May 8, 2012 On Poetry A Great Stag, Broad-Antlered: Rediscovering Hyam Plutzik By Edward Moran and Phillip Witte Plutzik as a professor at the University of Rochester, around 1950. This photo was taken by one of his students.The conclusion of Hyam Plutzik’s 1962 poem, Horatio, provide an apt commentary on Plutzik’s own unobtrusive presence in the world of American letters: A great stag came out of the woods, Broad-antlered, approaching slowly on the moonlit field, And looked about him like a king and re-entered the dark. The seismic shifts in American culture since 1960 have made footing precarious indeed for those broad-antlered poets who wrote in a hieratic and philosophic diction. Eschewing the more vernacular excursions of the Beats or the confessional poets of the 1970s, Plutzik published three full collections of poems, the last, Horatio, an eighty-nine-page dramatic poem in which Hamlet’s friend grapples with the charge to “report me and my cause aright.” Read More
May 8, 2012 Contests Win Two Tickets to See John Irving, Live By Sadie Stein As fans of John Irving know, interviews with the legendary writer are rare indeed. So the chance to see Irving interviewed live don’t come around every day. But this Friday, he’ll sit down for an hour-long radio chat with Ron Bennington, and you could be in the audience. (Provided you can get to Manhattan!) Here’s how it works: write the jacket copy—no more than five sentences—describing Irving’s imaginary next novel. Topics may include, but need not be restricted to, bears, wrestling, New England, sex workers, writers, and Vienna. (Probably at least two would be a good idea.) Please submit all entries to [email protected] by noon EST, Thursday, May 10.
May 8, 2012 In Memoriam R.I.P. Maurice Sendak By Sadie Stein Photo by John Dugdale.It is with great sadness that we note the death, at eighty-three, of legendary writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak. In books like Where the Wild Things Are, Outside Over There, The Nutshell Library, The Sign on Rosie’s Door and many more, Sendak defined childhood for many of us. Last September, we ran this interview with Mr. Sendak; his inimitable wit, wisdom, and legendary cantankerousness came through loud and clear.
May 8, 2012 On the Shelf Rushdie Is Bored, Pynchon Goes Public By Sadie Stein The creator of publishing tumblr Real Talk has unmasked herself! It’s GOOD magazine executive editor Ann Friedman. Salman Rushdie pronounces Middlemarch boring. A great what-if: Bond by Hitchcock. The seven best dinner parties in literature? We say Anna Karenina was robbed! Brace yourselves for Pynchon in Public Day.
May 7, 2012 Bulletin Happy Golden Anniversary! By Sadie Stein We’re delighted to wish a happy fiftieth to an organization we think a lot of: Choice Magazine Listening. Founded in 1962 by the (wonderfully named) philanthropist LuEsther Mertz, CML is a free, nationwide service that provides magazine content to the visually impaired via quarterly audio anthologies in several formats. The anthologies have included the work of everyone from John Updike to Alice Munro, and we’re proud to say that over the years, The Paris Review has been well represented. If you know someone who would enjoy this free service, please call 1-888-724-6423 or e-mail [email protected]. Many happy returns!
May 7, 2012 Arts & Culture Stillspotting By Jillian Steinhauer I’m sitting in an apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. It’s a nice apartment, with decidedly un-Ikea furniture and mild-mannered art on the walls. It feels well kept but welcoming, gently used. The room I’m in is a classic New York living/dining-room combo, its zones delineated by, on the one hand, a multicolored wood table and, on the other, a sleek white couch. The couch looks surprisingly comfortable, but I have no idea if it is; I’m sitting back-to-back with it, on a triangular block of foam. There’s a semicircle of these foam stools filling the room’s neutral territory and six people sitting with me. As we wait in awkward and anticipatory silence, I notice the sunlight streaming in from the windows. It glosses the shiny floors, which stay that way, I assume, because everyone who enters this apartment has been told to remove her shoes, just like in my home growing up. I don’t know who lives here. According to a map the Guggenheim has given me, this is “Erin’s House.” Erin is nowhere to be found, but she has generously loaned out her living/dining room for a few weekends in April and May, for a project called Stillspotting. As its name implies, the project is a search for still spots—quiet spaces, moments of respite, refuge from chaos—in New York. Read More