{"id":132505,"date":"2019-01-08T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=132505"},"modified":"2019-01-07T15:25:52","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T20:25:52","slug":"redux-a-secret-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/08\/redux-a-secret-mouth\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: A Secret Mouth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, the editors of\u00a0<\/i>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 pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by\u00a0signing up for the Redux newsletter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Wallace Stegner.<\/p><\/div>\n

This week, we bring you Wallace Stegner\u2019s 1990 Art of Fiction interview<\/a>, Virginia Harabin\u2019s story \u201cSaturday, Sunday<\/a>,\u201d and Yusef Komunyakaa\u2019s poem \u201cMemory Cave<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not\u00a0subscribe to read the entire archive<\/a>? You\u2019ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wallace Stegner, The Art of Fiction No. 118<\/a>
\nIssue no. 115 (Summer 1990)<\/em><\/p>\n

The whole business of writing is an attempt to arrive at truth, insofar as you can see it, as far as your capacity to unearth it permits. Truth is to be handled gingerly. That\u2019s an egg with a very thin shell. I\u2019m not writing fables\u2014where the moral is literally part of the form. I\u2019m writing something from which the reader is supposed to deduce or induce any moral that\u2019s there. The moral value ought to be hiding in the material.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Saturday, Sunday<\/a>
\nBy Virginia Harabin
\nIssue no. 97 (Fall 1985)<\/em><\/p>\n

Weekends I serve fried chicken to drunks who make jokes about breasts and thighs. The manager comes out about once an hour and tells me to please put my cap back on. It\u2019s brown and orange, made of shiny thick knit, so I take it off again as soon as he\u2019s gone. There are bugs in the shake machine too. This little guy comes in, keeps mumbling about giving me a job, looking all foreign, dark-eyed and meaningful. But I wave him away because we get that all the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Memory Cave<\/a>
\nBy Yusef Komunyakaa
\nIssue no. 144 (Fall 1997)<\/em><\/p>\n

A tallow worked into a knot
\nof rawhide, with a ball of waxy light
\ntied to a stick, the boy
\nscooted through a secret mouth
\nof the cave, pulled by the flambeau
\nin his hand. He could see
\nthe gaze of agate eyes
\n& wished for the forbidden \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.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, we\u2019ve lowered the paywall on Wallace Stegner\u2019s Art of Fiction interview, a short story by Virginia Harabin, and a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa.<\/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":[16304,1016,46095,46091,15154,35131,22061,241,15558,504,46089,46090,38793,3539,1447,165,31384,46092,15322,261,46088,1185,19086],"class_list":["post-132505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-redux","tag-archive","tag-art-of-fiction","tag-crossing-to-safety","tag-fable","tag-fables","tag-free","tag-fried-chicken","tag-interview","tag-light","tag-literature","tag-memory-cave","tag-moral","tag-paywall","tag-poem","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-redux","tag-saturday-sunday","tag-service-industry","tag-short-story","tag-virginia-harabin","tag-wallace-stegner","tag-yusef-komunyakaa"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRedux: A Secret Mouth by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, we\u2019ve 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