November 6, 2018 Redux Redux: You Only Vote Once in a While 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. Arthur Miller. This week, we bring you Arthur Miller’s 1966 Art of Theater interview, Wang Meng’s short story “The Stubborn Porridge,” and Martha Hollander’s poem “Election Night.” 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. Arthur Miller, The Art of Theater No. 2 Issue no. 38 (Summer 1966) I always drew a lot of inspiration from politics, from one or another kind of national struggle. You live in the world even though you only vote once in a while. It determines the extensions of your personality. I lived through the McCarthy time, when one saw personalities shifting and changing before one’s eyes, as a direct, obvious result of a political situation. And had it gone on, we would have gotten a whole new American personality—which in part we have … Such a pall of fright was laid upon us that it truly deflected the American mind. It’s part of a paranoia which we haven’t escaped yet. Good God, people still give their lives for it; look what we’re doing in the Pacific. Read More
October 30, 2018 Redux Redux: James Merrill’s Ouija Board 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. James Merrill. This week, we bring you James Merrill’s Art of Poetry interview, in which he explains how he draws inspiration from a Ouija board; “The Plato Club,” a strange feature in which Merrill and David Jackson use a Ouija board to contact Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Colette, Jean Genet, and others; and “Totem,” a poem by Eamon Grennan. 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. James Merrill, The Art of Poetry No. 31 Issue no. 84 (Summer 1982) INTERVIEWER Does the Ouija board ever manifest maniacal tendencies? Do you ever feel yourself lost in its grip? MERRILL Oh, we’ve been scared at times. A friend who sat with us at the board just once went on to have a pretty awful experience with some people out in Detroit. She was told to go west, and to sail on a certain freighter on a certain day, and the name of the island where she’d meet her great-grandmother reincarnated as a Polynesian teenager who would guide her to a mountain cave where in turn an old man . . . and so forth. Luckily she collapsed before she ever made it to California. Read More
October 23, 2018 Redux Redux: The Virgin Suicides 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. To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Virgin Suicides, Emily Nemens will be discussing the book’s legacy with Jeffrey Eugenides in Los Angeles this Friday. In anticipation of the event, we bring you Jeffrey Eugenides’s Art of Fiction interview; the first chapter of The Virgin Suicides, which originally appeared as a short story in the Winter 1990 issue; and Jim Gustafson’s poem “Detroit.” 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. Read More
October 16, 2018 Redux Redux: Two Hundred Perfect Words Every Day 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 bring you more selections by some of the women featured in Women at Work Volume Two: Doris Lessing’s 1988 Art of Fiction interview, Jeanette Winterson’s short story “The Lives of Saints,” and May Sarton’s poem “Coming into Eighty.” 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. Read More
October 9, 2018 Redux Redux: The Idea of Women’s Language 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. Last week, The Paris Review announced Women at Work Volume Two, a collection of twelve interviews with female artists from the Writers at Work series. Volume Two is available for preorder now. This week, we bring you selections of work by some of the women featured in Volume Two: Luisa Valenzuela’s 2001 Art of Fiction interview, Louise Erdrich’s short story “The Beet Queen,” and May Sarton’s poem “Letters from Maine.” 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. Read More
October 2, 2018 Redux Redux: The Whims of Men 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 bring you Toni Morrison’s 1993 Writers at Work interview, Grace Paley’s short story “The Little Girl,” and Sally W. Bliumis’s poem “In the Women’s Locker Room.” Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134 Issue no. 128 (Fall 1993) I only know that I will never again trust my life, my future, to the whims of men, in companies or out. Never again will their judgment have anything to do with what I think I can do. That was the wonderful liberation of being divorced and having children. I did not mind failure, ever, but I minded thinking that someone male knew better. Read More