{"id":145604,"date":"2020-06-15T14:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T18:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=145604"},"modified":"2020-06-15T14:17:55","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T18:17:55","slug":"the-art-of-distance-no-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/06\/15\/the-art-of-distance-no-13\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Distance No. 13"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March,<\/em>\u00a0The Paris Review\u00a0launched<\/em>\u00a0The Art of Distance, a newsletter highlighting unlocked archive pieces that resonate with the staff of<\/em>\u00a0the magazine<\/em>, quarantine-appropriate writing on the<\/em>\u00a0Daily, resources from our peer organizations,<\/em>\u00a0and more. Read Emily Nemens\u2019s introductory letter\u00a0here<\/a>, and find the latest unlocked archive pieces below.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIn this thirteenth Art of Distance newsletter, we\u2019re continuing to share the work of great Black writers from our archive. Unlocked this week is everything the <\/em>Review has published by Hilton Als, who is a <\/em>TPR advisory editor, a person of letters with a wildly capacious sensibility, and a wearer of many hats. <\/em>Ostensibly, Als writes nonfiction, but that term is far too limiting to classify all that he does. He is a voracious consumer and assimilator of culture, churning the books, music, theater, and people he loves into visions and versions of his own unfolding story. His essays are like rigorous dreamscapes, vitally alive and wide open to everything the world has to share\u2014Als turns nothing away. <\/em>Als has not only contributed writing to the <\/em>Review: he has also conducted several penetrating and joyful Writers at Work interviews, and has been featured across the past decade on the <\/em>Daily. Enmeshed in his reevaluations of the culture of the past century is a stark look at the struggles that have brought us to this moment in Black, queer, and American history.\u201d <\/em>\u2014Craig Morgan Teicher, Digital Director<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Hilton Als in a London photo booth, 2014. Courtesy of the writer.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI see fiction not as the construction of an alternate world but as what your imagination gives you from the real world,\u201d Als tells Lisa Cohen in his Art of the Essay interview<\/a>, which covers everything from mentors to trauma to queer life in New York to Thelonious Monk, Jane Fonda, and writing sentences that are \u201cnatural to who I am.\u201d <\/p>\n

In this 2016 interview<\/a> conversation with the scholar Jacqueline Goldsby, Als explains his very personal connection to James Baldwin\u2019s legacy: \u201cBaldwin was very real to me, all the time. It was through Owen Dodson, who was, I think, the second black person to go to the Yale School of Drama, and Baldwin was always a living thing to me because of their relationship. Owen was a great director and was the one who first staged Baldwin\u2019s play The Amen Corner<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Als interviews Edward P. Jones, the author of All Aunt Hagar\u2019s Children<\/em>, for the Art of Fiction No. 222<\/a>. Threaded through a conversation about Jones\u2019s origins and early life, Als elicits stunning insights about how a writer turns ideas into pages: \u201cI can sort of close my eyes and think I\u2019m reading a story in my mind, but until I can read it physically, with the eyes, it doesn\u2019t seem to exist for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you against entertainment?\u201d Als asks playwright and actor Wallace Shawn, who responds, \u201cThat\u2019s like saying, Are you against pumpkin pie? Pumpkin pie is enjoyable and people enjoy it, but it\u2019s in a different category from, for example, penicillin. Enjoyment is important, and pie is important, but pie is not the only thing we need.\u201d Of course you want to read the rest of the Art of Theater No. 17<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWriting nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with.\u201d Joan Didion says this to Als in the second of her two Writers at Work interviews, the Art of Nonfiction No. 1<\/a>, published after The Year of Magical Thinking<\/em> had become a sensation. What better pairing could there be\u2014two titans of nonfiction style for whom subjective and objective truth are anything but opposites.<\/p>\n

Turning back to Als\u2019s own work\u2014after a journey through his writing for the Daily<\/em><\/a>, which is always free to read\u2014check out \u201cDirector\u2019s Cut<\/a>,\u201d a portfolio in which he grieves his recently deceased sister in words and images, creating a photographic document of an imaginary encounter between the siblings\u2019 heroes: \u201cIf I made a movie about James Baldwin, Nina Simone\u2014which is to say, my sister\u2014would have to star in it, and that way I could get them both back: my sister through Nina, and Baldwin through my imagination.\u201d It\u2019s as beguiling as it is difficult to describe\u2014like everything Als makes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sign up\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to receive a fresh installment of The Art of Distance in your inbox every Monday<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, we\u2019ve lowered the paywall on everything we\u2019ve published by Hilton Als.<\/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":[63638],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-art-of-distance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Art of Distance No. 13 by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, we\u2019ve lowered the paywall on everything we\u2019ve published by Hilton Als.\" \/>\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\/06\/15\/the-art-of-distance-no-13\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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