{"id":142244,"date":"2020-01-23T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=142244"},"modified":"2020-01-23T10:21:12","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T15:21:12","slug":"less-is-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Less Is More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-142245 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-1024x597.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"597\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-1024x597.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-300x175.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-768x448.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Writing a book about minimalism opens you up to a lot of easy jokes. There\u2019s the simplest, the mismatch of form and content: <em>You wrote a whole book on minimalism? That\u2019s not very minimalist!<\/em> Then there\u2019s the added wrinkle of the book\u2019s size: <em>How could minimalism fill such a long book? <\/em>(In my defense, the book I wrote is only a bit over two hundred pages.) People ask if they should actually buy the book, since it\u2019s not minimalist to own extraneous objects. (Please do\u2014buy the e-book if you must.) Someone suggested that instead of text I should have just published a volume of empty pages: the only form of writing that could be properly minimalist is no writing at all.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, many minimalist books have already been written. In the context of literature, the word is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1986\/12\/28\/books\/a-few-words-about-minimalism.html\">associated with a hard-boiled quality<\/a>, like Raymond Carver or Bret Easton Ellis: terse sentences, tight plots, literalism. Or it can be in reference to scale, like flash fiction, in which a large effect is created within a small space. Diane Williams is a minimalist, as are haiku and Zen koans, fragments of language. I have begun to think that autofiction is our dominant form of minimalist writing today because it dispenses with some of the usual qualities of fictional literature, like dramatic plot, character arcs, and the boundary with nonfiction, in the same way that an artist like Donald Judd left out human figures, varied colors, and aggressive brushstrokes from his works. Rachel Cusk\u2019s <em>Outline<\/em> trilogy is minimalist because it leaves the narrator blank, a protagonist who listens instead of acts.<\/p>\n<p>But my book, <em>The Longing for Less<\/em>, is mostly about the visual associations of minimalism, in art, design, and architecture. Those forms have an antipathy of language and resist subtle description. There aren\u2019t enough words to capture the various shades of visual emptiness\u2014I\u2019ve used <em>blank<\/em>, <em>austere<\/em>, and <em>spare<\/em> too many times to tally without hating myself. Labeling something indescribable is an excuse for lazy writing, yet it seems to apply here. Writing that one of Judd\u2019s works is a box made of unpolished aluminum about a meter square, with its longer sides empty so that you can see through it, is both literally correct and missing the point entirely, like describing a Picasso only as oil and pigment caked on stretched cloth.<\/p>\n<p>At one point I went maximalist in frustration, spending many ekphrastic paragraphs on the epiphany of seeing a Judd box from multiple angles, the shallow pool of empty space in its top, the psychedelic effects of the SoHo sunlight glinting off its powder-coated angles in the upper floors of the artist\u2019s loft home. My editor wisely cut it down to a few sentences.<\/p>\n<p>Minimalist art is meant to exist for and as itself. There is no interpretation or explanation needed\u2014it\u2019s all evanescent effect. By contrast, all language seems like explanation, particularly in nonfiction. As soon as you point to something in writing, it\u2019s there, even if what you point to is the empty floor. Words break the delicate emptiness of a room or the thoughtlessness of pure observation without judgment, which is what I came to think minimalist art is actually about.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Judd, who began his career as a prolific critic, wound up hating words. He used language to summon the absence of language. In his notebook in 1986 he observed a jackrabbit hopping in the grass in rural Texas, where he lived. \u201cThe desert was spare, as usual, but very green and beautiful. I realized that the land and presumably the rabbits, quail, lizards, and bugs didn\u2019t know that this was beautiful,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe observation is only ours, the same as the lizard\u2019s opinion of the bug. The observation has no relevance, no validity, no objectivity, and so the land was not beautiful\u2014who\u2019s to say. It simply exists.\u201d Or, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/essay\/white-painting-three-panel\/\">1953 John Cage poem<\/a> that I used as my epigraph puts it: \u201cNo object \/ No beauty \/ No message.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judd was constantly aggrieved by the idea of minimalism as a movement, which he didn\u2019t identify with. He saw it as marketing shorthand. \u201cInstead of thinking about each person\u2019s work, critics invent labels to pad their irrelevant discourse,\u201d he wrote in a letter to the <em>Village Voice<\/em> in 1981. It\u2019s true, but we critics do it because we have to: language is a way of communicating the abstract ideas of art to an audience that might not be amenable to them otherwise. The simplification is a necessary evil, despite the artists\u2019 feelings. And simplify it does, unfortunately: \u201cWhen I hear the same nonsense about Minimalism and impersonality for twenty years, I realize that the clich\u00e9s have stuck,\u201d Judd wrote in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>The painter Agnes Martin wrote, too, though much less frequently, from statements on her work to more abstract poetry. Her writing is also anti-language, offering koans that must be resolved by the reader. \u201cIt is commonly thought that everything that is can be put into words. But there is a wide range of emotional response that we make that cannot be put into words,\u201d Martin wrote in \u201cBeauty Is the Mystery of Life.\u201d \u201cWe are so used to making these emotional responses that we are not consciously aware of them till they are represented in art work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Martin\u2019s ethereal grids and stripes evoke rather than describe. They present a form of transcendence that writing usually fails at, a heightened emotional plane in which the artifacts of the human world fall away. \u201cMy interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art work which is also wordless and silent,\u201d she wrote. Late in her career she chose titles like <em>Beautiful Life<\/em>, <em>Happiness-Glee<\/em>, and <em>I Love the Whole World<\/em>. I wouldn\u2019t call these good writing, but the language was not the point. Under minimalism, \u201cmetaphor died,\u201d as the critic and artist Brian O\u2019Doherty wrote. Like Judd\u2019s description of the desert, art \u201csimply exists,\u201d and that is enough.<\/p>\n<p>Philip Johnson, the figure most responsible for propagating the minimalist aesthetic by popularizing modernism in architecture and design in the United States, also spoke out the most vociferously against language. \u201cThe word kills art,\u201d Johnson proclaimed in a 1955 speech at Barnard College. \u201cThe word is an abstraction and art is concrete. The word is old, loaded with accreted meanings from usage. Art is new.