June 17, 2019 Arts & Culture What It Is to Wake Up By Carmen Maria Machado John William Waterhouse, Miranda, 1875, oil on canvas, 30″ x 40″. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. It was hard to fully appreciate The Awakening when I first read it, given to me by my sophomore-year English teacher to appease my rage against all the Hemingway we were assigned. It was one among a small stack of books from her home library—including titles by Henry James, Gloria Naylor, and Gabriel García Márquez—that would begin to make up the backbone of my own personal canon. But I read The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, first. Its back flap copy promised a feminist classic, and it sounded pretty sexy besides. It was 2001. I was fifteen years old and neither mother nor wife (nor straight, though I didn’t realize it at the time). I understood The Awakening’s appeal in the abstract; I appreciated that, despite the seeming quaintness of its epiphany, its content was radical, even shocking for its era. But Edna’s suicide seemed, to my teenage self, as melodramatic as Romeo and Juliet’s. So what if Robert left her? Was that any reason to die? Rereading The Awakening as an adult, I find that it’s nearly impossible to re-create that quick-to-judge adolescent frame of mind. Having marinated in the world of men for nearly two decades, I have a far better understanding of the depth and breadth of Edna’s suffering. When I read the book now, every male character—the resentful, petty husband; the philandering cad; the condescending doctor; the fickle man-child—induces a bowel-curdling rage. It occurs to the present-day me that a more just ending would have involved Edna drowning any of those men in the Gulf—maybe all of them—and then going to take a well-deserved swim. Read More
June 16, 2019 In Memoriam, Redux Redux: In Memoriam, Susannah Hunnewell By The Paris Review Susannah Hunnewell in 2017, at the magazine’s Spring Revel. Courtesy of The Paris Review. The Paris Review is mourning the loss of our publisher and friend, Susannah Hunnewell. Over the course of her long affiliation with the magazine—she began as an editorial assistant in 1989, served as the Paris editor in the early 2000s, and in 2015 became the magazine’s seventh publisher—Susannah conducted several iconic Writers at Work interviews. This week, we’re unlocking all of her interviews: she championed the work of Oulipo cofounder Harry Mathews, examined the literary corpus of French provocateur and novelist Michael Houellebecq, and bonded with Parisian nonfiction novelist Emmanuel Carrère, who said working with Susannah “left me stunned and admiring.” She’s responsible for two Art of Fiction interviews with Nobel laureates, Kazuo Ishiguro and Mario Vargas Llosa, and most recently, she interviewed the translator-couple Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Along with these interviews, read Houellebecq’s short story “Submission” and Mathews’s poem “The Swimmer.” Mario Vargas Llosa, The Art of Fiction No. 120 Issue no. 116 (Fall 1990) I never get the feeling that I’ve decided rationally, cold-bloodedly to write a story. On the contrary, certain events or people, sometimes dreams or readings, impose themselves suddenly and demand attention. That’s why I talk so much about the importance of the purely irrational elements of literary creation. Harry Mathews, The Art of Fiction No. 191 Issue no. 180 (Spring 2007) I always set out to write a three-hundred-page novel, but whatever the length of the first draft, by the time I finish cutting out the deadwood it has dwindled to two-hundred-and-some pages. Except in French. Everything comes out longer in French. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Art of Fiction No. 196 Issue no. 184 (Spring 2008) When you find yourself in different parts of the world, you become embarrassingly aware of the things that culturally just don’t translate. Sometimes you spend four days at a time explaining a book to Danes. I don’t particularly like, for example, to use brand names and other cultural reference points, not just because they don’t transfer geographically. They don’t transfer very well in time either. In thirty years’ time, they won’t mean anything. Michel Houellebecq, The Art of Fiction No. 206 Issue no. 194 (Fall 2010) The hardest thing about writing a novel is finding the starting point, the thing that will open it up. And even that doesn’t guarantee success. I basically failed with Platform, even though tourism is an excellent point of departure for understanding the world. Emmanuel Carrère, The Art of Nonfiction No. 5 Issue no. 206 (Fall 2013) Today still, when I’m not working on anything, I’ll take a notebook, and for a few hours a day I’ll just write whatever comes, about my life, my wife, the elections, trying not to censor myself. That’s the real problem obviously—“without denaturalizing or hypocrisy.” Without being afraid of what is shameful or what you consider uninteresting, not worthy of being written. It’s the same principle behind psychoanalysis. It’s just as hard to do and just as worth it, in my opinion. Everything you think is worth writing. Not necessarily worth keeping, but worth writing. