March 18, 2013 Quote Unquote Happy Birthday, George! By Sadie Stein “I have never been convinced there’s anything inherently wrong in having fun.” —George Plimpton
March 18, 2013 Arts & Culture Cult Classic: Defining Katherine Mansfield By Kirsten O'Regan In “Je Ne Parle Pas Français,” a short story by Katherine Mansfield, the narrator muses: “I believe that people are like portmanteaux—packed with certain things, started going, thrown about, tossed away, dumped down, lost and found, half emptied suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the Ultimate Train and away they rattle …” Mansfield’s own Train has proved to be less Ultimate than she may have hoped. Despite sharp instructions to her husband to publish as little as possible after her death, the enterprising John Middleton Murry quickly set about curating her legacy. He perceptively noted (with, one imagines, a gleeful rubbing of hands), “Since Katherine Mansfield’s death, the interest in her personality has steadily increased.” It was, he explained, his duty to make known her private correspondence, the stories she was unsatisfied with, the journals in which she had recorded her thoughts. It has been a lively afterlife. In the ninety years since Mansfield’s death, her work has never been out of print; the same stories repeatedly reedited and reissued in newer, more “authentic” editions. Biographies have multiplied, clamoring for validation like conspiracy theorists. Scholars have greedily rummaged through this particular portmanteau, each emerging with quite irreconcilable portraits of the author. Read More
March 18, 2013 Bulletin On the Road iPad By Stephen Hiltner In 1955, The Paris Review paid a struggling Jack Kerouac fifty dollars for an excerpt from a then unpublished manuscript. The excerpt appeared as a short story titled “The Mexican Girl” and, after much acclaim, was picked up a year later by Martha Foley’s The Best American Short Stories. Due in large part to the success of “The Mexican Girl,” On the Road was soon accepted by Viking Press; the full novel was published in 1957. The issue containing Kerouac’s excerpt—The Paris Review no. 11 (Winter 1955)—has long since sold out, but we’re happy to announce that it’s now available in digital form via the Paris Review app. For those interested in our hard-to-find archival issues, we’ve also digitized issues 1, 18, and 20, and many more are on the way. In fact, for the next two weeks, readers who purchase a digital subscription via the Paris Review app will receive free digital access to the issue containing Kerouac’s excerpt. Alongside “The Mexican Girl” are stories by Gerard Reve and Marjorie Housepian, an interview with Nelson Algren, portfolios by Antoni Clavé and Oskar Kokoschka, and poetry by Louis Simpson, John Hollander, W. S. Merwin, Rolf Fjelde, Christopher Logue, and John Haislip. And all of that, of course, accompanies a year-long digital subscription to The Paris Review, beginning with issue 204. There’s good reason for print subscribers to download the app, too—we’ve granted free digital access to any issue covered by your print subscription. (If you’re a print subscriber and haven’t yet set up your app account, send an e-mail to support [at] theparisreview [dot] org.) There’s also lots of free content, including our complete interview archive—now fully bundled for offline viewing—and The Paris Review Daily. That’s really all to say: there’s no good reason not to have us on your iPad or iPhone! (To those with Android devices: we hope to have a version for you soon!)
March 18, 2013 On the Shelf Eliot’s Pen, Fabio’s Mane, and Other News By Sadie Stein With Charles Dickens’s quill a bit the worse for wear, the Royal Society of Literature begins signing its roll book with T. S. Eliot’s fountain pen. James Wood inaugurates. In the New York Post, poet Bob Holman shares a guide to his poetic New York, which includes the White Horse Tavern, the Hare Krishna tree, and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Will independent bookstores fill the gaps left by Borders? In Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, at least, this might be happening! Speaking of: Did you catch this list of über-indie bookstores in private homes? Happy birthday, Fabio: here are his best book covers.
March 15, 2013 Arts & Culture Notes from a Bookshop: March, or Waiting for Redbird By Kelly McMasters “The sky was darker than the water—it was the color of mutton-fat jade.”—Elizabeth Bishop, “The End of March” On more Saturday afternoons than not this month, I’ve watched swirls of snow blow past the blue door of our bookshop. The parking lots in town have small mountains of mud-encrusted snow piled in their corners, monuments to the length of this winter. At home, the firewood is running low, our freezer is nearly empty of the lamb we split with our neighbors back in the fall, and the local farmer’s market offerings have dwindled down to the last rutabagas from the root cellars. This has been a long winter, and everyone who comes into the bookshop looks a bit tired, drawn, impatient for spring and the promises that come with it. My favorite customer came in three weeks ago with his pregnant wife, her hair and eyes glowing, everything about her bursting with her own impending spring. Her husband is my favorite customer because he is my good luck charm—on the bookshop’s first Saturday he walked in and poked around until he found our poetry section. He gaped, not believing our little cache of modern poets. He revealed he was also a poet, had written his graduate thesis on Franz Wright. He’d grown up in town and I thought the presence of a local poet on one of our first days open was an auspicious sign. Read More
March 15, 2013 The Print Series Alex Katz, Paris Review, 1991 By The Paris Review Since 1964 The Paris Review has commissioned a series of prints and posters by major contemporary artists. Contributing artists have included Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, Ed Ruscha, and William Bailey. Each print is published in an edition of sixty to two hundred, most of them signed and numbered by the artist. All have been made especially and exclusively for The Paris Review. Many are still available for purchase. Proceeds go to The Paris Review Foundation, established in 2000 to support The Paris Review.