{"id":139225,"date":"2019-09-03T13:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=139225"},"modified":"2019-09-03T12:13:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T16:13:18","slug":"redux-tautology-tautology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/09\/03\/redux-tautology-tautology\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: Tautology, Tautology"},"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 pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by\u00a0signing up for the Redux newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

This week at The Paris Review<\/em>, we\u2019re going back to school. Read on for Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s Art of Poetry interview<\/a>, Ottessa Moshfegh\u2019s short story \u201cBettering Myself<\/a>,\u201d and Melanie Rehak\u2019s poem \u201cSelf-Portrait as the Liberal Arts<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Elizabeth Bishop, The Art of Poetry No. 27<\/a>
\nIssue no. 80 (Summer 1981)<\/em><\/p>\n

The word creative<\/em> drives me crazy. I don\u2019t like to regard it as therapy \u2026 It\u2019s true, children sometimes write wonderful things, paint wonderful pictures, but I think they should be dis<\/em>couraged. From everything I\u2019ve read and heard, the number of students in English departments taking literature courses has been falling off enormously. But at the same time the number of people who want to get in the writing classes seems to get bigger and bigger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Bettering Myself<\/a>
\nBy Ottessa Moshfegh
\nIssue no. 204 (Spring 2013)<\/em><\/p>\n

My classroom was on the first floor, next to the nuns\u2019 lounge. I used their bathroom to puke in the mornings. One nun always dusted the toilet seat with talcum powder. Another nun plugged the sink and filled it with water. I never understood the nuns. One was old and the other was young. The young one talked to me sometimes, asked me what I would do for the long weekend, if I\u2019d see my folks over Christmas, and so forth. The old one looked the other way and twisted her robes in her fists when she saw me coming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Self-Portrait as the Liberal Arts<\/a>
\nBy Melanie Rehak
\nIssue no. 165 (Spring 2003)<\/em><\/p>\n

l. ARITHMETIC<\/small><\/p>\n

The addition of solitude untrammeled,
\none and more and more but always
\nthe inner life astray,
\nthat equation incompatibly private.<\/p>\n

The errors unrepenting that will not
\ncome out right.<\/p>\n

Tautology, tautology. What I\u2019ve said
\nin argument cannot be taken away.
\nI\u2019ve emptied my pockets of change.<\/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 Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s Art of Poetry interview, a story by Ottessa Moshfegh, and a poem by Melanie Rehak.<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-139225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-redux"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRedux: Tautology, Tautology by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, we\u2019ve lowered the paywall on Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s Art of Poetry interview, a story by Ottessa Moshfegh, and a poem by Melanie Rehak.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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