{"id":141471,"date":"2019-12-20T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T18:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=141471"},"modified":"2019-12-23T10:29:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T15:29:34","slug":"the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paris Review<\/em> Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Lydia Davis. Photo: \u00a9 Theo Cote.<\/p><\/div>\n

Was it worth plowing through this year, after all? The jury has a few more days on that, but a compelling argument came in last month, when Lydia Davis\u2019s Essays One<\/em><\/a> hit the shelves. Even just as a physical object, it is delightful: a small, pleasantly chubby book, the jacket a grassy and somehow optimistic green, the design unadorned, as though there is nothing more you need to know than title and author. (It makes a nice companion to her collected stories<\/a>\u2014similar in size and shape, green against orange.) The delights continue inside. Davis is speaking of reading Lucia Berlin when she writes, \u201cThis is the way we like to be when we\u2019re reading\u2014using our brains, feeling our hearts beat,\u201d but the phrase applies well to this book: it\u2019s an experience in an active, alive sort of reading, sensitive and attuned. Sitting with the book felt as though someone had come in to gently adjust my antennae, helping clarify signals in what had seemed just noise. And in any case, this book is part promise: that One<\/em> in the title, those notes in the preface\u2014there is more to come. \u2014Hasan Altaf\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

T Fleischmann. Photo: May Allen.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, 2019 felt like the year when civilization teetered definitively toward collapse. Notre Dame burned down, authoritarian governments shut off the internet, a child sailed across the ocean to tell us we were destroying the planet\u2014all of which, of course, is not to mention our own president or what\u2019s happening in England. This past January feels impossibly long ago\u2014how innocent we were then, when we still thought we might find resolution in the Mueller Report or the Game of Thrones<\/em> finale\u2014and yet Sarah Moss\u2019s Ghost Wall<\/em><\/a> still feels as vivid to me as the cold day on which I read it. It\u2019s a book about willfully severing our ties from civilization, and the dormant brutality that lies under the surface in us all. Adolescent Silvie\u2019s obsessive, controlling father forces their family onto an anthropological mission where they, along with a class of college students, live in the woods of England as primitively as early man, foraging for food and bathing in streams. As the past rises up around them and a terrifying masculine violence is unleashed, Silvie sneaks off for snacks at the gas station. I have rarely felt so gripped by a narrator\u2019s voice. From within the sways of puberty, Sylvie possesses the cynicism and clarity only the newfound loss of one\u2019s own innocence can bring. It\u2019s a deceptively slim book for how full a soul it contains.<\/p>\n

Another book I carried with me this year was T Fleischmann\u2019s Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through<\/em><\/a>. As explicitly sexy as it is intelligent, it\u2019s a genuinely radical text that transcends genre: part essay, part poem, part art criticism, part history, part intimate letter to a friend. It feels written not for the world as it is but for the world as it should be. The book is unapologetically addressed to a queer audience, set in a milieu where anticapitalism is the baseline and no one\u2019s gender is normative, and where none of these things need to be explained. It\u2019s an ode to human connection composed by a luminously solitary spirit, and I wanted to stay inside it all year. Instead, I slipped copies into the hands of nearly everyone I know and lost myself in older works of transgression with new covers: Natalia Ginzburg\u2019s The Dry Heart<\/em><\/a>, which makes murdering one\u2019s husband sound perfectly logical, and Rebecca Godfrey\u2019s impressive feat of reporting Under the Bridge<\/em><\/a>, which examines the deadly brutality of teenage girls. Perhaps I was seeking anger this year, or the feeling of transcendence that can be found when things break irreparably open.<\/p>\n

