June 29, 2018 Department of Tomfoolery The Hardest Guess-the-Writer Quiz By Matt B. Weir The five anonymous minibiographies below are drawn from the lives of writers in our interview archives. Think you’ve got what it takes to identify them based on only the strangest and most idiosyncratic details of their lives? On our last quiz, only 24 percent of participants got a perfect score—but we are ruthless and haven’t made this one any easier. Be among the first to correctly identify all five and you could win a copy of The Paris Review’s newest book, The Writer’s Chapbook. The winner will be drawn on Friday, July 6, and contacted via email. Loading… Matt B. Weir is a writer living in New York. These anonymous biographies are part of his larger ongoing series.
May 7, 2018 Department of Tomfoolery How Well Do You Know These Writers’ Lives? By Matt B. Weir The five anonymous minibiographies below are drawn from the lives of writers in our interview archives. Be among the first to correctly identify all five and you could win a copy of The Paris Review’s newest book, The Writer’s Chapbook. Winners will be drawn on Wednesday, May 10, and contacted via email. These anonymous biographies are part of a larger ongoing series by Matt B. Weir. Loading… Matt B. Weir is a writer living in New York.
February 23, 2018 Department of Tomfoolery 💀 Vanitas 💀 By Elif Batuman Simon Renard de Saint-André, Vanitas, c. 1660. Read More
January 31, 2018 Department of Tomfoolery Paris, Reviewed By Rosa Rankin-Gee Real life reviews from the City of Light, compiled from TripAdvisor.com Musee d’Orsay MUSÉE D’ORSAY Not worth unless you are into art Only go if you are interested in art history. I love history, but I couldn’t stay here for more than an hour, as its pictures doesn’t make sense to me. EIFFEL TOWER Very not good! We expect from the Eiffel Tower something romantic. But we got—very not good and not clean around the Eiffel Tower! At night you can’t see the city of Paris because there is not enough lighting!!! After visiting the Eiffel Tower, NO body helped us to find the way to go down!!! Read More
January 12, 2017 Department of Tomfoolery Kafka’s Budget Guide to Florence By Robert Cohen József Rippl-Rónai, Houses in Florence by the River Arno (Woman Leaning on Her Elbow), 1904. During a trip that they took together in August and September of 1911, Kafka and Max Brod hit on the idea of creating a new type of travel guide. “It would be called ‘Billig’ (‘On the Cheap’),” Brod remembered. “Franz was tireless and got a childlike pleasure out of elaborating all the principles down to the finest detail for this new type of guide, which was supposed to make us millionaires, and above all wrest us away from our awful office work.” —Reiner Stach, Is That Kafka? Exploring Florence Whoever leads a solitary life and yet now and then wishes to attach himself somewhere, anywhere—to be drawn at last, that is to say, into human relation, human harmony—might do well to come to Florence in the shoulder season, when the prices are lower and the narrow, crowded streets, with laborious effort and the proper shoes, can still be managed. There is so much to see. One chases after the city, stumbling and frantic, like a beginner learning to skate. And yet how can one be glad about the world unless one occasionally takes refuge in it? There is no having, only a state of being that craves suffocation. Read More
December 5, 2016 Department of Tomfoolery Krushing on Krampus By Laren Stover He wasn’t handsome or well-dressed. In fact, he wasn’t dressed. He was the size of an elf, made of fuzzy red chenille. But most striking—considering he arrived in a box of gifts from Vienna in December—was that he had a devilish head with horns and clutched, not a gift, but a bundle of ominous twigs. Why was my Austrian friend Susanne sending me a pipe-cleaner devil? “That’s the Krampus,” she told me when we spoke. “Before Christmas, on December 5, the Krampus shows up at houses where children have misbehaved.” “Why is he holding sticks?” “Birch switches to beat the bad children.” Whoa. And then she told me the Krampus drags the really bad ones down to the underworld! It was love. Read More