October 19, 2011 Bulletin On the Shelf By Sadie Stein A page from Spalding Gray's journal. Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center.A cultural news roundup. After a particularly contentious run-up, Julian Barnes (finally) wins the Booker. The ceremony was … eventful. On the other side of the pond, the National Book Award apologizes for its error. Lauren Myracle withdraws. Roz Chast: “I think that children’s books should be censored not for references to sex but for references to diseases. I mean, who didn’t think after reading Madeline that they were going to get appendicitis?” Amazon hoards its superheroes. Stan Lee creates new ones. Tintin, the movie. The Seagull, the movie. Spot the fake title. Bram Stoker’s notebooks! Spalding Gray’s journals! C. S. Forester’s lost novel! Emily Post 4.0: “Just because someone’s IM service shows them as being ‘available,’ doesn’t necessarily mean they are … Respect ‘do not disturb’ status. Remember, each time you IM you are interrupting someone.”
October 19, 2011 Bulletin Congratulations to Julian Barnes By The Paris Review We were delighted to learn that the bookies’ favorite took the Booker: contributor Julian Barnes won the prize last night for his novel The Sense of an Ending. Barnes, in his 2000 Paris Review interview, describes writing literature as “producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.” But it was in 1998, when he fielded our questions about British literature, that he shed some light on the prize itself. When we asked Barnes whether the Booker ever got it right, he replied, “Yes, in that it is always awarded to a novel of serious intent.” Indeed.
October 12, 2011 Bulletin On the Shelf By Sadie Stein Steve Jobs. Photo by COG LOG LAB. A cultural news roundup. Roberto Saviano has won the PEN/Pinter International Writer of Courage Award for his exposés on the Naples mafia. Steve Jobs, the movie? Catch-22, the cartoon! Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is now an editor at large at Faber & Faber. Christopher Hitchens: “The influence of Larkin is much greater than I thought. He’s perfect for people who are thinking about death. You’ve got that old-line Calvinist pessimism and modern, acid cynicism—a very good combo. He’s not liking what he sees, and not pretending to.” Amy Winehouse’s father, Mitch, will write a memoir. Asterix goes on the road in his retirement. Audio fiction goes Hollywood. Dale Carnegie goes digital. Margaret Atwood goes green. Coetzee’s papers, meanwhile, go to the University of Texas. “The first real recipes for what you could identify as biscotti come from about 1550 or so.” Franzen on David Foster Wallace’s non-fiction. Literary matchmaking. Literary jerks.
October 7, 2011 Bulletin Congratulations to Tomas Tranströmer By Lorin Stein Tomas Tranströmer. The Paris Review congratulates Tomas Tranströmer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature. A valued contributor to the Review, Tranströmer is a poets’ poet, one whose name has come up in several of our interviews. Jorie Graham and Robert Bly both cite his influence. Translating Tranströmer, Bly told us, “was an amazing experience for me because there was a kind of image appearing in him that I’d never seen before … You feel yourself, because of the work you’ve done on the image, invaded by the image. You feel that it has become a part of your house like someone who’s moved into your house, and your house is changed then.” More prosaically, perhaps, Seamus Heaney credited Tranströmer and his wife, Monika, with this excellent-sounding marital advice: “Things will work fine as long as you see each other every six weeks … Just don’t let more than six weeks go past.”
October 6, 2011 Bulletin Help Us Support St. Mark’s! By Natalie Jacoby Yesterday, Lorin wrote about St. Mark’s Bookshop—“where the staff knows how to spread the word about good writing, face to face, hand to hand”—and the importance of keeping independent booksellers like this one alive. We meant every word of it, and to prove it, we’re offering a special discount to St. Mark’s patrons. Beginning today, when you buy a copy of our fall issue at St. Mark’s, you’ll receive a coupon good for 25% off a one-year subscription to The Paris Review, starting with our next issue (it’s good for T-shirts, tote bags, and mugs, too). It’s our way of saying thank you for supporting this beloved East Village institution!
October 5, 2011 Bulletin Saving St. Mark’s By Lorin Stein St. Mark’s Bookshop is the one of the last booksellers in the East Village. Since 1979 it has been famous for its collection of fiction, poetry, and criticism. With just 2,700 square feet, it always manages to stock the best new books and literary magazines—things that would get buried in a less selective store. Pace the Bloomberg newswire, you could find most of these things online. But first you’d have to look—and St. Mark’s teaches you what to look for. The staff don’t just select the stock, they proselytize on its behalf and, in their small way, help hold the neighborhood together. Once a friend of mine went up to the information desk and asked the clerk to restore his faith in the contemporary novel. Another time, another friend asked where to find flowers on a Sunday. Both left satisfied. That’s the kind of store it is. Now it seems St. Mark’s Bookshop may close—not for lack of customers, but for the same reason that the East Village lost its Ukrainian diners: if you’re selling pierogi or paperbacks, it’s hard to make $20,000 every month in rent. The owners of St. Mark’s have asked the landlord—the Cooper Union—to lower that rent by $5,000. Friends of the bookstore have circulated a petition and have gathered some 40,000 signatures supporting this request. We at The Paris Review have a stake in St. Mark’s Bookshop: the store sells between 150 and 200 copies of each issue of The Paris Review. That’s more than we sell in most cities. It’s more than we sell off our own Web site. Magazines like The Paris Review need good bookstores, where the staff knows how to spread the word about good writing, face to face, hand to hand. To our way of thinking, New York needs bookstores, too, or it will no longer be New York.