As the year drew to a close, I found myself rereading Edmund White\u2019s A Boy\u2019s Own Story<\/a>, <\/em>his autobiographical novel about his adolescence in the fifties. On my first encounter with the book, when I was an adolescent myself, I read only for the stirrings of gay lust, the way he paints the boys he desires with brushstrokes so luminous I wondered if I, too, was a gay man, though I also recognized myself fully in his refusal to give the confusion of early friendships any name other than love. And yet in this reading I was struck by the exquisite precision of all he does name, rendering language into an instrument that plays the notes of emotion so evocatively it stills your spine. \u201cFor the real movements of a life are gradual, then sudden; they resist becoming anecdotes, they pulse like quasars from long-dead stars to reach the vivid planet of the present, they drift like fog over the ship until the spread sails are merely panels of gray in grayer air and surround becomes object, as in those perceptual tests where figure and ground reverse, the kissing couple in profile turn into the outlines of the mortuary urn that holds their own ashes,\u201d he writes. Many writers would compose an entire novel just to contain a single sentence like that one; White strings them together almost carelessly, as if he were the princess in the fairy tale who opens her mouth to find she can speak only pearls. Emotions I had always felt without knowing, because I had no words for them, were suddenly there, unassailable, in his articulation. And\u2014dare I say it?\u2014I felt hope. \u2014Nadja Spiegelman<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kate Zambreno. Photo: Tom Hines.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Effectively, I\u2019ve been picking my favorite books of 2019 for a year and a half now. Mitchell S. Jackson\u2019s Survival Math<\/em><\/a> (check out issue 226<\/a>) is a love song to his Pacific Northwest hometown, but it\u2019s also an ambitious take on what memoir can do. Kate Zambreno\u2019s Screen Tests<\/em><\/a> (get<\/a> a peek<\/a> in<\/a> 228<\/a>) does something brilliant with celebrity and autofiction and the possibilities of the flash form. Hanif Abdurraqib did the remarkable thing of publishing both a book of poems<\/a> and a book about music<\/a> this year (does the man sleep?); we got to publish bits<\/a> of both<\/a> as well as his Notes on Pop<\/a> column on the Daily<\/em>. I think about short stories most of my waking hours, so to read an early copy of Kimberly King Parsons\u2019s killer debut was exhilarating; the hardest part of that acquisition was choosing the right story to run (we picked \u201cFoxes<\/a>\u201d for 229, but Black Light<\/em><\/a> is wonderful from start to close). Of course, I read plenty of stuff I loved that we didn\u2019t<\/em> get to publish, but it still feels like I\u2019m pulling one over on a big man with a fistful of industry trends when we get to run slices of these great manuscripts before they\u2019re published books and share them with our readers under the TPR<\/em> logo. But every quarter it seems less like a trick and more like the imperative of what we do and why we do it. \u2014Emily Nemens<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

David Wallace-Wells. Photo: \u00a9 Beowulf Sheehan.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

2019 has been, for me, a year of transition. I moved away from the town where I grew up and into my first New York apartment. I bought furniture on Craigslist, built bookshelves that slant ever so slightly to one side, planted basil in a small pot by my bed, and began to make this new place into something that feels like home. I also spent more time in motion\u2014on trains, planes, busses, and, for a brief spell, a cargo ship\u2014in the past year than in any previous one. This includes, by my calculation, well over a hundred hours on the Long Island Rail Road, most of them spent reading or listening to audiobooks or nodding off with my forehead pressed against the window.<\/p>\n

Perhaps all this movement helps to explain why, looking back at the books that meant the most to me over the past twelve months, I notice that so many of them seem to be about place. David Wallace-Wells\u2019s The Uninhabitable Earth<\/em><\/a> is the literary equivalent of a cold shower, an all-too-real dose of reality about our ever-warming world. From there, I took some solace in Robert Macfarlane\u2019s cavernous and many-chambered Underland<\/em><\/a>, a reminder that the planet we live on is far older and more full of mystery than I often consider. I read Lakota America<\/em><\/a>, a brutal, bison-filled book that turned many of the stories I thought I knew about our nation inside out. Most recently, I lost myself in the crowded corridors of Sarah M. Broom\u2019s The Yellow House<\/em><\/a>, a book that single-handedly proves Joan Didion\u2019s quote that \u201ca place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that [s]he remakes it in [her] own image.\u201d<\/p>\n

