December 6, 2021 Redux, Uncategorized Redux: In Honor of Jamaica Kincaid 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. Cover art by Jonathan Borofsky. In our Winter 1981 issue, The Paris Review published an early story by Jamaica Kincaid. Titled “What I Have Been Doing Lately,” it follows the narrator’s recursive, dreamlike journey in search of home. (You can listen to her reading it on the inaugural season of The Paris Review Podcast.) The story was included in Kincaid’s 1983 debut collection, At the Bottom of the River, which drew from her early life in Antigua and marked her as a singular voice in American letters. Kincaid has gone on to publish five novels and five books of nonfiction—she was a prolific New Yorker Talk of the Town columnist—as well as many other stories. In 2020, the Daily published two of her essays, “I See the World” and “Inside the American Snow Dome.” It’s our pleasure to announce that on April 12, 2022, The Paris Review will present the Hadada, our annual lifetime achievement award, to Jamaica Kincaid at our Spring Revel. To celebrate, we’re highlighting the work of previous Hadada winners in this week’s Redux. Read on for the Art of Fiction no. 223 with Joy Williams, Kincaid’s short story “What I Have Been Doing Lately,” N. Scott Momaday’s poem “Concession,” and a series of collages by John Ashbery. If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Eleven Collages by John Ashbery. Interview Joy Williams, The Art of Fiction No. 223 Issue no. 209 (Summer 2014) The Keys were still kind of strange and unspoiled in the eighties. I went around the state and wrote things down, but nobody talked to me. Nobody! I’d limp into these bed-and-breakfasts and people would snarl at me and not want to talk. I mean, honestly, it was terrible and I had no idea what I was doing. And it wasn’t edited, nobody edited it. Read More
November 30, 2021 Redux Redux: Each Train Rips 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. Jan Morris © David Hurn. This week at The Paris Review, we’re traveling via plane, bus, and foot. Read on for Jan Morris’s Art of the Essay interview, Anuk Arudpragasam’s short story “So Many Different Worlds,” Sarah Green’s poem “Vortex, Amtrak,” W. S. Merwin’s essay “Flight Home,” and a portfolio of art by Paige Jiyoung Moon. If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Interview Jan Morris, The Art of the Essay No. 2 Issue no. 143 (Summer 1997) I’m not the sort of writer who tries to tell other people what they are going to get out of the city. I don’t consider my books travel books. I don’t like travel books, as I said before. I don’t believe in them as a genre of literature. Every city I describe is really only a description of me looking at the city or responding to it. Read More
November 23, 2021 Redux Redux: Chance Progression 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. Margaret Drabble photographed by Nancy Crampton. This week at The Paris Review, we’re thinking about family bonds, in anticipation of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Read on for an Art of Fiction interview with Margaret Drabble, Tama Janowitz’s short story “American Dad,” Jeffrey Yang’s poem “Ancestors,” and a portfolio of photographs, “Iranian Family Portraits,” by Mohsen Rastani. If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Interview Margaret Drabble, The Art of Fiction No. 70 Issue no. 74 (Fall-Winter 1978) My sister and I are very similar. She’s a novelist and our lives have been parallel in many ways. She has been an important part of my life. One’s relationship with one’s siblings and parents is something that you’re going to write about again and again, in different forms. Read More
November 16, 2021 Redux Redux: Backwards and Upside Down 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. BLAISE CENDRARS, CA. 1907, PHOTOGRAPH BY AUGUST MONBARON. This week at The Paris Review, we’re looking in the mirror. Read on for Blaise Cendrars’s Art of Fiction interview, Shruti Swami’s short story “A House Is a Body,” Sharon Olds’s poem “I Cannot Forget the Woman in the Mirror,” and Melissa Febos’s essay “The Mirror Test,” paired with a selection of photographs by Francesca Woodman. If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Interview Blaise Cendrars, The Art of Fiction No. 38 Issue no. 37 (Spring 1966) A writer should never install himself before a panorama, however grandiose it may be. Like Saint Jerome, a writer should work in his cell. Turn the back. Writing is a view of the spirit. “The world is my representation.” Humanity lives in its fiction. This is why a conqueror always wants to transform the face of the world into his image. Today, I even veil the mirrors. Read More
November 9, 2021 Redux Redux: Plates Collapse 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 at The Paris Review, we’re celebrating the release of The Paris Review Podcast Season 3 and lowering the paywall on four pieces featured in the first two episodes. Read on for Robert Frost’s Art of Poetry interview, Yohanca Delgado’s short story “The Little Widow from the Capital,” Antonella Anedda’s poem “Historiae 2,” and Molly McCully Brown’s essay “If You Are Permanently Lost.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Interview Robert Frost, The Art of Poetry No. 2 Issue no. 24, (Summer-Fall 1960) So often they ask me—I just been all around, you know, been out West, been all around—and so often they ask me, “What is a modern poet?” I dodge it often, but I said the other night, “A modern poet must be one that speaks to modern people no matter when he lived in the world. That would be one way of describing it. And it would make him more modern, perhaps, if he were alive and speaking to modern people.” Read More
November 2, 2021 Redux Redux: Weird Ghost 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. COURTESY ROLLIE MCKENNA COLLECTION. This week at The Paris Review, we’re telling scary stories. Read on for James Merrill’s Art of Poetry interview, Joy Williams’s short story “Tricks,” William Faulkner’s ghost story “The Werewolf,” and Bhanu Kapil’s poem “Three Ghost Stories: 1944–48,” paired with photos from Flavia Gandolfo’s portfolio “Masks.” If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Interview James Merrill, The Art of Poetry No. 31 Issue no. 84 (Summer 1982) INTERVIEWER The Ouija board, now. I gather you use a homemade one, but that doesn’t exactly help me to imagine it or its workings. An overturned teacup is your pointer? MERRILL Yes. The commercial boards come with a funny see-through planchette on legs. I find them too cramped. Besides, it’s so easy to make your own—just write out the alphabet, and the numbers, and your yes and no (punctuation marks too, if you’re going all out) on a big sheet of cardboard. Or use brown paper—it travels better. On our Grand Tour, whenever we felt lonely in the hotel room, David and I could just unfold our instant company. He puts his right hand lightly on the cup, I put my left, leaving the right free to transcribe, and away we go. We get, oh, five hundred to six hundred words an hour. Better than gasoline. Read More