December 10, 2019 Redux Redux: Credible Threats That Appear and Disappear Like Clockwork 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. This week at The Paris Review, we’re celebrating the release of the Winter issue. Read on for three archive pieces written by contributors to our new issue: an excerpt from Georges Perec’s novel A Man Asleep, a selection from Jeffrey Yang and Kazumi Tanaka’s collaboration “No Home Go Home / Go Home No Home,” and Rae Armantrout’s poem “Now See.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review and read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. from A Man Asleep By Georges Perec Issue no. 116 (Fall 1990) You are sitting, naked from the waist up, wearing only pajama bottoms, in your garret, on the narrow bench that serves as your bed, with a book. Raymond Aron’s Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society, resting on your knees, open at page one-hundred and twelve. At first it’s just a sort of lassitude or tiredness, as if you suddenly became aware that for a long time, for several hours, you have been succumbing to an insidious, numbing discomfort, not exactly painful but nonetheless intolerable, succumbing to the sickly-sweet and stifling sensation of being without muscles or bones, of being a sack of potatoes surrounded by other sacks of potatoes. Read More
December 3, 2019 Redux Redux: Your Name Means Open 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. This week, we’re reading pieces that are featured on The Paris Review Podcast, which just wrapped up its second season. Read on for Tennessee Williams’s Art of Theater interview, Danez Smith’s poem “my bitch!,” and Philip Roth’s short story “The Conversion of the Jews.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review and read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. And don’t forget to listen to Season 2 of The Paris Review Podcast! Tennessee Williams, The Art of Theater No. 5 Issue no. 81 (Fall 1981) I now look back at periods of my life, and I think, Was that really me? Was I doing those things? I don’t feel any continuity in my life. It is as if my life were segments that are separate and do not connect. From one period to another it has all happened behind the curtain of work. And I just peek out from behind the curtain now and then and find myself on totally different terrain. Read More
November 26, 2019 Redux Redux: One Empty Seat 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. Jack Kerouac, ca. 1956. Photo: Tom Palumbo. This week at The Paris Review, we’re thinking about travel—by train, plane, car, or bus. Read on for Jack Kerouac’s Art of Fiction interview, W. S. Merwin’s essay “Flight Home,” and Paulé Bártón’s poem “The Sleep Bus.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review and read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Jack Kerouac, The Art of Fiction No. 41 Issue no. 43 (Summer 1968) I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings. Read More
November 19, 2019 Redux Redux: So Much Loneliness in That Gold 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. Isak Dinesen. Illustration by Michael Batterberry, 1956. This week at The Paris Review, our gaze is directed toward the moon. Read on for Isak Dinesen’s Art of Fiction interview, Ottessa Moshfegh’s short story “Dancing in the Moonlight,” and Jorge Luis Borges’s poem “The Moon.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review and read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. And don’t forget to subscribe to The Paris Review Podcast—a new episode comes out every Wednesday! Isak Dinesen, The Art of Fiction No. 14 Issue no. 14 (Autumn 1956) DINESEN The amusing thing is, that after the book was published in America, Huntington wrote to Robert Haas praising it, and begging for the address of the author, saying he must have the book for England. He had met me as Baroness Blixen, while Mr. Haas and I had never seen one another. He never connected me with Isak Dinesen. Later he did publish the book in England. INTERVIEWER That’s delightful; it’s like something from one of the tales. DINESEN How lovely to sit here in the open, but we must be going I think. Shall we continue our discussion on Sunday? I should like to see the Etruscan things at the Villa Giulia: we might chat a little then. Oh, look at the moon. Read More
November 12, 2019 Redux Redux: A Cold, Wet November Morning 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. Alberto Moravia, 1954. This week at The Paris Review, we’re acknowledging that November has finally arrived. Read on for Alberto Moravia’s Art of Fiction interview, Amparo Dávila’s short story “Moses and Gaspar,” and Paul Jenkins’s poem “November.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review and read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. And don’t forget to subscribe to The Paris Review Podcast—a new episode comes out every Wednesday! Alberto Moravia, The Art of Fiction No. 6 Issue no. 6 (Summer 1954) INTERVIEWER May we start at the beginning? ALBERTO MORAVIA At the beginning? INTERVIEWER You were born … MORAVIA Oh. I was born here. I was born in Rome on the twenty-eighth of November, 1907. Read More
November 5, 2019 Redux Redux: More Interesting as a Scorpio 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. Margaret Atwood. This week at The Paris Review, we’re looking to the stars and featuring works about or written by Scorpios. Read on for Margaret Atwood’s Art of Fiction interview, Tom Disch’s “The Joycelin Shrager Story,” and Anne Sexton’s poem “The Poet of Ignorance.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review and read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. And don’t forget to also subscribe to The Paris Review Podcast—a new episode comes out every Wednesday! Margaret Atwood, The Art of Fiction No. 121 Issue no. 117 (Winter 1990) When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical—one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float. Read More