March 12, 2012 Bulletin A Tote for 200! By The Paris Review Our 200th Issue tote! We are thrilled to offer you what may be the coolest tote bag in Paris Review history! When you renew or subscribe to The Paris Review, you’ll receive this 11” x 13” eco-canvas tote, which takes its design from the cover of our two-hundredth issue (itself an adaptation of our very first cover, in 1953). And, as if it needs saying, a full year of fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays. All for $40. Subscribe now!
March 6, 2012 Bulletin Join Us for Our 2012 Spring Revel By Sadie Stein Our annual gala, the Spring Revel, brings together writers and friends of the magazine to share in an evening of cocktails, dinner, music, talk, and, all-around revelry. Just last year Women’s Wear Daily called this venerable tradition “the best party in town”—and who are we to argue with WWD? This year’s going to be especially … revelrous, because we’re celebrating the two hundredth issue of The Paris Review. Comedian David Cross (Arrested Development, etc.) will give the Terry Southern Prize for Humor. Mona Simpson will give the Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith will present Robert Silvers, cofounder and editor of The New York Review of Books (and our sometime Paris editor), with the Hadada Prize for a “unique contribution to literature.” Our Benefit Chairs are Chris Hughes, cofounder of Facebook, and his fiancée Sean Eldridge, President of Hudson River Ventures and Senior Adviser at Freedom to Marry. We’d love to see you there! Tickets and tables are available in The Paris Review’s store.
February 27, 2012 Bulletin Announcing Issue 200! By Sadie Stein It’s The Paris Review’s 200th issue, and that’s a big deal. As if two hundred volumes of fiction, poetry, belles-lettres, and iconic interviews weren’t reason enough to celebrate, this one is something special, including: fiction by Lorrie Moore, David Means, and Matt Sumell; poetry by Adrienne Rich, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Frederick Seidel; essays by David Searcy, Geoff Dyer, and John Jeremiah Sullivan; and literary paint chips by Leanne Shapton and Ben Schott. The Spring issue also contains a blockbuster interview with Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho came out of a place of severe alienation and loneliness and self-loathing. I was pursuing a life—you could call it the Gentleman’s Quarterly way of living—that I knew was bullshit, and yet I couldn’t seem to help it. American Psycho is a book about becoming the man you feel you have to be, the man who is cool, slick, handsome, effortlessly moving through the world, modeling suits in Esquire, having babes on his arm … On the surface, like Patrick Bateman, I had everything a young man could possibly want to be ‘happy’ and yet I wasn’t. Plus, Maggie Paley’s interview with Terry Southern—in the works since 1967. Southern, asked what he would do with unlimited financial resources, replied: First I would engage a huge but clever and snakelike “Blowing Machine,” and I would have it loaded with one ton of dog hair each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It would be brought up East Seventy-second Street to the very end, where it would poise itself outside George Plimpton’s house like a great dragon. Then, exactly when Katherine the Char had finished one room, the powerful, darting snout of the machine would rise up to the third floor windows and send a terrific blast of dog hair into the room—a quarter ton per room. I would observe her reaction—I have friends opposite—with a spyglass, room by room. The entire place would be foot-deep in dog hair, most of which however has not yet settled and has the effect of an Arctic blizzard. Then I would drop in—casually, not really noticing her hysteria, or that anything at all was wrong, just sort of complaining in a vague way, occasionally brushing at my sleeve, et cetera, speaking with a kind of weary petulance: “Really, Katherine, I do think you might be more … uh, well, I mean to say …” voice trailing away, attention caught by something else, a picture on the wall: “I say, that is an amusing print—is it new?” fixing her with a deeply searching look, so there could be no doubt at all as to my interest in the print. If this didn’t snap her mind I would give her several hundred thousand dollars—all in pennies. “Mr. Plimpton asked me to give you this, Katherine—each coin represents the dark seed of his desire for you.” Subscribe now!
February 15, 2012 Bulletin Win Two Free Tickets to ‘Seminar’ By Sadie Stein In Theresa Rebeck’s highly acclaimed Seminar, now playing at the Golden Theatre in New York, four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard (Alan Rickman), an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon and hearts come unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience … Of course, here at 62 White Street, this sort of thing is just another day at the office! But for anyone eager to experience the underbelly of the literary world—not to mention a night of great theater—here’s your chance. We’re giving away eight pairs of tickets to Seminar, valid through March 18. Subscribe or renew between now and Tuesday, February 21, to be eligible. We’ll randomly draw winners next week—but really, with a full year of poetry, fiction, and interviews in the offing, everyone wins! *The Paris Review is not responsible for transportation or lodging.
February 6, 2012 Bulletin Only One Day to Go! By The Paris Review Remember: through Tuesday, when you subscribe to The Paris Review, you’ll receive all four installments of Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich! That’s right, seven issues of poetry, fiction, and interviews, for just $50. Act fast—time is running out!
January 31, 2012 Bulletin Last-Chance Bolaño By The Paris Review “Compassionate, disturbing, and deeply felt … tragic and beautiful.” —NPR “A scathing novel with a lot of exuberance to it, not unlike the man who wrote it.” —The Economist “Thoroughly, weirdly absorbing.” —The New York Times That’s what the critics are saying about Roberto Bolaño’s lost novel, The Third Reich, which we serialized with original illustrations by Leanne Shapton. Over the course of four issues, we followed the adventures of Udo Berger, a young German who falls into louche company in an insalubrious resort on the Costa Brava—but of course, as a reader of The Paris Review, you know all about it. But maybe you missed an installment. Maybe you left it on the beach. Maybe your sinister uncle stole a copy from your apartment. Maybe you never subscribed at all. Well, kids, you’re in luck. Subscribe now* to The Paris Review, and receive all four installments—the entire Third Reich—plus three more issues to come. All for only $50. That’s right: you’ll receive seven issues, 196 through 202, and catch up on our most popular installments to date. Plus: interviews with Janet Malcolm, William Gibson, Nicholson Baker, and Jeffrey Eugenides; new work by Geoff Dyer, Jonathan Lethem, Frederick Seidel, and John Jeremiah Sullivan; and much more. But don’t delay! This offer only lasts through February 7. *Offer good for U.S. subscriptions only.