I also dipped into the backlist. I read Howards End<\/em><\/a> and Sula<\/em><\/a> and Fierce Attachments<\/em><\/a>, all stories of homes, both found and forged. These books helped to save me from my transitory life by transporting me to solid, well-loved territories under which memory and history flow like groundwater. At a time when so many things in my world, and the world at large, feel precarious, these books put solid ground beneath my feet. \u2014Cornelia Channing<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Frame from Ogden Whitney\u2019s Return to Romance<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

This year, I enjoyed John Zada\u2019s In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond<\/em><\/a>, which chronicles his search for the Sasquatch, that most As-Seen-on-TV of cryptids. Zada wonders only in passing about how big bigfoot\u2019s feet are or how richly the creature may stink. His concerns are more metaphysical: What does it mean to believe in something absurd, something that eludes any effort to prove its existence? Roaming through the First Nations communities of coastal British Columbia, Zada camps out at the foggy junction of lore and fact. He\u2019s a disarming travel companion, and his curiosity is contagious. I also liked Return to Romance<\/em><\/a>, a collection of nine \u201clove stories\u201d from the late fifties by the comics artist Ogden Whitney. Visceral and candy-striped, these are portraits of seduction in the age of Eisenhower, when the military-industrial complex has leached into matters of the heart. Dating is gamesmanship; affection is a form of control, heartbreak a moral failure, and libido an unsettling whisper from pleats of gabardine. Everyone is aching to settle down in some prefab on a cul-de-sac beckoning just beyond the final frame. Whether the comics are satirical or sincere is anyone\u2019s guess; either way, they cut to the quick. One more: after Margo Jefferson reckoned with the documentary Leaving Neverland<\/em>, she wrote a new introduction<\/a> for her On Michael Jackson<\/em><\/a>, first published in 2006. Acute and unsparing, the addition brings the rest of the book into sharp relief. In her generous, clear-eyed writing on celebrity and pop, Jefferson has found what might be a mantra for the decade to come: \u201cNo evasions, no simplifications.\u201d\u00a0\u2014Dan Piepenbring<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Olga Tokarczuk. Photo: \u00a9 Jacek Ko\u0142odziejski.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I read a lot of books this year, though fewer than I would have liked. There was something in the air over the past few months\u2014the world is sort of ending; could that be it?\u2014that made it hard for me to concentrate. And so the fiction of Olga Tokarczuk came (thanks to the tireless advocacy of our engagement editor, Rhian Sasseen, followed by a bit of a nudge from the Nobel Committee) as no small revelation to me. I read Flights<\/em><\/a> and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead<\/em><\/a> in quick succession\u2014or as rapidly as my flailing concentration would allow, meaning not very rapidly, which was fine because Tokarczuk has her own ideas about time and place. In her work, one is always in flight from both\u2014or, anyway, endeavoring not to be stuck in either.<\/p>\n

The short, noncontiguous chapters of Flights<\/em> sprawl across Europe, glance across decades, flit between characters, and are ever haunted by the ever-present past, which, despite all attempts to outrun it, is inescapable. I am making the book sound disorienting, but somehow it isn\u2019t, which is a big part of its magic. Another part is the way it works itself into your consciousness and conscience so that you never quite leave it behind. Drive Your Plow<\/em> is, in contrast, something of a lighthearted murder mystery about a woman who avenges slain animals. It, too, is full of surprises, though of a different kind. Like some kinds of lizards, Tokarczuk is capable of looking in more than one direction at once and still finding herself \u201chere\u201d; she checks her watch and comes up with more than one answer to the question, What time is it? We\u2019ve been here before, haven\u2019t we? We have. That\u2019s helpful to remember\u2014helpful, if not comforting\u2014in these chaotic times. And I forgot to mention that Tokarczuk is also funny\u2014that helps, too. \u2014Craig Morgan Teicher<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Deborah Levy. Photo: \u00a9 Sheila Burnett.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of my resolutions for 2019 was to record, in list form, all of the books I read. It was a resolution I actually stuck to, and now, as the year trails off, I\u2019m consulting that list with real pleasure, each title invoking the memory of who I was with, what I was doing, and who I was at that particular moment in time. The year started off on a high note\u2014the first book I read in 2019 was the difficult but rewarding Greed<\/em><\/a>, written by Elfriede Jelinek, one of my absolute favorite writers, and translated from the German by Martin Chalmers\u2014and only went up from there.<\/p>\n

