March 9, 2021 Redux Redux: Pulling Away the Greenery 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. Anne Carson. This week at The Paris Review, we’re celebrating the launch of the Spring issue by featuring a few contributors who have appeared in previous issues of the magazine. Read on for Anne Carson’s Art of Poetry interview, Allan Gurganus’s short story “Art History (From An Only Modestly Good Translation),” and Forrest Gander’s poem “Body Visible.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry No. 88 Issue no. 171 (Fall 2004) One thing I do understand about the Greeks is that they, too, understood otherness and valued it. That is what the god Dionysus is as a principle—the principle of being up against something so other that it bounces you out of yourself to a place where, nonetheless, you are still in yourself; there’s a connection to yourself as another. It’s what they call ecstasy. Read More
March 2, 2021 Redux Redux: This Cannot Be the Worst of My Days 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. Italo Calvino. Spring may be around the corner, but this week, we’re taking one last look at winter. Read on for Italo Calvino’s Art of Fiction interview, Deborah Love’s story “One Winter,” and Rohan Chhetri’s poem “New Delhi in Winter.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Italo Calvino, The Art of Fiction No. 130 Issue no. 124 (Fall 1992) By then I had reached a level of obsession with structure such that I almost became crazy about it. It can be said about If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler that it could not have existed without a very precise, very articulated structure. I believe I have succeeded in this, which gives me a great satisfaction. Of course, all this kind of effort should not concern the reader at all. The important thing is to enjoy reading my book, independently of the work I have put into it. Read More
February 23, 2021 Redux Redux: Idlers of My Kind 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. George Saunders. Photo: Chloe Aftel. Courtesy of George Saunders. This week, we’re looking at some of the writers whom both The Paris Review and BOMB Magazine have published in the past. Read on for George Saunders’s Art of Fiction interview, Renee Gladman’s essay “Five Things,” and Cathy Park Hong’s poem “Happy Days.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not take advantage of our current subscription offer with BOMB Magazine? Until the end of February, subscribe and save on both of these New York magazines, bringing you the best in literary and visual arts, for only $62. George Saunders, The Art of Fiction No. 245 Issue no. 231 (Winter 2019) My view of myself is that I came in through the basement window of literature. I’m not well educated or well read enough to do things correctly, and when I write what seems to me a “correct” story, it’s got low energy and isn’t true to my experience. Somehow the story and the language have to be a little messy or low. I love the idea of pushing an idea through a too-small linguistic opening—that feeling of overflow. I love the idea that the passion contained in a story is so great that it fucks up the form and makes it unseemly and impolite. Read More
February 16, 2021 Redux Redux: Drowning in the Word 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. Simone de Beauvoir. This week at The Paris Review, we’re celebrating Valentine’s Day and dwelling on both the highs and lows of love. Read on for Simone de Beauvoir’s Art of Fiction interview, Akhil Sharma’s short story “The Well,” Frank O’Hara’s poem “Love,” and Eric Fischl’s portfolio “Couples.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? Or take advantage of our current subscription offer, featuring our stylish new notebook—the perfect place to draft love poems, write your novel, or log your reading list. (And you can always just buy the notebook, too!) Simone de Beauvoir, The Art of Fiction No. 35 Issue no. 34 (Spring–Summer 1965) INTERVIEWER None of your female characters are immune from love. You like the romantic element. DE BEAUVOIR Love is a great privilege. Real love, which is very rare, enriches the lives of the men and women who experience it. INTERVIEWER In your novels, it seems to be the women—I’m thinking of Françoise in She Came to Stay and Anne in The Mandarins—who experience it most. DE BEAUVOIR The reason is that, despite everything, women give more of themselves in love because most of them don’t have much else to absorb them. Perhaps they’re also more capable of deep sympathy, which is the basis of love. Perhaps it’s also because I can project myself more easily into women than into men. My female characters are much richer than my male characters. Read More
February 9, 2021 Redux Redux: Who Walked Unannounced 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. Maya Angelou. This week at The Paris Review, we’re highlighting work by Black American writers in honor of Black History Month. Read on for Maya Angelou’s Art of Fiction interview, John Edgar Wideman’s short story “Sightings,” and Lucille Clifton’s poem “bouquet.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? Or take advantage of our current subscription offer, featuring our stylish new notebook—the perfect place to draft love poems, write your novel, or log your reading list. (And you can always just buy the notebook, too!) Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction No. 119 Issue no. 116 (Fall 1990) I try to pull the language in to such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics—New York critics as a rule—who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language. Read More
February 2, 2021 Redux Redux: A Window like a Well 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. John Hall Wheelock. Photo: Rowland Scherman. This week at The Paris Review, we’re peering through windows. Read on for John Hall Wheelock’s Art of Poetry interview, an excerpt from Gerald Murnane’s Border Districts, and Forough Farrokhzad’s poem “Window.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? Or take advantage of our new subscription bundle, bringing you four issues of the print magazine, access to our full sixty-seven-year digital archive, and our new monogrammed notebook for only $69 (plus free shipping!). John Hall Wheelock, The Art of Poetry No. 21 Issue no. 67 (Fall 1976) One reason I know it was not my line is I consulted a dictionary to find out that an oriel was a window in a balcony that you could look down from. I had sensed that it was some kind of window, but I didn’t know. I looked it up, afraid that it might be the wrong kind of window and wouldn’t fit into the poem. Now I have taken that line on as my own, yet no one can convince me that I didn’t hear it. Read More