July 17, 2018 Redux Redux: Snared By Sin 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. Doesn’t summer begin to feel … dull? Like, who can stomach all this tedious sunshine anyway? Before you go looking for some mischievous fun, consider Max Frisch’s definition of sin from his 1989 Writers at Work interview: “a lack of capacity for love”; read Yiyun Li’s “Persimmons,” a short story about punishment and drought; and learn what happened to a misfortunate youth in Greg Kosmicki’s poem “Lester Pyrtle Gets Snared By Sin and Caught in the Act By God in Old Man Mooney’s Barn, Summer, 1956.” Read More
July 10, 2018 Redux Redux: A State of Hyperconsciousness 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 Jane Smiley’s 2015 Writers at Work interview, where she describes writing in a fugue state; Raymond Pettibon’s portfolio “Real Dogs in Space”; and May Sarton’s poem “A Farewell.” Jane Smiley, The Art of Fiction No. 229 Issue no. 214 (Fall 2015) INTERVIEWER You’ve described writing as a source of relaxation. SMILEY Do you know the writer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? He’s a Hungarian psychologist who writes about the state of flow. If you’re in a creative state, then essentially things sort of coagulate and you enter a state of hyperconsciousness—you can write for an hour or so, but it only seems like a few minutes because you’re so concentrated on it. I’ve experienced that a lot, which doesn’t mean there’s no frustration, but I don’t really remember the frustration very well. I remember more when the writing comes together. And I’m willing to seek out that coming together. If I get frustrated, I’ll go eat something, I’ll go open another Diet Coke, I’ll go to the barn, I’ll distract myself, and then the parts in my brain that were working click and I get an idea. I read an article about how to learn to play a musical instrument. You practice, practice, practice on Friday, then you walk away. And then when you sit down on Saturday, you’re better. Not only because of all the practice, but also because of the walking away. I’m a firm believer in walking away. Read More
July 3, 2018 Redux Redux: Greetings from America 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 John Irving’s 1986 Writers at Work interview, where he advises American writers on how to be political in the face of lying presidents; the artist Olav Westphalen’s portfolio “Greetings from America,” which explores our country’s clichéd myths; and Robert Bly’s “Five American Poems.” Read More
June 26, 2018 Redux Redux: In Dire Straits By The Paris Review This week, we bring you three pieces about immigration from our archive. Read Dany Laferrière’s 2017 Writers at Work interview, in which he bemoans complacency in the face of suffering; meet the narrator from a war-torn country in Gretchen Herbkersman’s short story “Thor”; and travel to impoverished Detroit, the city in which the American immigrant dream once lay, in Philip Levine’s poem “A Walk with Tom Jefferson.” Dany Laferrière, The Art of Fiction No. 237 Issue no. 222 (Fall 2017) To watch someone see you, when you are begging or homeless, and the person isn’t scandalized. He’s not happy about it, but he is thinking if someone has to be homeless, it might as well be you. If you saw that someone you went to school with had become homeless, you would be scandalized. You’d say to yourself, It can’t possibly be! But for all the others who are homeless, it can’t possibly be either! But it’s like that when you don’t know the person—you are categorized by race, or as a part of society that we accept seeing in a miserable situation. Native Americans drinking on a street corner or blacks in dire circumstances—these are things society thinks are normal. I’m not saying they accept it, but it’s something they’ve always seen. Well, I’ve been in that situation. I’ve been seen that way—He’s an immigrant and not white, and he’s in dire straits, that’s normal. There is nothing more extraordinary than seeing compassion in someone’s eyes, but not the slightest surprise at your situation. That is what it is to be a desert island, with no one to protect you—which could plunge some people into despair, bordering on insanity. But for a writer, it can be interesting. Because you can observe society, since you are completely invisible. No one sees you. People will say and do anything in front of you. Read More
June 19, 2018 Redux Redux: A Summer Month Together 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. The summer solstice is this week, so as things heat up and before the days get shorter, we bring you our interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, where he recalls his summer job as a grouse beater for the queen mother; William Gass’s nostalgia-driven short story “Summer Bees,” in which an affair is fondly remembered; and Molly Peacock’s poem “A Hot Day in Agrigento.” Kazuo Ishiguro, The Art of Fiction No. 196 Issue no. 184 (Spring 2008) My first summer after leaving school I worked for the Queen Mother at Balmoral Castle, where the royal family spend their summer holidays. In those days they used to recruit local students to be grouse beaters. The royal family would invite people to shoot on their estate. The Queen Mother and her guests would get into Land Rovers with shotguns and whiskey and drive over bits of the moor from shooting butt to shooting butt. That’s where they would aim and shoot. Fifteen of us would walk in formation across the moor, spaced about a hundred yards apart in the heather. The grouse live in the heather, and they hear us coming, and they hop. By the time we arrive at the butts, all of the grouse in the vicinity have accumulated and the Queen Mum and her friends are waiting with shotguns. Around the butts there’s no heather, so the grouse have got no choice but to fly up. Then the shooting starts. And then we walk to the next butt. It’s a bit like golf. Read More
June 12, 2018 Redux Redux: Three for Dad 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. With Father’s Day around the corner, we bring you our 1976 Art of Fiction interview with Stanley Elkin, where he credits his father with having influenced his shoptalk writing style; Benjamin Percy’s story “Refresh, Refresh,” in which a troubled teen awaits a message from his old man, who is stationed in Iraq; and Louise Erdrich’s poem “Birth.” Read More