This was a year in which I found myself closing the door a little on socializing, and retreating into the hermetic pleasures of reading and writing alone on weekends. I read Kate Briggs\u2019s This Little Art<\/em><\/a>, a book-length essay on the pleasures and pains of translation, in January, and it proved to be something of a beacon for the year. Some of my favorite books over the ensuing months were from writers across the globe: Panty<\/em><\/a>, a slim meditation on female sexuality by the Bengali writer Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, translated by Arunava Sinha; the poetry collection Hysteria<\/em><\/a>, by Kim Yideum, translated from the Korean by Jake Levine, Soeun Seo, and Hedgie Choi; Will and Testament<\/em><\/a>, the Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth\u2019s disquieting exploration of family secrets, translated by Charlotte Barslund; and the darkly satirical and at times scatological Broken Glass<\/em><\/a>, by the Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou, translated by Helen Stevenson. After reading Ingeborg Bachmann\u2019s extraordinary Malina<\/em><\/a> (translated by Philip Boehm) in the summer\u2014a novel that haunted me for months\u2014I got into a bit of a Gruppe 47 kick, and read many of Hans Magnus Enzensberger\u2019s prescient essays<\/a> on politics, poetry, and the media from the sixties and seventies, as well as his collection poems for people who don\u2019t read poems<\/em><\/a>, much of which was translated by the author himself.<\/p>\n

Nell Zink\u2019s Doxology<\/em><\/a> is one of my favorite novels I read this year, and perhaps the only one that so perfectly captures the madness and folly of life under the Trump administration, though Lucy Ellmann\u2019s breathtaking and addictive Ducks, Newburyport<\/em><\/a> gives it a run for its money. Rebecca Tamas\u2019s poetry collection Witch<\/em><\/a> uses the figure of the witch to create an incisive critique of Brexit. Gina Apostol\u2019s brilliant Insurrecto<\/em><\/a> deconstructs plot to critique the white gaze in art and ask important questions concerning just who is telling the story. Kate Zambreno\u2019s Screen Tests<\/em><\/a> melds essay and fiction to explore class and gender in literature, film, and the visual arts. I read Heike Geissler\u2019s novel of contemporary consumerism at Amazon, Seasonal Associate<\/em><\/a> (translated by Katy Derbyshire), and saw her give a talk on it at the Goethe-Institut in March, which ended up being the best reading I saw this year. And Deborah Levy\u2019s The Man Who Saw Everything<\/em><\/a> made me cry this fall with how beautifully it portrays the compression of time and the ways in which the twentieth century still haunts the twenty-first. \u2014Rhian Sasseen<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Gregory Orr. Photo: Trisha Orr.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sheila Heti\u2019s Motherhood<\/em><\/a> came out in 2018, but I would be misrepresenting my year\u2019s reading if I didn\u2019t mention it first. It\u2019s the book I\u2019ve pressed on pals most often this year, and I\u2019m always eager to know what they think of it. This eagerness is, I imagine, because I haven\u2019t entirely figured out what I think of it myself\u2014it left me a bit uncertain, a bit worried, and a wee bit self-conscious. Heti was a childless thirty-six-year-old woman when she wrote the book; I read it as a childless thirty-six-year-old man. Society asks us both a number of similar questions, but they are never asked in the same tone.<\/p>\n

My feelings regarding Gregory Orr\u2019s memoir, The Blessing<\/a>,<\/em> are clearer. When he was twelve, Orr killed his brother in a hunting accident. What he needed, of course, was the forgiveness and love of his parents, but for whatever reason those things never came. Lyricism emerged from this childhood despair. It is a sad and wonderful book, and though it should sink under its tragedy, it is somehow buoyed by Orr\u2019s storytelling and poetry.<\/p>\n

