{"id":126583,"date":"2018-06-19T13:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=126583"},"modified":"2018-06-18T15:02:22","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T19:02:22","slug":"redux-a-summer-month-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/19\/redux-a-summer-month-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: A Summer Month Together"},"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

The\u00a0summer solstice is this week, so as things heat up and before the days get shorter, we bring you our interview with\u00a0Kazuo Ishiguro<\/a>, where he recalls his summer job as a grouse beater for the queen mother; William\u00a0Gass\u2019s nostalgia-driven short story \u201cSummer Bees<\/a>,\u201d in which an affair is fondly remembered;\u00a0and Molly Peacock\u2019s poem \u201cA Hot Day in Agrigento<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Art of Fiction No. 196<\/a>
\nIssue no. 184 (Spring 2008)<\/em><\/p>\n

My first summer after leaving school I worked for the Queen Mother at Balmoral Castle, where the royal family spend their summer holidays. In those days they used to recruit local students to be grouse beaters. The royal family would invite people to shoot on their estate. The Queen Mother and her guests would get into Land Rovers with shotguns and whiskey and drive over bits of the moor from shooting butt to shooting butt. That\u2019s where they would aim and shoot. Fifteen of us would walk in formation across the moor, spaced about a hundred yards apart in the heather. The grouse live in the heather, and they hear us coming, and they hop. By the time we arrive at the butts, all of the grouse in the vicinity have accumulated and the Queen Mum and her friends are waiting with shotguns. Around the butts there\u2019s no heather, so the grouse have got no choice but to fly up. Then the shooting starts. And then we walk to the next butt. It\u2019s a bit like golf.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Summer Bees<\/a>
\nBy William Gass
\nIssue no. 79 (Spring\u00a01981)<\/em><\/p>\n

We had one shortened summer month together, Lou and I \u2026 my god, even the decade\u2019s gone. Pleading the pressures of work, I excused myself from my life and settled in a second-story room in western New York. A wooden stair fell from one widened window like a slide of cards. We hung our towels there: a shirt sometimes, a slip as discreet as a leer. I remember particularly the quiet empty streets, the long walk to the beach. Well, it was scarcely a beach, though there was a pier, and even in August the water was cool in those thin deep lakes the patient passion of the glaciers scratched. My chief memory is the heat, the silence, your pale breasts. Pale as a bleached leaf. I do not understand what makes another body so appealing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

A Hot Day in Agrigento<\/a>
\nBy Molly Peacock
\nIssue no. 100 (Fall\u2013Summer 1986)<\/em><\/p>\n

Temples look like discarded alphabets.
\nWe loved lying in their shadows lazily
\ndeciphering and resting and laying bets<\/p>\n

on what they really were for. Easily
\ncaught by fantasy, we no longer cared
\nwhy they were there, just that they were \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you like what you read,\u00a0get a year of<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review\u2014four new issues, plus instant access to everything we\u2019ve ever published.\u00a0<\/em>Order now and you\u2019ll get a copy of our new\u00a0book,\u00a0<\/em>The Writer\u2019s Chapbook<\/a>,\u00a0for only ten dollars more.<\/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.     The\u00a0summer solstice is this week, so as things heat up and before the days […]<\/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":[34410,10759,20835,34409,16024],"class_list":["post-126583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-redux","tag-a-hot-day-in-agrigento","tag-kazuo-ishiguro","tag-molly-peacock","tag-summer-bees","tag-william-gass"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRedux: A Summer Month Together by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, in anticipation of the solstice, we're giving you free access to an interview, a story, and a poem about summer.\" \/>\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\/19\/redux-a-summer-month-together\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Redux: A Summer Month Together by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 19, 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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