October 29, 2019 Redux Redux: Pen with Which to Write It All Down 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 listening to the first episode of The Paris Review Podcast Season 2! Read on for the pieces featured in the episode: Toni Morrison’s Art of Fiction interview, Mary Terrier’s short story “Guests,” and Alex Dimitrov’s poem “Impermanence.” 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! Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134 Issue no. 128 (Fall 1993) Sometimes something that I was having some trouble with falls into place, a word sequence, say, so I’ve written on scraps of paper, in hotels on hotel stationery, in automobiles. If it arrives you know. If you know it really has come, then you have to put it down. Read More
October 22, 2019 Redux Redux: Cold Night of October 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. This week at The Paris Review, it’s starting to get a little chilly. Read on for Italo Calvino’s Art of Fiction interview, Hiromi Kawakami’s short story “Mogera Wogura,” and Tina Barr’s poem “Twelve Dancing Princesses.” 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 make sure to listen to the new trailer for The Paris Review Podcast—Season 2 premieres this Wednesday, October 23! Italo Calvino, The Art of Fiction No. 130 Issue no. 124 (Fall 1992) 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
October 15, 2019 Redux Redux: What You Usually Find in Novels 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. Illustration of E. M. Forster by William Pène du Bois. This week, as always, we’re thinking about the novel. Read on for our very first Art of Fiction interview, with E. M. Forster; a previously unpublished Anton Chekhov short story called “What You Usually Find in Novels”; and Peg Boyers’s poem “Open Letter to Alberto Moravia,” which imagines a missive from Natalia Ginzburg to Moravia. 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 make sure to listen to the new trailer for The Paris Review Podcast—Season 2 premieres October 23! E. M. Forster, The Art of Fiction No. 1 Issue no. 1 (Spring 1953) INTERVIEWER While we are on the subject of the planning of novels, has a novel ever taken an unexpected direction? FORSTER Of course, that wonderful thing, a character running away with you—which happens to everyone—that’s happened to me, I’m afraid. Read More
October 8, 2019 Redux Redux: The Deep Well of Other Beings 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 listening to Season 1 of The Paris Review Podcast in anticipation for Season 2. We’ve unlocked archival selections used in Season 1: the Art of Fiction with Maya Angelou, the short story “A Dark and Winding Road” by Ottessa Moshfegh, and Pablo Neruda’s poem “Emerging.” 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 make sure to listen to the new trailer for The Paris Review Podcast—Season 2 premieres October 23! Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction No. 119 Issue no. 116 (Fall 1990) Podcast Season 1, Episode 1: “Times of Cloud” I know when it’s the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it’s the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, “No. No, I’m finished. Bye.” And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that. Read More
October 1, 2019 Redux Redux: Courting Sleep 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. Cynthia Ozick. This week at The Paris Review, we can’t sleep—our theme is insomnia. Read on for Cynthia Ozick’s Art of Fiction interview, Georges Perec’s short story “Between Sleep and Waking,” and Susan Barbour’s poem “Insomnia.” 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 make sure to listen to the new trailer for The Paris Review Podcast—Season 2 premieres October 23! Cynthia Ozick, The Art of Fiction No. 95 Issue no. 102 (Spring 1987) INTERVIEWER You write all night. Have you always done so? OZICK [Speaking, not yet typing.] Always. I’ve written in daylight, too, but mainly I go through the night. INTERVIEWER How does this affect your interaction with the rest of society? OZICK It’s terrible. Most social life begins in the evening, when I’m just starting. So when I do go out at night, it means I lose a whole day’s work. Read More
September 24, 2019 Redux Redux: Gold-Leaf from the Trees 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. Ali Smith, with Leo, in Cambridge, 2003. This week at The Paris Review, we’re in an autumnal mood. Read on for Ali Smith’s Art of Fiction interview, the second part of Katharine Kilalea’s novel in serial OK, Mr. Field, and Jane Hirshfield’s poem “Autumn.” 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. Ali Smith, The Art of Fiction No. 236 Issue no. 221 (Summer 2017) INTERVIEWER Were you pleased to see Autumn referred to as “the first serious Brexit novel”? SMITH Indifferent. What’s the point of art, of any art, if it doesn’t let us see with a little bit of objectivity where we are? All the way through this book I’ve used the step-back motion, which I’ve borrowed from Dickens—the way that famous first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities creates space by being its own opposite—to allow readers the space we need to see what space we’re in. Read More