I wanted to mention Lewis Hyde\u2019s A Primer for Forgetting<\/em><\/a> and David Wallace-Wells\u2019s The Uninhabitable Earth<\/em><\/a>, but I\u2019ll refer you to Lydia Davis\u2019s thoughts<\/a> on those two. For my own part, I had intended to write this tucked up at home in New York, with this year\u2019s stack beside me as a reminder. Instead, I\u2019m on an overbooked London\u2013Edinburgh train on the Friday before Christmas, and my brain is convinced it is five in the morning, not the ten that the clocks are reporting. The sky is a uniform gray cloud, the brown fields are dotted with puddles, and there is a thin, solemn rain hanging all the way to the horizon. To survive a morning like this, one must remind oneself that it\u2019ll be over soon, but I can\u2019t quite convince myself that it\u2019s true. This grayness seems to be threatening to stretch out over the coming five years. I\u2019ve already staff picked Nesrine Malik\u2019s We Need New<\/em> Stories<\/em><\/a>, but right now that book feels more important than ever. I\u2019ll have to revisit it when I get back to New York. And then monthly, until the next election. \u2014Robin Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mary-Kay Wilmers.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 2019 I picked up the paper\u2014again. \u201cThe paper\u201d is what Mary-Kay Wilmers calls her lingering argument for British superior intelligence, the London Review of Books<\/em>. For one thing, subscriptions to the LRB<\/em>\u00a0easily top those of Esquire<\/em> in that nation<\/a>. For another, Wilmers has figured out how best to harness the power of Patricia Lockwood. For the LRB <\/em>this year, Lockwood wrote the best thing yet written about the internet<\/a> and the best piece about literature\u2019s #metoo reckoning<\/a> (and believe you me, I\u2019ve read many), which is actually about John Updike\u2019s collected early stories. In another paper, the Times<\/em>, 2019 was the year of Ligaya Mishan. I love even halfway-decent food writing and delight in exceptional specimens\u2014Mishan is the latter<\/a>. She writes not just about food but about everything; my favorite of hers this year, \u201cThe Distinctly American Ethos of the Grifter<\/a>,\u201d is an agile argument for the American traits that make us both likely to be swindlers and likely to be swindled. Like an Alvin Ailey dancer, Mishan flexes muscles you didn\u2019t know existed. I also loved the impossible in Joseph O\u2019Neill\u2019s short story \u201cThe Flier<\/a>,\u201d every goddamn installment<\/a> of Sabrina Orah Mark\u2019s Happily<\/a> column, Jill Lepore on herself<\/a>, Janet Malcolm on Susan Sontag<\/a>,\u00a0 and Cathy Horyn on the state of American fashion<\/a>. In Washington earlier this year, I fought with a woman not about her politics but about her lack of receptivity to reading beyond the news sections of the paper. In 2019 it was as hard to read the news as it was to turn away. I\u2019m not saying you should bury your head in the sand; all I\u2019m suggesting is you consider turning the page. \u2014Julia Berick<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jia Tolentino. Photo: \u00a9 Elena Mudd.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another year has passed, and this time around, I\u2019m forced to reckon with the facts: I finished only a few books in 2019 because I spent far too much time consulting The Dog Bible<\/em><\/a> (\u201cthe good book,\u201d as my girlfriend calls it, though we refused to take the author\u2019s suggestion of setting up sting operations on our dog) and browsing posts on new-puppy support forums. I\u2019ve loved every minute of our descent into the treacherous depths of pet parenthood, but I\u2019d also be a fool not to admit that I\u2019ve walked through most of these past months in a haze, singularly fixated on the needs and caprices of Pebble, a tiny ball of chaos who\u2019s managed to effect an epochal change on our lives. Those early days of raising Pebble drained me thoroughly before filling me up again with a love so pure that it warped my brain and crowded out nearly everything else.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fitting, then, that the book I thought about most this year is explicitly concerned with self-delusion: Jia Tolentino\u2019s wickedly sharp\u00a0Trick Mirror<\/em><\/a>, which succeeds in illuminating all the shortcuts and deceptive thought patterns we use to bear the realities of life under late capitalism. This is a book that gets in your head; after reading a few pages on my commute, I\u2019d emerge from the subway feeling as though a detailed computer interface had been stretched across my field of view, overlaying my sight with a grid of previously unseen connections\u2014a more useful version of the Terminator\u2019s head-up display<\/a> that I\u2019d like to call Tolentino Vision. Reading Tolentino\u2019s shorter pieces for The New Yorker<\/em> will, of course, always be a delight, but how marvelous it is to see this fiercely intelligent writer tunnel into topics until she hits bedrock.<\/p>\n

