{"id":126359,"date":"2018-06-12T13:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T17:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=126359"},"modified":"2018-06-12T13:16:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T17:16:52","slug":"redux-three-for-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/12\/redux-three-for-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: Three for Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, the editors of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review\u00a0lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine\u2019s archive. You can have these unlocked\u00a0pieces delivered straight to your inbox every\u00a0Sunday by\u00a0signing up for the Redux newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With Father\u2019s Day around the corner, we bring you our 1976 Art of Fiction<\/a>\u00a0interview with Stanley Elkin, where he credits his father with having influenced his shoptalk writing style;\u00a0Benjamin Percy\u2019s story \u201cRefresh, Refresh<\/a>,\u201d in which a troubled teen awaits a message from his old man, who is stationed in Iraq; and\u00a0Louise Erdrich\u2019s poem \u201cBirth<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stanley Elkin, The Art of Fiction No. 61<\/a>
\nIssue no. 66 (Summer 1976)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Your characteristic style is, I think, distinguished by its oral quality. Could you comment on the sources of this style? Your father …<\/p>\n

ELKIN<\/p>\n

I was a very attentive listener to my father\u2019s stories and to my father\u2019s shoptalk . . . this may be the real source of my style. All shoptalk, the specialized jargon of a closed universe, fascinates me. Whenever I hear it, wherever I hear it, I\u2019m thunderstruck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Refresh, Refresh<\/a>
\nBy Benjamin Percy
\nIssue no. 175 (Fall\/Winter 2005)<\/em><\/p>\n

My father wore steel-toed boots, Carhartt jeans, and a T-shirt advertising some place he had traveled, maybe Yellowstone or Seattle. He looked like someone you might see shopping for motor oil at Bi-Mart. To hide his receding hairline he wore a John Deere cap that laid a shadow across his face. His brown eyes blinked above a considerable nose underlined by a gray mustache. Like me, my father was short and squat, a bulldog. His belly was a swollen bag and his shoulders were broad, good for carrying me during parades and at fairs when I was younger. He laughed a lot. He liked game shows. He drank too much beer and smoked too many cigarettes and spent too much time with his buddies, fishing, hunting, bullshitting, which probably had something to do with why my mother divorced him and moved to Boise with a hairdresser and triathlete named Chuck.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Birth<\/a>
\nBy Louise Erdrich
\nIssue no. 111 (Summer 1989)<\/em><\/p>\n

When they were wild
\nWhen they were not yet human
\nWhen they could have been anything,
\nI was on the other side ready with milk to lure them,
\nAnd their father, too, the name like a net in his hands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you like what you read, why not\u00a0become a subscriber<\/span><\/a>? You\u2019ll get instant access\u00a0to our entire sixty-five-year archive, not to mention four issues of new interviews, poetry, and fiction.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every week, the editors of\u00a0The Paris Review\u00a0lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine\u2019s archive. You can have these unlocked\u00a0pieces delivered straight to your inbox every\u00a0Sunday by\u00a0signing up for the Redux newsletter.     With Father\u2019s Day around the corner, we bring you our 1976 Art of Fiction\u00a0interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31006],"tags":[17420,8340,11082,4065,2591,1482,34358,22285],"class_list":["post-126359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-redux","tag-benjamin-percy","tag-birth","tag-dads","tag-father","tag-fathers-day","tag-louise-erdrich","tag-refresh-refresh","tag-stanley-elkin"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRedux: Three for Dad by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, in anticipation of Father\u2019s Day, we\u2019re giving you free access to an interview, story, and poem about \u2026 fathers.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/12\/redux-three-for-dad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Redux: Three for Dad by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 12, 2018 \u2013 Every week, the editors of\u00a0The Paris Review\u00a0lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine\u2019s archive. 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