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Art of Translation No. 4 Issue no. 213 (Summer 2015) One thing I love about translating is the possibility it gives me to do things that you might not ordinarily do in English. I think it’s a very important part of translating. The good effect of translating is this cross-pollination of languages. Submission By Michel Houellebecq Issue no. 213 (Summer 2015) The academic study of literature leads basically nowhere, as we all know, unless you happen to be an especially gifted student, in which case it prepares you for a career teaching the academic study of literature—it is, in other words, a rather farcical system that exists solely to replicate itself and yet manages to fail more than 95 percent of the time. Still, it’s harmless, and can even have a certain marginal value. The Swimmer By Harry Mathews Issue no. 37 (Spring 1966) Removing my watch, pleased with the morning weather, I dove—I would cross the Atlantic by myself Neither she, Nor I, nor Brooklyn minded. Still so near: I must swim harder. This striving (On love’s anniversary she had turned to mud in my bed) For distance and brave attitude Corrupted the serene wishlessness …
June 15, 2019 In Memoriam Susannah Hunnewell, 1966–2019 By The Paris Review Photograph by Stephen Andrew Hiltner. The Paris Review mourns the loss of publisher Susannah Hunnewell, friend, colleague, and luminous presence at the magazine for three decades, who passed away on June 15 at her home in New York. She was 52. Susannah Gordon Hunnewell was born in Boston and spent much of her childhood in Paris. She attended Harvard, where she studied English with the playwright William Alfred. She began her career with The Paris Review as an editorial assistant in the summer of 1989. George Plimpton, the magazine’s founding editor, quickly recognized her literary precociousness, commitment to international literature, and “herculean” work ethic, and in her first years at the quarterly she translated Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa’s Art of Fiction interview from the original Spanish, worked on fiction by Niccolò Tucci, and helped George in editing The Paris Review Anthology (1990) and the first Writer’s Chapbook (1989). Those early years at the magazine were fortuitous in another way: it was during her first summer in the cramped office on East Seventy-Second that she met Antonio Weiss, then the magazine’s associate editor, whom she would marry in 1993. The couple went on to have three sons. So began Susannah’s long affiliation with the magazine. In 2000 Susannah and her family returned to Paris; she became the magazine’s Paris editor in 2005. During this time she conducted iconic interviews with Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Oulipo cofounder and poet Harry Mathews, French provocateur and novelist Michel Houellebecq, and Parisian nonfiction novelist Emmanuel Carrère, as well as with the famed translator-couple Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. These interviews, at once broad in range and meticulously edited into ideal presentations of the writer at work, show Susannah’s intellectual fortitude, determined inquisitiveness, and editorial acumen. As Carrère later said of their conversation, “The long interviews with writers published in The Paris Review are renowned both for their seriousness and their liberty, but it wasn’t until I met Susannah Hunnewell that I was able to determine what this seriousness and liberty could be. We spent two days together; I would have liked for us to have spent three, four, five … I don’t know of anyone funnier, wittier, or friendlier than Susannah … The result, a few months later, left me stunned and admiring: she had made cuts, of course, rephrased my words, but I had the impression that everything was there. In each sentence, I recognized my own voice. One must have talent, not just that of a writer but that of a musician, to create such a transcription and it’s a rare experience to be its recipient.” In 2015, Susannah, back in New York, became the seventh publisher of The Paris Review. As publisher she was a generous colleague and mentor, integral to the board and staff both. She was known to take the staff out for martini lunches at the Odeon, where she’d grill the new interns on personal histories and professional aspirations—and keep those details committed to memory as the new Parisians’ courses progressed. Last November, in an elegant ceremony at the French Consulate, Susannah became a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to literature (she also worked at George, Marie Claire, and the New York Times, and was a founding board member of the Albertine Bookshop). Among her many meaningful efforts on both sides of the Atlantic, it is her long engagement with The Paris Review that defines her literary career. Her three decades with the magazine, a span made better by her intelligence, kindness, and great spirit, have left an indelible imprint on The Paris Review. More tributes to Susannah will appear in the coming days. For now, we remember that not long ago, she referred to the magazine as “our magical world.” It is a world she helped build and one she enthusiastically, big-heartedly shared with others. We will miss her dearly.