Another book that nestled into my mind is Joanna Howard\u2019s Rerun Era<\/em><\/a>, a memoir that vibrates on a frequency all its own. So many books concern themselves with the nature of memory, but Howard\u2019s is rare in its understanding of how technology can both fortify and deplete (mostly the latter) our mental faculties. She is incredibly smart on the ways the TV shows of one\u2019s youth have a habit of bleeding into childhood recollections, rendering them shimmery and strange. Further, Rerun Era<\/em> might be the first book I\u2019ve read that really, truly captures the glorious boredom of growing up, as I did, in a particular pocket of middle America, complete with strip malls, theme parks, farmland, factories, flood zones, and long stretches of nothing at all.<\/p>\n

Finally, I\u2019d be remiss not to mention two older books I read for the first time in 2019: George Saunders\u2019s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline<\/em><\/a>\u2014which, like Rerun Era<\/em>, uses humor to probe the potential side effects of relying too heavily on technology\u2014and Paul\u00e9 Bart\u00f3n\u2019s collection of folktales The Woe Shirt<\/em><\/a>, translated from the Haitian Creole by Etienne Joseph. Reading Bart\u00f3n is like wandering into a friendly stranger\u2019s daydream: disorienting, occasionally sad, but most of all pleasant, buzzy, and warm. Though each tale is short, I lost myself in those pages, savoring the richness of Bart\u00f3n\u2019s imagination. \u2014Brian Ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Deborah Eisenberg. \u00a9 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Used with permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

One cold winter night I went to hear Eisenberg read from Your Duck Is My Duck<\/em><\/a>, her fifth short story collection, and bought the book then and there. Every square centimeter of it is gold, but I find the first line of the first story particularly genius: \u201cWay back\u2014oh, not all that long ago, actually, just a couple of years, but back before I\u2019d gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earth\u2019s core to its surface\u2014I was going to a lot of parties.\u201d Eek! I could read that again and again, and I do. Here, she\u2019s almost given us the whole story as well as a blueprint for what all stories should be (\u201ca glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earth\u2019s core to its surface\u201d\u2014of course! Thanks for the tip!) in one knockout sentence, but in such a way that we must keep reading. This narrator has seen some shit, and she is tired (years of parties followed by the sight of those damn gears, which she can never unsee) but she will tell us about it, if we insist, and of course we do.<\/p>\n

For anyone who hasn\u2019t read it yet, I don\u2019t want to rob you of the reading experience I had, in which each line is a delightful surprise. So I\u2019ll just say that what I really love about this book is its sense of humor. Even in stories that strongly imply we\u2019re all fucked, Eisenberg does what few can: she fully represents the comedy of reality. In that first one, there is a bizarre and beautiful puppet opera that ends in doom\u2014and not one explosive doomsday but the even more terrifying conclusion that everything gets worse than it was before and we have to keep on living with that. When the narrator calls it depressing, the puppeteer replies, \u201cWell, yeah, sure. But I mean, these are the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

You know that expression \u201cshit got real?\u201d Usually someone says it when the jokes stop and the conversation turns to individual or global trauma. But reading these stories, I am reminded that it\u2019s all real. In a year when it can feel self-indulgent to be anything but furious or terrified or sad about the state of the world or to laugh with anything more than bitter cynicism, it is good to be reminded that despite our human preference for one mood at a time, the world is tragedy and comedy and all shades in between, inextricably tangled.\u00a0\u2014Jane Breakell<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kimberly King Parsons. Photo: Heather Hawksford.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Natalia Ginzburg was, among many things, a shrewd observer of the domestic drama. Happiness, as Such<\/a><\/em>, is a largely epistolary novel that unwraps its family\u2019s dynamic with all the nuance and humor of her beloved autobiographical novel Family Lexicon<\/em>. Minna Zallman Proctor\u2019s translation of Happiness<\/em> captures grievances both petty and profound, refracting through a variety of voices the pain of alienation and the poignant tension of unshakeable family ties. The conversational missives that volley between characters are captivating for their relatability.<\/p>\n

