November 28, 2017 Redux Redux: James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Dorothea Lasky 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 our 1984 interview with James Baldwin, Raymond Carver’s story “Why Don’t You Dance?,” and Dorothea Lasky’s poem “I Had a Man.” You can also listen to all three in the third episode of our new podcast, featuring guest readers LeVar Burton and Dakota Johnson. Read More
November 21, 2017 Redux Redux: Jack Kerouac, Shelly Oria, Erica Ehrenberg 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 our 1968 interview with Jack Kerouac, Shelly Oria’s story “My Wife, in Converse,” and Erica Ehrenberg’s poem “Pause at the Edge of the Country.” You can also listen to all three in the second episode of our new podcast! Bring them on the road, in the air, or in the quiet car while you travel home for Thanksgiving this week. Jack Kerouac, The Art of Fiction No. 41 Issue no. 43 (Summer 1968) The original Buddha wouldn’t even walk on young grass so that he wouldn’t destroy it. He was born in Gorakhpur, the son of the consul of the invading Persian hordes. And he was called Sage of the Warriors, and he had seventeen thousand broads dancing for him all night, holding out flowers, saying, “You want to smell it, my lord?” But by the time he was thirty-one years old he got sick and tired … his father was protecting him from what was going on outside the town. And so he went out on a horse, against his father’s orders and he saw a woman dying—a man being burnt on a ghat. And he said, “What is all this death and decay?” The servant said,” That is the way things go on. Your father was hiding you from the way things go on.” “My Wife, in Converse,” by Shelly Oria Issue no. 209 (Summer 2014) My wife and I took a cooking class recently. My wife and I take classes. It is a passion of my wife’s, taking classes. My wife is good at most things one could take classes in, which, when you think about it—and I’ve thought about it—means my wife excels in all things. And I believe that is in fact true. I believe my wife excels in all things. I am not blinded by love when I say this—we have been together eight years. They say after seven, whatever blindness you had is gone. “Pause at the Edge of the Country,” by Erica Ehrenberg Issue no. 216 (Spring 2016) He gets back in the car, resting a plastic tray of nachos on his jeans. I smell the salt, the corn, the nacho cheese, its under-smell of plastic, the way his hair smells when he hasn’t washed it in a few days, gasoline. Tune in for free—and while you’re at it, subscribe to The Paris Review for instant access to everything we’ve published since 1953. Order now and you’ll get a copy of our new anthology, Women at Work, for only $10 more.
November 14, 2017 Redux Redux: Maya Angelou, Denis Johnson, and James Schuyler 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 our 1990 interview with Maya Angelou, Denis Johnson’s story “Car-Crash While Hitchhiking,” and James Schuyler’s poem “In earliest morning.” What do these have in common? They’re all in the first episode of our new podcast! Tune in for free—and while you’re at it, subscribe to The Paris Review for instant access to everything we’ve published since 1953. Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction No. 119 Issue no. 116 (Fall 1990) There is, I hope, a thesis in my work: we may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody-two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it’s just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats—maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats—but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Read More
November 7, 2017 Redux Redux: Emily Wilson, Robert Fitzgerald, and Robert Fagles 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 salute Emily Wilson, whose new English-language translation of the Odyssey is (incredibly enough) the first ever published by a woman. We bring you the opening pages of her translation, plus interviews with two of her most famous modern precursors, Robert Fitzgerald and Robert Fagles. Read More
October 31, 2017 Redux Redux: Joan Didion, William Faulkner, and Matthew Zapruder 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. Photograph by Mary Lloyd Estrin, 1977. To celebrate the release of the Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, we bring you our 1978 Art of Fiction interview with the writer—plus a Halloween ghost story from William Faulkner and a haunted poem by Matthew Zapruder. Read More
October 24, 2017 Redux Redux: Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) 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. Photo: Vincent Tolentino This week, we celebrate the late Richard Wilbur, whose poems have a way of turning up where we might not expect them—in an essay on threesomes by Kristin Dombek, for example, or a poem about lying by Robert Hahn. Richard Wilbur, The Art of Poetry No. 22 Issue no. 72 (Winter 1977) I often don’t write more than a couple of lines in a day of, let’s say, six hours of staring at the sheet of paper. Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia. “Letter from Williamsburg,” by Kristin Dombek Issue no. 205 (Summer 2013) After I stopped believing in God, I would sometimes wake in a panic at being alone without supernatural support. So I memorized Richard Wilbur’s poem “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World,” to say to myself in the morning. When I woke with someone in my bed, I would recite it to him or her: The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple As false dawn. Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels … “Tell the Truth,” by Robert Hahn Issue no. 127 (Summer 1993) To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm. Your reputation for saying things of interest Will not be marred, if you hasten to other topics, Nor will the delicate web of human trust Be ruptured by that airy fabrication. —Richard Wilbur, “Lying” You wake and reach for the phone. No one is harmed if you call your wife to claim you have seen the Pacific at dawn, running for miles over the quick blossom-and-fade of an image, on the glassy sand, when the mist and the lightly stippled sea were a single tone of gray. A simple invention. Meanwhile, far below, the trackless beach and the green, heaving ocean are beginning, only now, to be disclosed in the wide panes of your room … If you like what you read, get a year of The Paris Review—four new issues, plus instant access to everything we’ve ever published. Order now, and get a copy of our upcoming Women at Work for only $10.