September 19, 2022 Listen Terrance Hayes’s Soundtracks for Most Any Occasion By Terrance Hayes Photograph by Jem Stone, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. When we asked Terrance Hayes to make a playlist for you, our readers, he wrote us a poem. Of course he did. As Hayes told Hilton Als in his Art of Poetry interview in our new Fall issue, formal constraints offer him “a way to get free.” Many of Hayes’s poems derive their titles from song names and lyrics; others are influenced by the mood of a particular album or track. Music, he tells Als, “changes the air in the room.” This particular playlist-poem has a track for almost any kind of air—or room—you might find yourself in this week. Read and listen to “Occasional Soundtracks” below. Soundtrack for almost any morning: “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You” by James Ray Soundtrack for twelve minutes in the bathroom: “Mind Power” by James Brown Soundtrack for grooming: “Look” by Leikeli47 Soundtrack for any occasion: “Your Sweet Love” by Lee Hazlewood Soundtrack for a Friday night: “If It Wasn’t True” By Shamir Soundtrack for a carefree, slightly bittersweet day: “Free” by Deniece Williams Soundtrack for internet surfing: “Expensive Shit” by Fela Kuti Read More
January 29, 2019 Listen Mercilessness Clarifies: On Bernard Malamud By Chris Bachelder Bernard Malamud and Cynthia Ozick, backstage at the 92nd street Y “75 at 75: Writers on Recordings,” a special project from the 92nd Street Y in celebration of the Unterberg Poetry Center’s seventy-fifth anniversary and beyond, invites contemporary authors to listen to a recording from the Poetry Center’s archive and write a personal response. Here, Chris Bachelder reflects on Bernard Malamud’s reading from 1972, which was introduced by Cynthia Ozick. You can listen to the recording below. I’ve been talking to students about what a short story is, what it does, for about two decades. I’ve spent a lot of words. It occurred to me, while listening to this recording, that my entire teaching career has primarily been an attempt to say what Cynthia Ozick says—in just two words!—during her introductory remarks for Bernard Malamud. Of Malamud and his work, Ozick says, “Mercilessness clarifies.” Subject, verb. Read More
January 15, 2019 Listen John Dos Passos at the 92nd Street Y By Lydia Davis JOHN DOS PASSOS “75 at 75: Writers on Recordings,” a special project from the 92nd Street Y in celebration of the Unterberg Poetry Center’s seventy-fifth anniversary and beyond, invites contemporary authors to listen to a recording from the Poetry Center’s archive and write a personal response. Here, Lydia Davis reflects on John Dos Passos’s reading from January 18, 1965, which was introduced by her father, Robert Gorham Davis, Columbia English professor and literary critic. Offered the rich array of events recorded in the decades-spanning Unterberg Poetry Center archive, I was immediately drawn to comment upon John Dos Passos reading at the 92nd Street Y, before knowing what he had read or how interesting the evening was or wasn’t. I was drawn to it because the one who introduced him that evening—January 18, 1965—was my father, Robert Gorham Davis, then a literary critic and professor at Columbia. I had another strong reason to want to revisit Dos Passos, and it was that one of his books, most likely Manhattan Transfer or part of the U.S.A. trilogy, was the first book that appealed to me, at age twelve or fourteen, purely for the quality of the writing. I have tried and tried, without success, to find what I remember as those limpid, incantatory opening paragraphs. It was perhaps my first “grown-up” book (if I don’t count Mazo de la Roche’s rather steamy Jalna series). To be intrigued by more than plot and character, by the language of the writing itself, was the beginning of my slow awakening to the power of writing. And, of course, it changed the way I read a book—no longer mainly for the story, for an escape into another world, but now also for the way the sentences were formed, the kind of language that was used. Read More
January 15, 2018 Listen Chinua Achebe on Martin Luther King: He Died Too Young By The Paris Review Chinua Achebe In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., we bring you audio from an unused portion of the Art of Fiction No. 139, an interview with Chinua Achebe conducted for issue no. 133 (Winter 1994) of The Paris Review. In this clip, Achebe discusses the legacy of none other than Martin Luther King Jr. A transcript follows: Yes, I think certainly, in my view, that Martin Luther King is an ancestor. And although he died at the age of thirty-nine, this is something we do not often remember—how young he was when he was cut down. But his achievement was such that some who lived to be a hundred didn’t achieve half as much. So he does deserve that status, that standing. If he were in my country, he would be worshipped … I did not meet him, unfortunately, and I think one of the reasons was what I have just said, that he died too young. He was thirty-nine. Gandhi, with whom he is often compared, had not even returned to India at thirty-nine; he was still studying. We are thinking not about a sportsman, who can achieve his peak at eighteen, we are thinking of a philosopher, a thinker, who had to mature into action. I have been lucky in the past few years to be invited, again and again, to speak on his day—two years ago at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and then last year at the Smithsonian, so I’ve become something of an expert on Martin Luther King.
February 21, 2017 Listen Maya Angelou with George Plimpton By The Paris Review Tonight PBS’s American Masters series debuts “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise,” the first-ever feature documentary on the writer. The Paris Review’s George Plimpton, himself the star of a 2014 American Masters documentary, interviewed Angelou onstage at 92Y in 1988. That conversation laid the groundwork for Angelou’s Art of Fiction interview, which appeared in our Fall 1990 issue. But the audio from that night at 92Y is worth listening to in its own right—it finds both of them in rare form. As Plimpton wrote, Angelou’s “presence dominated the proceedings. Many of her remarks drew fervid applause, especially those which reflected her views on racial problems, the need to persevere, and ‘courage.’ She is an extraordinary performer and has a powerful stage presence.” Read More
August 24, 2016 Listen Jean Rhys Speaks By Dan Piepenbring Jean Rhys was born in Dominica, an island among the British West Indies. Though she spent most of her life in England, her time in the Caribbean left her with a distinctive, lilting accent. It sounds beautiful to me, but in 1909 it got her kicked out of the Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she was supposedly “slow to improve” it. In this minute-long clip, she dispenses some dour wisdom about writing and happiness. (The rumors are true: they’re inversely related.) If you don’t have a pair of headphones handy—or if you’re just paralyzed with fear at the thought of hearing a deceased person’s voice—here’s a rough transcript: Read More