\u201d Language always gets bogged down in its past; only art can surpass it and create something truly unprecedented\u2014or so he argued. It could be a boast for Johnson\u2019s own Glass House, which envisioned its own new way of living in 1949.<\/p>\n<p>This idea that anything can emerge fully formed from a blank slate without history or context is one of the dangers of minimalism, which has a tendency to erase its own origins. (Johnson affiliated for years with the Nazis, who maintained their own regime of aesthetic homogeneity.) Charting the history and heritage of minimalism in its varied forms and iterations is one way of complicating the idea, allowing for more interpretations to coexist.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, it was a writer who first came up with the fateful phrase \u201cless is more.\u201d It\u2019s usually credited to the architect Mies van der Rohe and associated with the chilly minimalist geometry of his glass-and-steel buildings, in which less visual stimulus leads to more effect. But the phrase actually first appeared in English from the Victorian poet Robert Browning, who was decidedly maximalist.<\/p>\n<p>In an 1855 poem, Browning wrote from the perspective of Andrea del Sarto, an Italian Renaissance painter who was known for his technical brilliance. Browning\u2019s del Sarto delivers monologues to his wife, Lucrezia, confessing his own ultimate lack of emotion. Other painters try to match the skill that he seems to display so effortlessly, but they end up achieving \u201cless, so much less.\u201d \u201cWell, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged,\u201d del Sarto admits. \u201cThere burns a truer light of God in them.\u201d The other painters are able to capture the deeper truth that del Sarto misses as he focuses too much on the cold exactness of each line. \u201cAll is silver-grey, \/ Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So \u201cless is more\u201d is a complaint instead of praise, and placid perfection a fault. The harder you try to nail something down, the more it escapes. My mistake.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Kyle Chayka is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomsbury.com\/us\/the-longing-for-less-9781635572100\/\">The Longing For Less: Living with Minimalism<\/a>,\u00a0<em>out this week from Bloomsbury.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kyle Chayka on how minimalist artists work against language. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Less Is More by Kyle Chayka<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 23, 2020 \u2013 Kyle Chayka on how minimalist artists work against language.\" \/>\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\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Less Is More by Kyle Chayka\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 23, 2020 \u2013 Kyle Chayka on how minimalist artists work against language.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/\" \/>\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=\"2020-01-23T14:00:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-01-23T15:21:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"3600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2100\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kyle Chayka\" \/>\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=\"Kyle Chayka\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kyle Chayka\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6daf2f404382fc3cd6c8e84d813d2fc8\"},\"headline\":\"Less Is More\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-01-23T14:00:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-01-23T15:21:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/\"},\"wordCount\":1441,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-1024x597.jpeg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Arts &amp; Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/\",\"name\":\"Less Is More by Kyle Chayka\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-1024x597.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-01-23T14:00:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-01-23T15:21:12+00:00\",\"description\":\"January 23, 2020 \u2013 Kyle Chayka on how minimalist artists work against language.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970.jpeg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970.jpeg\",\"width\":3600,\"height\":2100,\"caption\":\"Empty white minimalist room with falling light from the window. 3d rendering\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Less Is More\"}]},{\"@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\/6daf2f404382fc3cd6c8e84d813d2fc8\",\"name\":\"Kyle Chayka\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/152b6f80bb3e1315b40b05dcea1c7da73ca0689296ee7e6137a61b7391c2a169?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/152b6f80bb3e1315b40b05dcea1c7da73ca0689296ee7e6137a61b7391c2a169?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Kyle Chayka\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/kchayka\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Less Is More by Kyle Chayka","description":"January 23, 2020 \u2013 Kyle Chayka on how minimalist artists work against language.","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\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Less Is More by Kyle Chayka","og_description":"January 23, 2020 \u2013 Kyle Chayka on how minimalist artists work against language.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2020-01-23T14:00:57+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-01-23T15:21:12+00:00","og_image":[{"width":3600,"height":2100,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970.jpeg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Kyle Chayka","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Kyle Chayka","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/"},"author":{"name":"Kyle Chayka","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6daf2f404382fc3cd6c8e84d813d2fc8"},"headline":"Less Is More","datePublished":"2020-01-23T14:00:57+00:00","dateModified":"2020-01-23T15:21:12+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/"},"wordCount":1441,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-1024x597.jpeg","articleSection":["Arts &amp; Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/","name":"Less Is More by Kyle Chayka","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970-1024x597.jpeg","datePublished":"2020-01-23T14:00:57+00:00","dateModified":"2020-01-23T15:21:12+00:00","description":"January 23, 2020 \u2013 Kyle Chayka on how minimalist artists work against language.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970.jpeg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/adobestock_141365970.jpeg","width":3600,"height":2100,"caption":"Empty white minimalist room with falling light from the window. 3d rendering"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/23\/less-is-more\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Less Is More"}]},{"@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\/6daf2f404382fc3cd6c8e84d813d2fc8","name":"Kyle Chayka","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/152b6f80bb3e1315b40b05dcea1c7da73ca0689296ee7e6137a61b7391c2a169?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/152b6f80bb3e1315b40b05dcea1c7da73ca0689296ee7e6137a61b7391c2a169?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Kyle Chayka"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/kchayka\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142244","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\/1149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142244"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142254,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142244\/revisions\/142254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}