April 12, 2011 James Salter Month Solo Faces By J. D. Daniels Our Spring Revel is tonight, April 12. In anticipation of the event, The Daily is featuring a series of essays celebrating James Salter, who is being honored this year with The Paris Review’s Hadada Prize. Imagine: there is a man who likes to climb mountains. It’s the only thing he likes. Of course he likes women, too, but he won’t put them at the center of his life. “I’m not really a great climber,” he says, “I’m not that talented.” He just loves it more than anyone else does, or can. But he isn’t climbing. His name is Vernon Rand, and he’s bumming around, roofing, picking up work out in Los Angeles. And then one day, playing father to his girlfriend’s twelve-year-old son, he encounters his old climbing companion, Jack Cabot. That they are lost brothers is admitted outright, but not that Cabot is Rand’s animating force, prophet, bird or devil, tempter sent. As for Rand, he had had a brilliant start and then defected. Something had weakened in him. That was long ago. He was like an animal that has wintered somewhere, in the shadow of a hedgerow or barn, and one morning, mud-stained and dazed, shakes itself and comes to life. Sitting there [with Cabot], he remembered past days, their glory. He remembered the thrill of height. That’s all it takes, Cabot’s tapping on the door. That in Rand which loves the mountain stirs. There was something he had to tell her. He was leaving, she said. She could hardly hear him. “What?” He repeated it. He was going away. “When?” she asked foolishly. It was all she could manage to say. “Tomorrow.” “Tomorrow,” she said. Read More
April 12, 2011 Events The Paris Review Daily Gets Two Webby Honors By Thessaly La Force The Daily has been chosen as an Official Honoree by the 2011 Webby Awards in two categories: Best Copy/Writing and Blog, Cultural. “With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries,” says Webby Exec David-Michel Davies, “the Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 10% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement.” Thanks to all of our contributors! We think you’re tops, too!
April 11, 2011 Events Paris Review–NYT Poetry Summit! By Lorin Stein Come to Housing Works this evening to hear our poetry editor, Robyn Creswell, talk with New York Times critic (and culture diarist?) David Orr about his new book together with Sam Tanenhaus, Dwight Garner, Laura Miller, and Tree Swenson. On the FSG Web site Creswell gives a preview of their talk.
April 11, 2011 James Salter Month An Interview with James Salter By Kate Petersen Photograph by Lan Rys. Our Spring Revel is tomorrow, April 12. In anticipation of the event, The Daily is featuring a series of essays celebrating James Salter, who is being honored this year with The Paris Review’s Hadada Prize. Here is Salter himself, discussing his new novel and reflecting on his work as a writer and a teacher. Tell me about your new novel. I’ve been working on it for some years. I’d had the idea for a long time, but I was unconsciously waiting for a line from Christopher Hitchens. He wrote somewhere that “No life is complete that has not known poverty, love, and war.” That struck me, and I began with that. I haven’t followed it through. Poverty doesn’t play much of a part. Betrayal does, and it’s a book that has a little more plot than other books of mine. It’s about an editor, a book editor, it’s the story of his life. In your Paris Review interview with Edward Hirsch, you describe this image of your friend Robert Phelps going through his books, taking down the ones that didn’t measure up and leaving them in the hall. Reading your work, one gets the sense that there is a similar process at work—that everything unnecessary or plain has been taken away. Yes, that’s probably a fault of the writing. How so? I think I’d like to write a little less intensely. Read More
April 8, 2011 James Salter Month Document: Possible Titles for ‘Light Years’ By Thessaly La Force At every magazine or publishing house, there’s always an editor or two with a knack for titles. But even so, rarely does one come in a flash of divine inspiration. There are iterations and themes and the same words written over and over. Here is a glimpse of what James Salter’s process was like with his novel Light Years (a book both Jhumpa Lahiri and Porochista Khakpour wrote about this week). Salter seems so close at points, circling back to light and years, sometimes on the same page but not always the same line, ranking his favorites and weighing the opinions of others. Image courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center. Click to enlarge. Read More
April 8, 2011 The Revel Last Chance for Tickets to the Revel! By Thessaly La Force On Tuesday, The Paris Review will be hosting its Spring Revel, a fund-raiser held each year at Cipriani’s 42nd Street. As readers of The Daily may already know, Robert Redford will be presenting James Salter with The Paris Review Hadada; Fran Lebowitz will be awarding Elif Batuman the Terry Southern Humor Prize for her piece in The Daily called “My 12-Hour Blind Date with Dostoevsky”; and Ann Beattie will be giving April Ayers Lawson the Plimpton Prize for her short story “Virgin.” It’s a very fun affair. To quote Mary Karr: the Revel is “prom for New York intellectuals.” We are excited for those of you who are already coming. A few tickets are left, and it goes without saying that they are available for purchase to all of our readers.