Jana Prikryl\u2019s No Matter<\/em><\/a> is a tremendous collection of poems. The settings of the poems are concrete enough to be familiar\u2014Greenpoint, the Upper West Side\u2014but that familiarity is often displaced by an imagined dystopian near-future. Her sly wit and fresh voice aren\u2019t gloomy, though; rather, these poems are smart and satisfying, resonant work by a star student of the New York School.<\/p>\n

Amparo D\u00e1vila\u2019s story \u201cMoses and Gaspar<\/a>\u201d was published in The Paris Review<\/em> in 2016, and this year New Directions released a whole book of D\u00e1vila\u2019s short fiction, translated by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson. The Houseguest<\/em><\/a> is a midnight picture show of eerie fables, populated by creepy monsters, psychological thrills, and Hitchcockian twists. D\u00e1vila, recognized as a nonagenarian maven of the uncanny in her native Mexico, was due for an introduction to English readers.<\/p>\n

Kimberly King Parsons\u2019s short story \u201cFoxes<\/a>\u201d is a study in perspective, as an unreliable narrator slowly reveals her fallibility with each swig of sherry. All of the stories in Parsons\u2019s debut, Black Light<\/em><\/a>, are honest glances into the hearts of destructive, deeply flawed characters. But her lyrical language lends compassion to the project, illuminating dark souls with a light by which to see them at their most vulnerable.\u00a0\u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Geoffrey Hill. Photo: Clara Molden.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe tills of commemoration blart and sing, all short-changing the ills of the nation,\u201d Geoffrey Hill observes in his posthumous volume The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin<\/em><\/a>, which I have brought with me everywhere this year, because it is filled with blazing insights that seem to speak directly to this dark moment in history. The Book of Baruch <\/em>is a most unusual work, a sequence of 271 poems intended to be Hill\u2019s final word on, well, everything\u2014the art of poetry, alchemy, mathematics, the bombing of London in World War II, Brexit, his approaching death, the relation between literature and the spiritual life, and so much more. Gone are the taut lines and stanzas of his earlier work, more than twenty collections\u2019 worth, which earned him the reputation of a formal master. But the antic humor, exuberance, and visionary pronouncements that defined his later work are everywhere on display in these versets, which owe more to Whitman than to the English poetic tradition he inherited and rigorously explored until his death in 2016, at age eighty-four. \u201cNo upright poem in its uptight English can seem to me quite free from limescale under the rim,\u201d Hill writes, and all at once the grim evidence of our plight\u2014cultural, environmental, political\u2014begins to shimmer with meaning. \u201cHow do I rate?\u201d he asked in a draft of his final poem, composed in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The question did not survive in the published version, which nevertheless ends with an answer from the other side: \u201cEven so, the power of stout roses has risen watt by watt against the afterglow of each brief thunder-shower.\u201d \u2014Christopher Merrill<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Yiyun Li. Photo: \u00a9 Phillippe Matsas.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In poetry, I was fired by Franny Choi\u2019s The Soft Science<\/em><\/a> and Aria Aber\u2019s\u00a0Hard Damage<\/em><\/a>, books interested in linguistics and experimentation in ways that bridge issues of culture, technology, textuality, and modernity, and that ultimately push hard against the limitations of poetic form and subject. From a different (but perhaps related) corner is Jericho Brown\u2019s The Tradition<\/em><\/a>, a book so emotionally devastating that I sometimes fear its burning beauty. In fiction I was heartened to discover (along with many of us) the genius of the recent Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk<\/a>, but the novels I\u2019ve held closest to my heart this year have been threefold: Miriam Toews\u2019s Women Talking<\/em><\/a>, Mary Miller\u2019s Biloxi<\/em><\/a>, and Yiyun Li\u2019s Where Reasons End<\/em><\/a>, the last of which is one of the most astounding pieces of writing I have ever read. \u2014Christian Kiefer<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Bernardine Evaristo. Photo: Jennie Scott.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I took a class in college called The Value of Literature. The premise of the course was to form a collective and individual response to the question at the heart of its title, a question that is simple yet vexing and of both little and vast importance: Why read? Why write? Why do anything at all? Like many good things I have been given in this life, the class was wasted on me. I felt I already knew<\/em> the value of literature, that, like breath or song, its worth was self-evident and everlasting.<\/p>\n

