July 16, 2019 Redux Redux: The Rapturous Monotony of Metal, Water, Stone 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. In honor of Bastille Day this past Sunday, The Paris Review is returning to its expatriate roots by highlighting some of the many French authors whose work resides within the archive. Read on for Simone de Beauvoir’s Art of Fiction interview, as well as Baudelaire’s poem “Parisian Dream” and Andre de Mandiargues’s brief story “The Bath of Madame Mauriac.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Simone de Beauvoir, The Art of Fiction No. 35 Issue no. 34 (Spring–Summer 1965) When one has an existentialist view of the world, like mine, the paradox of human life is precisely that one tries to be and, in the long run, merely exists. It’s because of this discrepancy that when you’ve laid your stake on being—and, in a way you always do when you make plans, even if you actually know that you can’t succeed in being—when you turn around and look back on your life, you see that you’ve simply existed. Read More
July 9, 2019 Redux Redux: A Creator of Inwardness 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. Elizabeth Hardwick. The Paris Review meets The New York Review of Books: our summer subscription deal is here! To celebrate, we’re taking a dive into both our archives for this week’s Redux. Read on for Elizabeth Hardwick’s Art of Fiction interview, paired with her 1969 essay “Reflections on Fiction”; Susan Sontag’s Art of Fiction interview, paired with her essay on Simone Weil; and James Baldwin’s Art of Fiction interview, paired with his 1970 letter to Angela Davis. If you enjoy these free interviews and essays, why not subscribe to both magazines? From now through the end of August, you’ll pay just $99—that’s 35% off—to receive a yearlong subscription to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books, as well as complete access to their respective archives. And if you’re already a Paris Review subscriber, never fear—this deal will extend your current subscription, and your new subscription to The New York Review will begin immediately. Read More
July 2, 2019 Redux Redux: Sulfurous Coils of Red and Green 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. Harry Mathews in Key West, Florida, 2006. This week at The Paris Review, we’re celebrating the Fourth of July early. Read Harry Mathews’s Art of Fiction interview, as well as Rachel Kushner’s short story “Blanks” and George Bradley’s poem “The 4th of July, and.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Harry Mathews, The Art of Fiction No. 191 Issue no. 180 (Spring 2007) The ends of my books are also designed in a way that subverts any illusion that what you have become involved in is anything but the book itself … At the end of Tlooth there’s a description of fireworks out of nowhere. This is the conclusion of the book, except apparently nothing is concluded. “The labyrinth of their colors sets a dense clarity against the blankness of the night.” If that doesn’t leave you groping … Read More
June 25, 2019 Redux Redux: Rushing Seas and Dozing Shores 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 official arrival of summer. Read our Art of Poetry interview with Anne Carson (whose birthday falls on the solstice), as well as Larry Woiwode’s short story “Summer Storms” and Spring Melody Berman’s poem “The Camp Counselor, after One Summer’s Absence.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to read the entire archive? 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) I think a poem, when it works, is an action of the mind captured on a page, and the reader, when he engages it, has to enter into that action. His mind repeats that action and travels again through the action, but it is a movement of yourself through a thought, through an activity of thinking, so by the time you get to the end you’re different than you were at the beginning and you feel that difference. 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 11, 2019 Redux Redux: Lost Causes Confound 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. Lydia Davis in Paris, 1973. This week at The Paris Review, we’re reading archive pieces written by contributors to the Summer 2019 issue. Read Lydia Davis’s Art of Fiction interview, as well as Richard Ford’s short story “Shooting the Rest Area” and Ishion Hutchinson’s poem “A Horace to Horace.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Lydia Davis, Art of Fiction No. 227 Issue no. 212 (Spring 2015) Back in the early eighties, I realized that you could write a story that was really just a narration of something that had happened to you, and change it slightly, without having really to fictionalize it. In a way, that’s found material. Read More