May 16, 2012 On Politics Kim Jong-Un’s First Speech, Interpreted as Doggerel By Anacharsis Clootz On April 15, Kim Jong-Un, the new leader of North Korea, gave his long-awaited maiden speech, on the hundredth anniversary of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder. Befitting the occasion, enormous crowds attended, and male and female soldiers marched with goose-stepping precision. North Korea-watchers considered it an important moment to gauge the new leader, and he did not disappoint, celebrating the particular take on history that distinguishes North Korea from all other nations. A full transcript has just been provided by a North Korean website, but for the readers of The Paris Review, a condensed version has been prepared, in poetic form. Read More
May 16, 2012 Arts & Culture Malcolm Cowley, Life Coach By Rebecca Davis O'Brien In the fall of 1946, my grandfather was twenty years old and back home in Pittsburgh, having completed his English degree at Purdue and a tour with the navy. Though he was expected to join the family diamond business, Richard Max Davis dreamed of becoming a writer—he just wasn’t sure how to do it. So he wrote a letter to Malcolm Cowley. And Malcolm Cowley wrote back. Read More
May 16, 2012 In Memoriam Get It Together: On Mourning Adam Yauch By Dave Tompkins I’m not sure who had the ball when George Clinton passed by in a golf cart. It could’ve been Mike D. It could’ve been Yauch. I just remember standing there astonished, watching George quietly scoot by in his Mothership mini, while my defensive assignment broke to the basket and scored. The Beastie Boys were playing some intrasquad hoops in a parking lot behind the Atlanta Amphitheater, a Lollapalooza stop during the summer of 1994. A portable basketball goal had been traveling with them, providing a transitional arc and some adrenaline for the stage. I don’t even remember who was on my team. I just know that I was playing with a bunch of guys once falsely accused of throwing pies at kids in wheelchairs. Yauch evidently hadn’t given up his outside shot for Buddhism. Adam Horovitz dribbled with an Archibaldian low center of gravity, while Mike D crashed about with his Kurt Rambis hustle. Keyboard player/carpenter Money Mark spent much of the game in midair. I spent much of the game looking for my fadeaway. In my defense, I was firing into the sun on a freshly reconstructed knee, ligament grafted, no brace. If I had reinjured it that day, I would’ve told anyone with a working set of ears that I’d blown out my knee playing basketball with the Beastie Boys—that I was treeing out of my mind until George Clinton put a golf cart on me. Read More
May 16, 2012 On the Shelf Remembering Rosset and Sexy Hoaxes By Sadie Stein In the Evergreen Review he founded, a moving tribute to Barney Rosset. The best-read cities in America. Cooking Cather. Mike McGrady, perpetrator of sexy sixties literary hoaxes, has died. To quote the Los Angeles Times,“Inspired by popular best-sellers by the likes of Jacqueline Susann, McGrady challenged his newsroom buddies to write their own terrible, trashy, sex-filled best seller. McGrady and 24 other writers each took a chapter; in every badly written one, Penelope Ashe engaged in fantastical sexual exploits.” The rest is (sort of) history. Odd couples, indeed: famous literary roommates! Swamplandia! author Karen Russell wins the NYPL’s Young Lions Fiction Award.
May 15, 2012 In Memoriam Carlos Fuentes, 1928–2012 By Sadie Stein “When your life is half over, I think you have to see the face of death in order to start writing seriously. There are people who see the end quickly, like Rimbaud. When you start seeing it, you feel you have to rescue these things. Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.” —Carlos Fuentes, The Art of Fiction No. 68
May 15, 2012 On Television Dear Betty Draper Francis, Stop Weighing Your Food By Adam Wilson Dear Betty Draper Francis, As I write this I’m live-streaming President Barack Obama’s Barnard College commencement speech on my laptop. What’s a laptop? Imagine a typewriter that’s also a Sears catalogue that’s also a post office that’s also a high school yearbook. Oh, and in the dark before dawn, when the wind howls like a pack of rabid Dire Wolves and thunder claps like a thousand canon balls colliding in the ether, you can log on and look at pictures of cats wearing Halloween costumes. As for Obama, it’s true: he’s of African descent. More importantly, he’s brilliant and beautiful and a supporter of gay marriage. I wish you were with me, Betty, watching the president tell the women of tomorrow that, yes, you can close the gap between life as it is and life as you want it to be. Read More