August 6, 2013 Bulletin What We’re Doing: Not Staying in Room 1212 By Sadie Stein Why should you never stay in room 1212? When should you tip the concierge? How can you raid your minibar—for free? Learn the answers to these and other shameful but reasonable questions tomorrow at noon when Paris Review editor Lorin Stein interviews Jacob Tomsky, author of Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality. To purchase tickets, click here.
August 6, 2013 On Film Don’t You Forget About Me By Jason Diamond Some people revere Jean-Luc Godard, others obsess over finding subliminal messages in the films of Stanley Kubrick. Much as I love the work of these masters, the filmmaker whose work I tend to think the most about is John Hughes. From the iconic films he both wrote and directed (The Breakfast Club, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles) to those he wrote and produced (Home Alone) the movies Hughes helped create between 1984 and 1991 are all classics in my eyes. (Even I will admit that after that his work gets really iffy: 101 Dalmatians, anybody?) I grew up laughing at his films, and when I eventually found myself homesick for the Chicagoland area I knew growing up, I’d revisit the copies of his films that I still watch on a monthly basis. Eventually I’d come to the realization that while David Kamp rightfully called Hughes the “Sweet Bard of Youth” in his 2010 Vanity Fair piece on the late director, I came to realize—thanks in large part to the distance between me and the place where I grew up—that Hughes was something even more; that he was to Chicago and its northern suburbs what Woody Allen was to Manhattan in the seventies and eighties. He made being from those bland suburbs seem more interesting than I recalled. Read More
August 6, 2013 Bulletin Gatsby-Jazz, and Other News By Sadie Stein “Over the years, I’d purchased books on Indian philosophy, Nepali architecture, alpine flowers, Hatha yoga, spirit possession, as well as old copies of The Paris Review, and I frequented the store long enough to see my own collection of short stories appear in the section for Nepali authors.” Kathmandu’s Pilgrims Book House rebounds, slowly, from a devastating fire. The Generative Gatsby lays out the text of Fitzgerald’s novel like music scores, designed along the lines of twenties-era jazz. Scholastic Book Club is dead; long live Scholastic Reading Club! “The phrase is alluring, stirring, and indistinctly evocative. It is also, strictly speaking, incomprehensible, and for all the time the phrase has been relished, readers and scholars have debated what the term actually means.” What, exactly, did Homer mean by “wine-dark sea” … if that’s even what he said?
August 5, 2013 Bulletin Short Story By Sadie Stein Check out those shorts second from the right. Your eyes do not deceive you: that is indeed the very same 1953 William Pène du Bois cityscape that graces the inside cover of your issue of The Paris Review. It’s one of four designs, taken from our archive, to be found on these limited-edition swim trunks (which could also, of course, just be worn as shorts). Produced in collaboration with Barneys New York and Orlebar Brown to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of The Paris Review, they can be found in our shop. With each purchase, you will receive a one-year subscription. (L-R: Kim MacConnel, Summer 1980; Donald Sultan, Summer 1996; William Pène du Bois, Spring 1953; Leanne Shapton, Spring 2011.)
August 5, 2013 Arts & Culture Sex on the Beach By M.J. Moore Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures. On August 5, 1953, the film version of James Jones’s From Here to Eternity opened at the Capitol Theater in New York City. A heat wave suffocated Manhattan. The theater was not air-conditioned. Nobody cared. Lines formed around the block beginning on that torrid Wednesday night. Quickly, it was decided to add a one A.M. screening to accommodate the overflow crowds. It was a smash hit throughout the world, and the film’s beach scene became instantly iconic. Did the film version of From Here to Eternity so enthrall the masses merely because of that famous beach scene (in which Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, playing adulterous lovers, passionately kiss as the waves wash over them)? Or because it was tailored to the ex-G.I. generation, thriving amid America’s victorious postwar abundance? Winning eight Academy Awards didn’t hurt. But there’s more to it than that. By the time the film debuted, James Jones’s debut novel had won for itself not just the 1952 National Book Award for Fiction, but also a vast international readership. It would sell a half million copies in hardcover and then three million in paperback. Timing was key. From Here to Eternity was published between the release of the controversial first Kinsey Report (“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” in 1948) and its scandalously received sequel, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” which induced a critical firestorm when it appeared in 1953. Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s methodologies and conclusions still inspire debate. But there’s no disputing the public’s reaction then to the two statistically top-heavy books that he and his colleagues issued. Shock, dismay, denial, and disgust were in the air, as the Kinsey Reports’ charts about extramarital sex, masturbation, homosexual and bisexual orientations, and other data contradicted American society’s self-image. Read More