July 8, 2022 The Review’s Review More Summer Issue Poets Recommend By The Paris Review Aerial view of Agios Nikolaos Beach in Hydra, Greece. Photograph by dronepicr. Licensed under CC BY 2.0. This week, we bring you reviews from two of our issue no. 240 contributors. If you enjoy these, why not read recommendations from four more of our Summer issue poets? I was watching the sunset on the Greek island of Hydra with my best friend when I suddenly said, “I think I hate Henry Miller.” I’d just raced through The Colossus of Maroussi and then Tropic of Cancer. So, as my friend and I perched on rough stones by the sea, I forced her to listen to my least favorite passages from Tropic of Cancer. Miller brags about his penis—“a bone in my prick six inches long”! He catalogs what seems like “every cunt I grab hold of.” At a bar, he ejaculates on a stranger’s dress. (She’s “sore as hell.”) In 1934, when Tropic was published, this ecstatic obscenity could have been appealing; in 2022, reading it reminds me of being trapped in the bathroom queue at a party next to a coked-up man with a PhD and a browser tab permanently open to PornHub. The book feels, in Miller’s words, like “a thick tide of semen flooding the gutters.” “I think I hate Henry Miller.” I think. Why did I qualify? Well, there is Tropic’s bravura opening. And despite the ethnographic gaze that saturates The Colossus of Maroussi, certain episodes of hilarity delighted me: the saga of Miller’s diarrhea during his visit to Crete, for example, in which he shits his pants, then shits at “the bottom of a moat near a dead horse swarming with bottle flies” and embarks on an oft-frustrated quest for “soggy rice with a little lemon juice in it” to quiet his bowels, all while touring ruins and being plied with victuals that are decidedly disquieting to his bowels. There are also passages of arresting beauty, where the writing has the feeling not of mania but of deep dreaming. Miller’s first approach to the island of Poros can only be quoted in full; it is perfect. Read More
July 7, 2022 Diaries Diary, 2001 By Molly Dektar “Today I’m REALLY worried about death. I almost started crying. However, my new calligraphy kit is AWSOME.” “My dollys are so fun to play with. They bend and move and pose. : ) P.S. the police think that Peterson might be guilty because there was blood all over the scene of the crime and a used condom (EW!) and a bloody soda can with hair on it.” Read More
July 6, 2022 Arts & Culture Why Write? By Elisa Gabbert Photograph of light on water by Aayugoyal. Licensed under CC0 4.0. I encountered Joan Didion’s famous line about why she writes—“entirely to find out what I’m thinking”—many times before I read the essay it comes from, and was reminded once again to never assume you know what anything means out of context. I had always thought the line was about her essays, about writing nonfiction to discover her own beliefs—because of course the act of making an argument clear on the page brings clarity to the writer too. She may have believed that; she may have thought it a truth too obvious to state. In any case, it’s not what she meant. She was talking about why she writes fiction: I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means … Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Strait seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the Bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind? Read More
July 5, 2022 On Leonard Cohen Beautiful Losers: On Leonard Cohen By Nell Zink From “The Lost Radio Interview.” To mark the appearance of Leonard Cohen’s “Begin Again” in our Summer issue, we’re publishing a series of short reflections on his life and work. In December 1981, I visited my older brother at the University of Michigan. There three men taught me to play three songs on guitar: “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” “Genesis,” and “Suzanne.” The first left me cold. The second, its melodic charms notwithstanding, featured the line “They say I’m harder than … a marble shaft,” leading me to believe, until just now when I finally looked him up, that Jorma Kaukonen was born in Finland and never really learned English. The third rocketed me, on my return to William & Mary, straight to the town record store, where the cashier sold me Songs of Leonard Cohen with a money-back guarantee on the condition that I listen to it ten times before complaining. Read More
July 1, 2022 The Review’s Review Emma Cline, Dan Bevacqua, and Robert Glück Recommend By The Paris Review Photograph by makeshiftlove, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY 2.0, This week, we bring you reviews from three of our issue no. 240 contributors. The documentary Rocco, which follows the Italian porn actor and director Rocco Siffredi, feels like a hundred perfect short stories. We learn that Rocco carries around a photo of his mother at all times. We watch Rocco and his teenage sons chat in their cavernous and starkly lit climbing gym/weight room in Croatia. We discover that Rocco’s hapless cameraman of many decades, Gabriel, is actually his cousin, a thwarted porn star. During one virtuosic shoot (Rocco Siffredi Anal Threesome with Abella Danger) Gabriel accidentally leaves the lens cap on, which they discover only after shooting the entire scene. There’s a surprising sweetness in Rocco, a man in the twilight of a certain era. “They used to focus on the women’s faces,” he says, sadly. He’s decided to retire. The final scene finds Rocco carrying a giant wooden cross on his back through the hallways of the Kink.com Armory. This tableau is the brainchild of Gabriel. “Because you die for everyone’s sins,” he tells Rocco. —Emma Cline, author of “Pleasant Glen” Read More
July 1, 2022 Bulletin The New York Review of Books and The Paris Review: Announcing Our Summer Subscription Deal By The Paris Review Love to read but hate to choose? Announcing our summer subscription deal: starting today and through the end of August, you really can have it all when you subscribe to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books for a combined price of $99. That’s one year of issues from both publications, as well as their entire archives—sixty-nine years of The Paris Review and fifty-nine years of The New York Review of Books—for $50 off the regular subscription price. Ever since former Paris Review managing editor Robert Silvers cofounded The New York Review of Books with Barbara Epstein, the two magazines have been closely aligned. With your subscription to both, you’ll have access to fiction, poetry, interviews, criticism, and more from some of the most important writers of our time, from T. S. Eliot to Sigrid Nunez, James Baldwin to Toni Morrison, and Joan Didion to Jamaica Kincaid. Subscribe today and you’ll receive: One year of The Paris Review (4 issues) One year of The New York Review of Books (20 issues) Full access to both the New York Review and Paris Review digital archives—that’s fifty-nine years of The New York Review of Books and sixty-nine years of The Paris Review. If you already subscribe to The Paris Review, we’ve got good news: this deal will extend your current subscription, while your new subscription to The New York Review of Books will begin immediately.