December 14, 2010 At Work Claire Vaye Watkins on “Gold Mine” By David Wallace-Wells Claire Vaye Watkins was born in Nevada and lives in Ohio, where she is putting the finishing touches on a debut collection of stories that all unfold in her home state, from down south in Nye County and Las Vegas, to Reno, Lake Tahoe, Virginia City, and the Blackrock Desert, the site of Burning Man. “Gold Mine,” which appears in our new issue, takes place entirely at a Nevada brothel. What brought you to the bunny ranch as a setting? I grew up Pahrump, Nevada, where prostitution is legal. There were two brothels near my house and the school bus used to drive past them every morning. As a girl I was especially fascinated by one, the Chicken Ranch, because it was done in this ornate dollhouse Victorian style, which I’d never seen before, with dormers and flower boxes and painted in lovely pastel pinks and blues. I wanted to live there. Of course, as I got older my relationship to those buildings became more complicated, let’s say. But a part of me has always been enchanted by them. There’s something magical about a brothel. It’s this alluring Eden compound in the middle of nowhere, even if it’s also grotesque and exploitative and dangerous. For a story about a brothel, it is remarkably chaste; the only sex act depicted is between the gay madam and his married male mentor. You’re right, there’s a lot of dirty talk but not much business. Does that make me a tease? I suppose I was more interested in the emotional bonds between the characters—Manny and Joe, Manny and Michele, Michele and Darla, Darla and Manny—because in this world that’s the stuff that can really get you into trouble. I don’t find the sex part of prostitution that interesting. (Such a tease line.) It’s the emotion work that gets me. As I see it, sex isn’t the real currency at the Cherry Patch Ranch—it’s affection and intimacy. And everybody’s looking for it. I’d originally written this story without the affair between Manny and Joe, but Manny felt entirely too stable. We couldn’t see what Michele meant to him. I needed something to knock him off kilter, to make him more vulnerable, more lonesome, hornier. So I broke his heart. Read More
December 13, 2010 Arts & Culture Questions Without Answers for John Baldessari By David Salle John Baldessari, Portrait: (Self) #1 as Control + 11 Alterations by Retouching and Airbrushing, 1974. A major exhibition devoted to the mercurial conceptual work of John Baldessari is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here, on the occasion of that retrospective, the master painter David Salle puts some probing questions to Baldessari, his friend and former teacher. § I have always felt a deeply humanistic undertone in your work, despite its use of irony and obliqueness. But I am hard pressed to account for why I feel it and sometimes think it’s because I have known you for a long time. Where do you think it resides? Is a Conceptual artist different from any other kind of artist? A lot of ink has been spilled about art as the new religion, with the museum as its church. Do you agree with that view? Do you crave a spiritual dimension to art, or are you a pure materialist? Conceptualism is closest to: a) rationalism, b) romanticism, or c) symbolism? Where do you place yourself on that scale? (Hint: Romanticism insists on the primacy of the individual.) Here’s a fan question: How did you come up with the idea of singing LeWitt? I understand the desire to tweak the seriousness of Conceptual art, but how did you arrive at the idea of the singing? And did you rehearse? What’s the one thing an artist must never do? And, apart from questions like these, what is your definition of a bad art idea? Harold Brodkey once said that people don’t like to be outshone—they’ll kill you if it bothers them enough. How have you managed to avoid this in your work? John Baldessari, Noses & Ears, Etc.: Blood, Fist, and Head (with Nose and Ear), 2006. Read More
December 13, 2010 Events Save the Date: Spring Revel By Thessaly La Force We are very pleased to announce our lineup for the Spring Revel, which will be held on April 12 at Cipriani 42nd Street: The Paris Review Spring Revel Honoring James Salter Featuring The Hadada Prize presented by Robert Redford The Plimpton Prize for Fiction presented by Ann Beattie The Terry Southern Prize for Humor presented by Fran Lebowitz Yves-Andre Istel and Kathleen Begala Benefit Chairs Stay tuned in 2011 for ticket and table information, as well as some excellent James Salter coverage on the Daily.
December 10, 2010 Arts & Culture Giacometti Painting in His Studio, 1965 By Ernst Scheidegger Credit: In Giacometti’s Studio, by Michael Peppiatt. Read More
December 10, 2010 This Week’s Reading Staff Picks: Wikileaks Crudity, Jay-Z, Infinite DFW By The Paris Review This has been a week of emotionally taxing reading. First, Shirley Jackson’s deliciously creepy tales (“The Lottery” has nothing on “The Summer People,” by the way), then Joyce Carol Oates’s New Yorker article on her husband’s sudden death and the advent of unexpected widowhood, and finally, a smattering of Marina Tsvetaeva’s vulnerable, heartfelt poems. Next week: Maybe I’ll lighten things up with a little Don Marquis—toujours gai! —Nicole Rudick A copy of The New Yorker’s newly minted 20 Under 40 book, edited by Deborah Treisman, landed on my desk. The colors on the spine are festively appropriate for the holidays (just like our fresh-off-the-press winter issue). Some of my favorites (and there are many): Daniel Alarcón’s “Second Lives,” (check out what he wrote for us this week); Salvatore Scibona’s “The Kid”; and C. E. Morgan’s “Twins.” —Thessaly La Force Jed Perl’s pox-on-both-your-houses treatment of l’affair Wojnarowicz and its “Wikileaks crudity.” —David Wallace-Wells Read More
December 10, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Promiscuous Reading; My Christmas Wish List By Lorin Stein I have this compulsion where I read the first one hundred pages of a book, and then stack it on my bedside table. I never finish them—call me promiscuous. But I feel guilty not finishing books! What do you advise? —P. There’s nothing wrong with not finishing a book. Samuel Johnson, surely one of the great readers of all time, claimed to feel guilty because he almost never read a book to the end—but still, he didn’t. Finish them, I mean. Why should you read a book just because it’s there, or (worse) because you read it yesterday? Completism is the bugbear of actual reading. There are books even by some of my favorite authors that I have never looked at and never plan to. If you really love Henry Green’s Loving, why should you have to read Living? And, really, how many second acts redeem a slow act one? I say, enjoy your promiscuity and keep reading new things. (But better make space on your bedside table!) Read More