The Paris Review

November 27, 2012
Video & Multimedia

Early Adaptors

By Sadie Stein

Sherlock Holmes Baffled, which Arthur Marvin made in 1900 (and released three years later), is acknowledged to be the sleuth’s first onscreen appearance. However, it would seem that the thirty-second film may also be the very first cinematic literary adaptation. (Although in fairness, it would be hard to say which case the film portrays. One in which Holmes is baffled, presumably.)
November 27, 2012
Books

Falling Hard

By Anna Wiener

You see things differently when you’re in love. Two outpatients from a methadone clinic slap each other on the corner. A goiter rides the crosstown bus. We attend a dinner party; none of the dogs have tails. Men in the map room of the New York Public Library surveil passing breasts. Nights slip by. I sit on the curb outside a magazine launch and watch a famous author pour cold water down a woman’s arm. “Don’t be jealous,” my companion says impatiently, cupping his own elbows. “He’s only applying a temporary tattoo.”

I was in love and then I wasn’t, and sometime during the drifting gray interim I was told by a bookseller friend to read Renata Adler’s 1976 debut, Speedboat, a novel that had long been out of print but was absolutely, he insisted, worth the trouble of the search. I did not know whether this recommendation was meant to be sympathetic or encouraging, but I found it on eBay in two minutes, for three dollars. My friend was correct, as booksellers usually are; it was as though the novel had outstretched arms and I fell in.

Read More
November 27, 2012
Bulletin

Your Holiday Gift Dilemma: Solved!

By The Paris Review

Just in time for the holidays! Give the gift of The Paris Review to yourself and a loved one! For a limited time, when you buy a one-year subscription with automatic renewal, you can give a one-year gift subscription for only $25.

Here’s how it works: Include the addresses for the gift subscriptions in the “notes” field when checking out. Each subscription will start with the Winter issue and, of course, includes access to The Paris Review digital edition.

Need more than two gift subscriptions? Just call 866 354 0212 to cover everyone on your list.

Offer available for U.S. addresses only. Gift subscriptions will not be automatically renewed.
November 27, 2012
First Person

Yanet’s Vintage Emporium

By Julia Cooke

While I’m at Yanet’s apartment it begins to pour, packs of chubby raindrops in the tropical afternoon that make the dust in her Havana apartment feel thicker than it actually is. I’m trapped until the storm passes. But every surface in Yanet’s home is coated with objects waiting to be lifted, appraised, perused, felt—at least an afternoon’s worth. So I browse the waist-high tables and rich wood armoires with rows of cut-crystal wine and port glasses, mod carafes with faded metallic polka dots, kitschy ceramic table lamps painted with bright pastoral scenes, and patterned blown-glass globes that once held water and fish. Technically, it’s not legal for any of these objects to be sold. Read More
November 27, 2012
On the Shelf

Scandal at the (Old) OED, and Other News

By Sadie Stein

“An eminent former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and bizarrely blamed previous editors, according to claims in a book published this week.”

It may be intended to kickstart NaNoWriMo, but we think this Random Line Generator could be put to all sorts of interesting social uses.

“They would have loved me to have written fantasy fiction because that would have been easier to sell from a Tolkien, but I wanted to write thrillers.” Simon Tolkien on his famous grandfather’s legacy.

“I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book. A book is a book is a book.” Maurice Sendak was characteristically wishy-washy on the subject of e-books.

Some less vitriolic takes on the state of print.