March 16, 2022 History A Memorial for Those Accused of Witchcraft By Olga Ravn Colors extracted, using a traditional recipe, from maritime sunburst lichen the author collected from the wildlife corridor along Ellebækstien in Køge. Fabrics from left to right, top to bottom: handwoven tussah and mulberry silk, wool, silk charmeuse, silk-rayon velvet, cotton, and linen. Photograph by Johan Rosenmunthe. A LOGBOOK TO REMEMBER 16 WOMEN OF WHOM 13 WERE BURNED ALIVE, TWO COMMITTED SUICIDE, AND ONE MANAGED TO ESCAPE, 1612–1615 AND 2021, REWRITTEN, GATHERED, DREAMED BY A WOMAN, AGE 34, THAT’S TO SAY ME, A STAR AMONG ALL THESE RESPIRING STARS WE CALL PEOPLE Johanne Tommesis, burned, August 24, 1612 Kirstine Lauridsdatter, burned, September 11, 1612 Mette Banghors, burned, December 7, 1612 Volborg Bødkers, escaped and convicted in absentia, June 7, 1613 Annike Christoffersdatter, burned, June 14, 1613 Anne Olufs, burned, June 26, 1613 Karen Eriks, suicide in prison, August 30, 1613 Maren Muremester, burned, 1613 Maren of Ringsbjerg, burned, 1613 Maren Bysvende, suicide in her well after receiving a summons to appear in court, 1613 Kirsten Væverkvinde, burned, 1613 Birgitte Rokkemager, burned, September 18, 1615 Else Holtug, burned, November 6, 1615 Mette Navns, burned, 1615 Johanne Muremester, burned, 1615 Magdalene, Søren Skrædder’s wife, burned, 1615 WHERE: Køge, Denmark Read More
March 15, 2022 A Letter from the Editor Announcing Our Spring Issue By Emily Stokes Five days before the Spring issue went to press, I found myself perched on a sofa in the Review’s Chelsea office, listening as Jamaica Kincaid and Darryl Pinckney put the finishing touches on a conversation they’d begun eight years earlier. By then, my colleagues and I had pored over hundreds of pages of transcripts for Kincaid’s Art of Fiction interview, and yet, that Monday afternoon, as the two writers went back over the stories she’d told him about her childhood on Antigua, her adventures as a young journalist in seventies New York, and her life as a writer, new details kept emerging. She was a backup singer in Holly Woodlawn’s band before being replaced by Debbie Harry? She drafted Annie John out loud in the bath while pregnant with her first child? Read More
March 15, 2022 Redux Redux: Vulnerable to an Epiphany By The Paris Review Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by signing up for the Redux newsletter. Each year, the Plimpton Prize for Fiction celebrates the work of an exceptional new writer appearing in the Review. In honor of this year’s winner, Chetna Maroo, we’re lifting the paywall on four previous recipients of the award, from the very first—Marcia Guthridge, for her story “Bones,” from issue no. 128 (Fall 1993)—to last year’s, Eloghosa Osunde, for “Good Boy,” from issue no. 234 (Fall 2020). If you enjoy these free stories, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. PROSE Bones Marcia Guthridge It is clear now that things were not quite normal with me. I was vulnerable to an epiphany. I needed a place to stand. From issue no. 128 (Fall 1993) Read More
March 10, 2022 The Review’s Review Do Not Et Cetera By The Paris Review DIY miniature dollhouse, licensed under CC BY SA 4.0. “Living in America during the Reagan years had the same disorientation as a texture dream,” writes David Wojnarowicz in Close to the Knives, “that sense you get at times lying with your face against the sheets with your eye open, millimeters away from the microscopic weave of the linen, and suddenly your body freezes up and your eye is locked into the universe of textures and threads and weaves, and for an extended moment you can’t shake yourself from the hallucination.” The political subterfuge of the Reagan years is the subject, too, of Maxe Crandall’s recent poem-novel, The Nancy Reagan Collection. Published by Futurepoem in 2020, it’s a mercurial archive of the Reagans’ silence on AIDS and the era’s innumerable other devastating failures, among them Iran-Contra and the expansion of the war on drugs. In high-camp imagined encounters with Nancy Reagan, Crandall deftly traces the era’s iconography of concealment—Nancy in her immutable trademark red, her high-necked collar, her tartan blazer, her little nautical blouse, her gloves—as he lists the names of friends and public figures dead from AIDS and its complications. Grief and rage churn at the center of these encounters, each of them shaped by speculative archival work and a biting queer sensibility. It’s a beautifully inventive experiment in historiography and a reminder of the enduring political aesthetics of obfuscation and silence: the particular politeness that meets with mass death. And like everything Futurepoem puts out, as an object it’s gorgeous—bright red, impossible to miss. —Oriana Ullman Read More
March 10, 2022 Eat Your Words Cooking with Dorothy Sayers By Valerie Stivers Photograph by Erica Maclean. Dorothy Sayers’s Strong Poison opens with a description of a man’s last meal before death. The deceased, Philip Boyes, was a writer with “advanced” ideas, dining at the home of his wealthy great-nephew, Norman Urquhart, a lawyer. A judge tells a jury what he ate: the meal starts with a glass of 1847 oloroso “by way of cocktail,” followed by a cup of cold bouillon—“very strong, good soup, set to a clear jelly”—then turbot with sauce, poulet en casserole, and finally a sweet omelet stuffed with jam and prepared tableside. The point of the description is to show that Boyes couldn’t have been poisoned, since every dish was shared, with the exception of a bottle of Burgundy (Corton), which he drank alone. The judge’s oration is another strike against the accused, a bohemian mystery novelist named Harriet Vane, who saw Boyes on the night he died, and had both motive and opportunity to poison him. Looking on from the audience, the famous amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey writhes in misery; he believes Harriet Vane is innocent, and he has fallen suddenly and completely in love with her. Read More
March 9, 2022 The Revel Chetna Maroo Wins This Year’s Plimpton Prize By The Paris Review Photograph by Graeme Jackson. We are thrilled to announce that Chetna Maroo has won the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, which will be presented at our Spring Revel in April. The prize, awarded annually since 1993 by the editorial committee of The Paris Review’s board of directors, celebrates an outstanding piece of fiction by an emerging writer published in the Review during the preceding year. Previous winners include Ottessa Moshfegh, Emma Cline, and Atticus Lish. Read More