starters, after nearly two years of editing the site, I’m going to be shifting my focus to writing: as a contributing editor and sort of house writer, I’ll now be appearing here on a daily (no pun intended) basis! As to the editorial side, I’m delighted to hand things over to Dan Piepenbring, who has graciously made the westward trek to lend TPR his talents, smarts, and musical acumen. (One of these days I’ll actually get all my perfume bottles, matchbooks, and ink bottles out of his desk.) Watch this space to see the wonders he works. As ever, Sadie
January 3, 2014 Bulletin Our New Year’s Resolution: Travel More By Dan Piepenbring Mallet compound locomotive of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway (Frisco) via Wikimedia Commons. We know: it’s hard to leave home. Your showerhead gets great water pressure; the guy at your bodega saves you the last copy of the Post; the coffee people remember your name. Why skip town? Indeed, we’re so irredeemably tethered to Manhattan that we haven’t bothered to have a foreign office in forty years. And we’re The Paris Review. But it’s a new year, time to cast off our parochialism and see the world. Riches may lie in store. Legend tells, for instance, of a land called San Francisco, where paupers pan for gold, used bookstores line the streets, and the buses run on electricity. What is the state of letters in this paradise? Which fashions are in vogue among its citizenry? How’s the ceviche? We can’t say. But we know who can: McSweeney’s, a San Francisco institution since 1998. This January only, you can get a dual subscription to The Paris Review and McSweeney’s for just $75—20 percent less than two individual subscriptions. In other words, you’ll have the comforts of home and a year of bicoastal exploration for less than it would cost us to get from Penn Station to Philadelphia, if that were something we were inclined to do. Get transcontinental with McSweeney’s and the Review.
January 2, 2014 Bulletin Our New Year’s Resolution: Stop Watching So Much Fucking TV By Dan Piepenbring Family watching television, c. 1958, via Wikimedia Commons Two thousand thirteen was the year that introduced binge-watching to the lexicon. In a new poll by Netflix, sixty-one percent of respondents conceded to having binged on one show or another, meaning they’d watched upwards of three episodes a single sitting. The message, dear reader, is clear: we’re gorging ourselves on serialized dramas and slick on-demand entertainment. It’s time to step away from the fucking television. This should be the year we all read more. And because our resolve can sometimes waver, we’ve enlisted our friends at McSweeney’s in a call to action. Until the end of January, you can subscribe to The Paris Review and McSweeney’s for only $75—that’s 20 percent less than the price of individual subscriptions. Your 2014 will be so stuffed with the best in fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays that you’ll forget where you put the remote, forever.
January 1, 2014 Bulletin Start 2014 with a Dual Subscription to McSweeney’s and The Paris Review By The Paris Review This new year, bury the hatchet, broaden your horizons, and shock your friends with a dual subscription to McSweeney’s and The Paris Review. Yes, our two magazines have always appealed to different readers. Our sensibilities, like our headquarters, are a continent apart. But for 2014 we say, Vive la différence. This January only, you can get a year of The Paris Review and McSweeney’s for just $75*—that’s 20 percent less than you’d pay for individual subscriptions. You’ll have the most cosmopolitan bookshelf, nightstand, and bathroom on the block, and a full supply of the interviews, fiction, essays, poetry, and humor that keep us reading each other and make us want to spread the love! Subscribe now! *US only.
December 16, 2013 Bulletin Holidays, via The Paris Review By Sadie Stein Richard Anuszkiewicz, Untitled. We have already reminded you about the wonderful gift that is a full year—or even two, or three!—of the best in prose, poetry, interviews, and art. But don’t forget, there is also the Paris Review print series, allowing you to share an archive of nearly fifty years of contemporary masterworks. Subscribe now! And see our print series here.