January 20, 2016 From the Archive The Distance Up Close By Molly Peacock Lovis Corinth, Walchensee, Schneelandschaft, 1919. Molly Peacock’s poem “The Distance Up Close” appeared in our Summer 1983 issue. Her most recent book is The Paper Garden. Read More
January 20, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Acquisition, Part II By Sadie Stein William Merritt Chase, View from Central Park, 1889. Read Part I here. After we’d left the flea market, we walked across Central Park. I had, in the end, rejected all but the most alluring treasures: the 1970s Harlequin romances, a beloved Little Golden Book—Pantaloon—a sort of novelty all-purpose kit from 1957 embossed with the words Girl Friday containing aspirin, buttons, a shoe horn, a pen, tissues, Band-Aids, and giving off a distinct smell of decaying leatherette. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it. Read More
January 20, 2016 Look Janet Fish: Glass & Plastic By Dan Piepenbring Janet Fish, Untitled, 1984, lithograph poster, 26” x 33”, edition of 250, signed and numbered Janet Fish’s “Glass & Plastic: The Early Years, 1968–78” is at DC Moore Gallery through February 13, featuring an impressive array of her trademark still lifes and her work with light. “The reason for painting glass was to totally focus on light, and the glass held the light,” Fish said in 1968. She said of her approach to still life, “It’s really as much painting life as anything else … because it’s not dead. Things aren’t dead. The light is through everything and energy through everything.” In 1964, The Paris Review launched a series of prints by major contemporary artists. Underwritten by Drue Heinz, the series was designed to encourage works in the print medium and to publicize the magazine. Largely through the efforts of Jane Wilson, who was chosen by George Plimpton to direct the program, dozens of artists donated signed and limited editions of original work. The print above, by Janet Fish, was completed in 1984; it’s still available from our online store. Below, four works from the DC Moore exhibition. Read More
January 20, 2016 On the Shelf Inside Incubabula, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring From Mikro-photographien nach botanischen Präparaten, an 1878 German text on plant anatomy. Congratulations to Review contributors Garth Greenwell and Ottessa Moshfegh. The former received a rave review of his debut, What Belongs to You, in the New York Times: “Greenwell writes long sentences, pinned at the joints by semicolons, that push forward like confidently searching vines. There’s suppleness and mastery in his voice. He seems to have an inborn ability to cast a spell.” And the latter has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for her novel Eileen. In the 1840s, before photomechanical printing processes came along, illustrated books were adorned by hand with “real” photographs. “Photography incubabula,” as such projects are known, were time-consuming to produce, requiring a complicated development process and elaborate pasting. You can have a look at some of them in the Getty, whose photography incubabula collection “spans a vast array of topics, from a 1878 publication filled with beautiful microscopic images of plant anatomy to an exceptionally rare 1844 edition of H. Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature—considered the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs showing the potential of the medium.” Is a young person in your life beginning the college application process? Tell her not to apply to Tolstoy College—yes, it has a prestigious name, but it’s been closed since the eighties. When it was open, though, what a place it was! As Jennifer Wilson tells it, the college, based in Buffalo, was an anarchist paradise: “the college tried to model equal and shared governance and collective decision-making in the running of the school as well. Initially, there was no official policy on grading, but the administration stepped in and imposed limits on the number of A’s that could be given out in a class. Professors then let students decide collectively who would get which grades, using the Marxist rubric of ‘each according to his ability, each according to his need.’ In practice, this meant that one student might say, ‘I need the A; I’m going to law school,’ in the hope of convincing other students that he was truly needy. Faculty salaries were collectively determined, too, and based on the respective household expenses of each staff member.” Paul Lisicky on Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation” and the torrent of disgraces she rains on her characters: “People, no matter how inert they seem to be, contain the capacity to surprise us, to change … Yes, O’Connor destroys some of her characters—subjects them to humiliation, degradation, violence. But maybe that’s because she understands human stubbornness, how we cling to our limitations until events of great force alter us … A narrative, when it’s really alive, will always disturb you when you’re there to seek comfort, and sing in two contrary voices when you just want to hear a single, pure melody.” Turning off your cell phone for a little “off-the-grid” time is a voguish way to announce your awareness of technology’s ills—but is it a mental-health exercise or just another signal of privilege? “The next big fashionable purging movement looks set to be the Wi-Fi detox; a bit like colonic irrigation for the mind, flushing out all the unnecessary gunge … What better proof that you’re just too cool and creative to be ‘on’ all the time; that you need to be free to think great thoughts? … Going off grid is all about suggesting you’re so hotly in demand that you need to stand back from the craziness—but also crucially that you can afford to do so.”
January 19, 2016 Bulletin Give Your Valentine Our Special Box Set By The Paris Review Valentine’s Day is less than a month away. Started that love letter yet? You could be forgiven for putting it off: even Roland Barthes felt that “to try to write love is to confront the muck of language.” Luckily, The Paris Review’s archive is full of writers—more than sixty years’ worth—who have already gotten their hands dirty. That’s why we’re offering a special Valentine’s Day box set: it features two vintage issues from our archive (you choose from five), a T-shirt, and a copy of our new anthology, The Unprofessionals—all packaged in a handsome gift box, including a card featuring William Pène du Bois’s 1953 sketch of the Place de la Concorde. (You may have seen it on the title page of the quarterly.) Your significant other will also receive a one-year subscription, starting with our Winter issue. We’ve been given to know that this box set yields results. Just ask this satisfied customer: Last year @amicob sent me a @parisreview Valentine’s boxed set and we fell in love. True story. So buy one: https://t.co/TOshUrrdXq — Catherine Campbell (@TheCatCampbell) January 19, 2016 You can order your box set here—purchase your gift by February 8 to guarantee delivery before Valentine’s Day.
January 19, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Acquisition, Part I By Sadie Stein From the cover of Victoria Gordon’s Everywhere Man, Harlequin Romance #2438. It was so cold that most of the flea market’s usual vendors hadn’t shown up. The blacktop playground was bare. Customers were so scarce that one seller chased us down the street offering ever-lower prices on a painting. We said no thank you. We didn’t need it. Then, indoors, after flirting with a wide velveteen belt and a souvenir spoon, I came across a stall selling books. I picked up a copy of the Little Golden Book Pantaloon. “You’re not old enough to have read that,” said the seller, who was wearing a woolen cap. “I can guarantee that.” Read More