July 13, 2021 Redux Redux: An Artist Who in Dreams Followed 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. Hilton Als. This week at The Paris Review, we’re commemorating another year of the best deal in town: our summer subscription offer with The New York Review of Books. For only $99, you’ll receive yearlong subscriptions and complete archive access to both magazines—a 34% savings! To celebrate, we’re unlocking pieces from the archives of both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books. Read on for Hilton Als’s Art of the Essay interview, paired with his essay “Michael”; Fernanda Melchor’s “They Called Her the Witch,” paired with Emmanuel Ordóñez Angulo’s review of the novel from which it is excerpted, Hurricane Season; and Adrienne Rich’s poem “Architect,” alongside Mark Ford’s essay on two recent collections of Rich’s poetry and essays. If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, poems, and works of criticism, why not subscribe to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books and read both magazines’ entire archives? Hilton Als, The Art of the Essay No. 3 The Paris Review, issue no. 225 (Summer 2018) For me, writing is a way of struggling through the intricacies of an antiempirical sensibility. And there must be words other than fiction and nonfiction. I see fiction not as the construction of an alternate world but as what your imagination gives you from the real world. Michael By Hilton Als The New York Review of Books, August 13, 2009, issue James Baldwin did not live long enough to see Jackson self-destruct. And the most interesting aspect of his essay in light of Jackson’s death is Baldwin’s identification with Michael Jackson, another black boy who saw fame as power, and both did and did not get out of the ghetto he had been born into, or away from the father who became his greatest subject. But the differences are telling. Read More
July 6, 2021 Redux Redux: Fireworks Out of Nowhere 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. Harry Mathews in Key West, Florida, 2006. This week at The Paris Review, we’re celebrating the Fourth of July. Read on for Harry Mathews’s Art of Fiction interview, Rachel Kushner’s “Blanks,” and Rita Dove’s “Wingfoot Lake.” 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. Or, choose our new summer bundle and purchase a year’s worth of The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books for $99 ($50 off the regular price!). Harry Mathews, The Art of Fiction No. 191 Issue no. 180 (Spring 2007) The ends of my books are also designed in a way that subverts any illusion that what you have become involved in is anything but the book itself … At the end of Tlooth there’s a description of fireworks out of nowhere. This is the conclusion of the book, except apparently nothing is concluded. “The labyrinth of their colors sets a dense clarity against the blankness of the night.” Read More
June 29, 2021 Redux Redux: Nothing Is Commoner in Summer than Love 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. Phillips in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 2018. Photo courtesy of Reston Allen. This week at The Paris Review, we’re highlighting the work of queer and trans writers in our archive in honor of Pride. Read on for Carl Phillips’s Art of Poetry interview, Jeanette Winterson’s short story “The Lives of Saints,” Timothy Liu’s poem “Action Painting,” and a selection of diary entries by Jan Morris. 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. Or, choose our new bundle and you’ll also receive Poets at Work for 25% off the cover price. Carl Phillips, The Art of Poetry No. 103 Issue no. 228 (Spring 2019) INTERVIEWER With that book you were part of a watershed moment for gay poetry. PHILLIPS Around the time of my first book, Mark Doty’s My Alexandria appeared. That was a very important book for me. And within a few years were first books from Timothy Liu and Rafael Campo. To write about having sex with someone of the same sex, to write about same-sex love and vulnerability—these were very new things in poetry, as far as I could tell. It’s something that gets taken for granted now, but it’s great that something like this can be taken for granted. Not that any of this means it’s not still very frightening, even dangerous, for many people to speak openly about who they are, and to live openly as they are. For many people of my generation, there was only the hetero model—so what to do when you have the freedom to make your own model? Read More
June 22, 2021 Redux Redux: The Name like a Net in His Hands 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. Hass teaching at St. Mary’s College, ca. 1977. Photo courtesy of the author. This week at The Paris Review, we’re thinking about fatherhood and Father’s Day. Read on for Robert Hass’s Art of Poetry interview, Jonathan Escoffery’s short story “Under the Ackee Tree,” and Louise Erdrich’s poem “Birth.” 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. Or, subscribe to our new bundle and receive Poets at Work for 25% off. Robert Hass, The Art of Poetry No. 108 Issue no. 233 (Summer 2020) When you’re taking care of small children, it’s the one time when you don’t have to ask what the meaning of it all is. The meaning is to get through the day without closing a car door on their fingers. Read More
June 15, 2021 Redux Redux: Without Wanting to Live Forever 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. Elizabeth Bishop. Photo: Alice Helen Methfessel. Courtesy of Frank Bidart. This week at The Paris Review, we’re eating our vegetables and celebrating the summer’s bounty. Read on for Elizabeth Bishop’s Art of Poetry interview, Alice Munro’s short story “Spaceships Have Landed,” and Sue Kwock Kim’s poem “The Korean Community Garden in Queens.” 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. Or, subscribe to our new bundle and receive Poets at Work for 25% off. Elizabeth Bishop, The Art of Poetry No. 27 Issue no. 80 (Summer 1981) The next day there was a picture in the afternoon paper—they take such things very seriously in Brazil—and the day after that my Brazilian friend went to market again. There was a big covered market with stalls for every kind of comestible, and there was one vegetable man we always went to. He said, “Wasn’t that Doña Elizabetchy’s picture in the paper yesterday?” She said, “Yes, it was. She won a prize.” And he said, “You know, it’s amazing! Last week Señora (Somebody) took a chance on a bicycle and she won! My customers are so lucky!” Isn’t that marvelous?! Read More
June 8, 2021 Redux Redux: Mother for Whom the Whole Sky 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. Vladimir Nabokov. This week at The Paris Review, we’re celebrating the release of the Summer 2021 issue and highlighting work by issue no. 237 contributors who have previously appeared in the Review. Read Vladimir Nabokov’s Art of Fiction interview, Anuk Arudpragasam’s short story “Last Rites,” Kaveh Akbar’s poem “Mothers I Once Was,” and Roz Chast’s “The Art of Revelry.” 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. Or, choose our new bundle and you’ll also receive Poets at Work for 25% off the cover price. Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40 Issue no. 41 (Summer–Fall 1967) INTERVIEWER Do you feel you have any conspicuous or secret flaw as a writer? NABOKOV The absence of a natural vocabulary. An odd thing to confess, but true. Of the two instruments in my possession, one—my native tongue—I can no longer use, and this not only because I lack a Russian audience, but also because the excitement of verbal adventure in the Russian medium has faded away gradually after I turned to English in 1940. My English, this second instrument I have always had, is however a stiffish, artificial thing, which may be all right for describing a sunset or an insect, but which cannot conceal poverty of syntax and paucity of domestic diction when I need the shortest road between warehouse and shop. An old Rolls-Royce is not always preferable to a plain jeep. Read More