May 29, 2018 Redux Redux: Philip Roth (1933–2018) 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. Philip Roth, a longtime friend and an early contributor to the magazine, died last week at age eighty-five. Roth’s influence on American letters is staggering, and it didn’t take long for the remembrances, appreciations, and obituaries to pour in from every publication imaginable. This week, to honor Roth, we bring you his Art of Fiction interview, from our Fall 1984 issue; his novella Goodbye, Columbus, from our Autumn–Winter 1958–1959 issue; and a special bonus episode of our podcast, where we share a recording of Roth’s speech from our 2010 Revel, when he was given the Hadada, our award for lifetime achievement. Read More
May 22, 2018 Redux Redux: Tom Wolfe, Barbara Grossman, and Gwyneth Lewis 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. Tom Wolfe, New York City, November 2011 Tom Wolfe died last week, at eighty-eight. So today, we bring you his Art of Fiction interview. We also bring you Barbara Grossman’s tale about a young man and his house plants, “My Vegetable Love,” and Gwyneth Lewis’s poem about Florida titled “Pentecost.” Read More
May 15, 2018 Redux Redux: Reading About Mom 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. Happy Mother’s Day! This week, read Nadine Gordimer’s Art of Fiction interview to learn why her mother would say, “Now, take it slowly, remember your heart”; Lorrie Moore’s story “Terrific Mother,” about a woman who is too often told she would be one; and Paul Carroll’s poem “Mother.” Read More
May 8, 2018 Redux Redux: Emily’s Other Daffodil 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 help you usher in the month of May with a bouquet of archival reads. Learn about John Fowles’s wild-orchid hobby in his Art of Fiction interview; follow the hunt for a flatware pattern in Belle Boggs’s story “Imperial Chrysanthemum”; and read May Swenson’s Emily Dickinson–inspired poem “Daffodildo.” Read More
May 1, 2018 Redux Redux: The Story of the Story 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 Lorrie Moore’s Art of Fiction interview, Rachel Kushner’s story “Blanks,” and Kevin Young’s poem “Homage to Phillis Wheatley.” Lorrie Moore, The Art of Fiction No. 167 Issue no. 158 (Spring–Summer 2001) If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure. Certainly literature has been written about and taught in this manner for a long time; it’s not new. It is sometimes, however, like so many things that are natural, unfortunate. Read More
April 24, 2018 Redux Redux: Excessive Doom Scenarios 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. Sunday was Earth Day, but before you head outside to explore the wonders of nature, linger a moment with The Paris Review. This week, we bring you Gary Snyder’s Art of Poetry interview, in which he urges us to love the world; Roger Salloch’s story “Romantic Landscape”; and Mark Strand’s poem “After Our Planet.” Gary Snyder, The Art of Poetry No. 74 Issue no. 141 (Winter 1996) I feel that the condition of our social and ecological life is so serious that we’d better have a sense of humor. That it’s too serious just to be angry and despairing. Also, frankly, the environmental movement in the last twenty years has never done well when it threw out excessive doom scenarios. Doom scenarios, even though they might be true, are not politically or psychologically effective. The first step, I think, and that’s why it’s in my poetry, is to make us love the world rather than to make us fear for the end of the world. Make us love the world, which means the nonhuman as well as the human, and then begin to take better care of it. Read More