June 14, 2019 This Week’s Reading Staff Picks: Jai Paul, Journalists, and Just Policies By The Paris Review Olga Tokarczuk. Photo: © K. Dubiel. How to describe Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead? Unlike her Man Booker International Prize–winning novel Flights, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead—first published in Poland in 2009 and newly translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones—has a plot. It follows Janina Duszejko, an amateur astrologer and former engineer-turned-teacher, and the series of murders that occur over the course of a winter in a remote Polish town near the Czech border. Unlike Mrs. Duszejko, a vegetarian who fondly refers to local deer as “Young Ladies” and who, alongside her former pupil Dizzy, likes to translate the poetry of William Blake for fun, the murder victims are all men, all crude, and all hunters. Are the town’s animals taking their revenge? Or is something else going on? While the book itself is a damning indictment of humanity’s attempts to control and destroy nature, it never feels didactic; Mrs. Duszejko’s narration, with its old-fashioned capitalizations and tangents about astrological charts, is equal parts charming and inspiring. Tokarczuk, with her ability to marry the political, the philosophical, and the eccentric, creates a stirring defense of the natural world, even when it is threatened by consumerism and the Catholic Church. —Rhian Sasseen Read More
June 14, 2019 Summer Solstice Fecund Sounds Like a Swear By Nina MacLaughlin In this series on the summer solstice, which will run every Friday through June 21, Nina MacLaughlin wonders what summer’s made of. MAX PECHSTEIN, Ein Sonntag, 1921 The delights of summer are earthly. An older friend lives for pleasure. Just north of sixty, with a thin ponytail and a thick mustache, he does seasonal work, landscaping, collects unemployment in the winter, and pursues the perfect high. After a knee injury, beers and hallucinogens gave way to pain pills. “I’ll die of terminal boyhood,” he tells me. Another friend floods me with her schedule, her work, her workouts, this kid at soccer practice, that kid at gymnastics, the new dog needs walking, the groceries do not buy themselves, sixty hours at her job, thirty in her car to-ing and fro-ing. “Usually I’ve reached over ten-thousand steps by seven in the morning,” she tells me. When we were high school, in fits over too much homework, one teacher would stop us mid-whine: “Complaining or bragging?” he’d ask. It’s a question that comes to my mind when my friend enumerates her obligations. Complaining or bragging? It’s a question I try to ask myself at certain moments, too. Is it bad, or are you proud? Is it bad, or do you want others to know what you’re capable of? Is it bad, or is this how you identify yourself? How much does the toil define your life on earth? Now: It’s summer. Time to take a load off for once. The wheel of the year is rolling toward the longest day, a breath of air, a pause. We’re midway between the planting and the harvest, and it’s time for the earth—soil, rain, and sun—to do its work. Can you take rest, can you aim yourself toward pleasure? Or are your work and life too intertwined? In other words, are you the grasshopper or are you the ant? Read More
June 14, 2019 Look Mystical, Squishy, Distinctly Unsettling By The Paris Review A list of words that could describe Hyman Bloom’s work: loud, abstract, mystical, colorful, squishy, fleshy, grotesque, distinctly unsettling. But Bloom aimed to communicate beyond language. When thirteen of his paintings appeared in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1942, he refused to provide a statement for the exhibition catalogue. Doing so would have stood in direct opposition to the nonverbal, Blakean transcendence for which he aimed. Bloom’s paintings often represent moments when, in his own words, “the mood is as intense as it can be made,” which ends up looking like some meeting of the corporeal and the cosmic. What are we looking at here? What is earthly, and what is ethereal? Bodies swim into blurs. Horizons melt like heated plastic. Blobs bristle with tooth and bone. Modern Mystic: The Art of Hyman Bloom presents the artist’s work in all its soupy, horrifying glory; see a selection of images from the book below. Hyman Bloom, Seascape I (First Series), 1974, oil on canvas, 53″ x 62″. Private collection. Read More