It did not occur to me then that I might, at some point, hardly read at all. That was how I began 2019: struggling to discern what might distinguish each day from the long, hollow sweep of life. It took the Sally Rooney sensations Normal People<\/em><\/a> and Conversations with Friends<\/em><\/a> to extract me from this wordless stupor. Her frank prose and fraught lovers held me close, reminding me of the here and now, even as I read of there and then.<\/p>\n

Since then, I have sought books like Bernardine Evaristo\u2019s Girl, Woman, Other<\/em><\/a>, books that enable us to mourn and celebrate the human habit of moving from one moment to the next. Where the Light Falls<\/em><\/a>, a collection of Nancy Hale\u2019s stories, offers myriad opportunities to delight in life\u2019s smallest pleasures. Kimberly King Parsons\u2019s collection Black Light<\/em><\/a> is a stunning exercise in storytelling. Kate Zambreno\u2019s Screen Tests<\/em><\/a> helps make space for the thrill of fragmentary insight, and Carmen Maria Machado<\/a>\u2019s astounding In the Dream House<\/em><\/a> demonstrates how trauma can further splinter our stories. The Divers\u2019 Game<\/em><\/a>, Jesse Ball\u2019s strange novel in fables, is a chilling reminder of how the fantastic can pierce our everyday fictions. And then, I finally read Hanya Yanagihara\u2019s A Little Life<\/em><\/a>, a helpful reminder both of how good I have it and how good a sentence can sound.<\/p>\n

I still don\u2019t quite know why we do anything at all. The joys and horrors of the next decade are as yet untold. But I would like to remember always that it helps to read. It just helps. And maybe that is good enough. \u2014Noor Qasim<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 loved this year.<\/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":[60329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2019"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019 by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 loved this year.\" \/>\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\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019 by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 20, 2019 \u2013 What the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 loved this year.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-20T18:00:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-12-23T15:29:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"998\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"28 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e\"},\"headline\":\"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-20T18:00:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-12-23T15:29:34+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/\"},\"wordCount\":5655,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Best of 2019\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019 by The Paris Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-20T18:00:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-12-23T15:29:34+00:00\",\"description\":\"What the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 loved this year.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/parisreview\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019 by The Paris Review","description":"What the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 loved this year.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019 by The Paris Review","og_description":"December 20, 2019 \u2013 What the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 loved this year.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2019-12-20T18:00:31+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-12-23T15:29:34+00:00","og_image":[{"width":998,"height":750,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"The Paris Review","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"The Paris Review","Est. reading time":"28 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/"},"author":{"name":"The Paris Review","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e"},"headline":"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019","datePublished":"2019-12-20T18:00:31+00:00","dateModified":"2019-12-23T15:29:34+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/"},"wordCount":5655,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg","articleSection":["Best of 2019"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/","name":"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019 by The Paris Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg","datePublished":"2019-12-20T18:00:31+00:00","dateModified":"2019-12-23T15:29:34+00:00","description":"What the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 loved this year.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/davis-lydia-au-photo-by-theo-cote.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/20\/the-paris-review-staffs-favorite-books-of-2019\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Paris Review Staff\u2019s Favorite Books of 2019"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e","name":"The Paris Review","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"The Paris Review"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/parisreview\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141471"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141828,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141471\/revisions\/141828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}