{"id":127152,"date":"2018-07-03T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=127152"},"modified":"2018-07-03T11:15:38","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T15:15:38","slug":"redux-greetings-from-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/03\/redux-greetings-from-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: Greetings from America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, the editors of<\/em>\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<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week, we bring you\u00a0John Irving\u2019s 1986 Writers at Work interview<\/a>, where he advises American writers on how to be political in the face of lying presidents; the artist\u00a0Olav Westphalen\u2019s portfolio \u201cGreetings from America<\/a>,\u201d which explores our country\u2019s clich\u00e9d myths; and Robert Bly\u2019s \u201cFive American Poems<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93<\/a>
\nIssue no. 100 (Summer\u2013Fall 1986)<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe I should stop using the word \u201cpolitical\u201d and just claim that social observation is a writer\u2019s business; just to observe the society truthfully is, of course, being \u201cpolitical.\u201d I think New Englanders and Southerners have this in common, in their social observations, as writers: we recognize that America is a class society. People who differ from one another or draw lines between each other on matters of \u201ctaste\u201d are a part of the class society, just as surely as wealth and power are parts of it. These are more than manners, in a society; these things politicize us. By demonstrating how Americans discriminate we are also being political, as writers. And as long as we have presidents who lie to us \u2026 we\u2019ll be political just by using language clearly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Greetings from America<\/a>
\nBy Olav Westphalen
\nIssue no. 172 (Winter 2004)<\/em><\/p>\n

Gruesse aus Amerika<\/em>\u00a0was meant to be a personal love letter to America. But that proved to be too general and too sweet an idea to work for me. As time went on it had less and less to do with a realistic or journalistic view of America and more to do with myths, with clich\u00e9d notions of what America stands for, what it could have stood for. Take Pocahontas\u2019s Baptism [above], which I photographed from the pages of Klaus Theweleit\u2019s book on the founding of America (Pocahontas in Wonderland, Shakespeare on Tour<\/em>) \u2026 Pocahontas\u2019s story is evidence that there was a brief time window during which America was imagined (at least by some Europeans) as a place of productive cohabitation and miscegenation. The image of Pocahontas\u2019s baptism articulates both, the dream of a different story, and its forceful defeat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Five American Poems<\/a>
\nBy Robert Bly
\nIssue no. 27 (Winter\u2013Spring 1962)<\/em><\/p>\n

If we are truly free and live in a free country,
\nWhen shall I be without this heaviness of mind?
\nWhen shall I have peace? Peace this way and peace that way?
\nI have already looked beneath the street
\nAnd there I saw the bitter waters going down,
\nThe ancient worms eating up the sky \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.     This week, we bring you\u00a0John Irving\u2019s 1986 Writers at Work interview, where he advises […]<\/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":[34556,34555,7446,34554,4278],"class_list":["post-127152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-redux","tag-five-american-poems","tag-greetings-from-america","tag-john-irving","tag-olav-westphalen","tag-robert-bly"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRedux: Greetings from America by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every week, the editors of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine's archive. 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