August 7, 2018 Redux Redux: Doing Battle with Your Successors 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 August Wilson’s 1999 Art of Theater interview, Ben Okri’s short story “The Dream-Vendor’s August,” and Joyce Carol Oates’s poem “Wild Bamboo, Late August.” Read More
July 31, 2018 Redux Redux: On Trial 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 Janet Malcolm’s 2011 Writers at Work interview, Dante Troisi’s short story “Diary of a Judge,” and Devin Johnston’s poem “Means of Escape.” Read More
July 24, 2018 Redux Redux: Writers at Play 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 J. D. McClatchy’s 2002 Writers at Work interview, Nancy Lemann’s short story “Sportsman’s Paradise,” and Mark Halliday’s poem “Ballplayer at Midnight.” Read More
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