{"id":147092,"date":"2020-08-28T14:26:47","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T18:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=147092"},"modified":"2020-08-28T15:08:21","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T19:08:21","slug":"staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jenny Erpenbeck. Photo: Nina Subin.<\/p><\/div>\n

The subtitle of Not a Novel<\/em><\/a>, by the German writer Jenny Erpenbeck<\/a>, is A Memoir in Pieces<\/em>, but I think maybe the word shards<\/em> would be more accurate\u2014the texts collected here come from many eras and many moments and seem to fall around the reader like bits of glass, catching the light at different angles, complete in themselves but tied to one another to create a whole that is provisional and temporary and full of cracks. There is no trail of bread crumbs in this book, but somehow that makes it feel, as a memoir, even more real. The texts themselves share this tendency\u2014\u201cOpen Bookkeeping,\u201d which talks about her mother\u2019s death, becomes a list of items inherited and lost, costs incurred and paid (a tax adviser tells Erpenbeck that her mother is due a refund of five euros); \u201cOn \u2018The Old Child\u2019\u2009\u201d includes memories of its own earlier drafts and becomes a story about the imperatives and impossibilities of writing as a means of communication (\u201cIt isn\u2019t always the case \u2026 that saying more brings us closer to the truth than saying less\u201d). Translated by Kurt Beals, the book will be published next week by New Directions, and part of me expects it to land like a boulder on an iced-over river: there is something terrifying but liberating about seeing a person construct herself and her history in a way that feels so opposite to everything we are told. \u2014Hasan Altaf\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent a perfect sixteen minutes this past weekend watching the wonderful, curious, and gentle portrait John Was Trying to Contact Aliens<\/em><\/a> on Netflix. John Shepherd spent half his life as a cosmic DJ, beaming Can, Art Blakey, Tangerine Dream, and Bola Sete into the night sky in the hope of making contact with extraterrestrials. Here, we meet him as an aging though still unconventional character who has abandoned his mission. Interleaved between segments of this contemporary interview is archival footage filmed during the brief period of novelty interest the media paid him many decades ago. When John was born, his father walked out on the family, and growing up, he had very little contact with his mother. He was adopted by his grandparents, who cared for him and raised him, and it was at their cottage in rural Michigan that Project S.T.R.A.T.<\/small> (Special Telemetry Research and Tracking) was headquartered. We don\u2019t hear from them directly, but their heartwarming support is everywhere in evidence: from old black-and-white pictures of them watching TV, surrounded by John\u2019s astro-radio gear, to the revelation that a whole new annex was built\u2014with their blessing and financial support\u2014so that he could increase the power of his cosmic broadcast. Of course, higher towers and more powerful radio transmissions were never enough, and the viewer might begin to suspect that John was looking for more than alien life: \u201cSometimes, taking the course that I have in my life, and the path, is like a lonely mountain road to some higher elevation peaks, to see the view, to check out something most people don\u2019t see. So you tend to go it alone more, you don\u2019t have much company.\u201d It is hardly a spoiler to reveal that he didn\u2019t encounter alien life, though there is no sense here of failure. By the time the credits roll, it becomes clear that John\u2019s search was, at least in some respects, a celestial success. \u2014Robin Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Vivian Gornick. Photo: Mitchell Bach.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I write this, I\u2019m in the process of moving\u2014not far, just down the road from my current apartment, and yet somehow this entire journey feels so overwhelming that it\u2019s as though I\u2019m traversing continents. Packing inevitably entails getting distracted by all the memories\u2014and, most important, all the books\u2014one has accumulated over the years in a single place, and so I\u2019ve found myself sitting down and rereading paragraphs, pages, and chapters from favorite novels as I box them up. The pleasures of rereading are the subject of Vivian Gornick<\/a>\u2019s wonderful Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader<\/em><\/a>, which was published earlier this year. In a series of nine essays that interweave autobiographical details that will be familiar to Gornick fans\u2014her working-class childhood, her experiences writing for the Village Voice<\/em> in the seventies\u2014alongside readerly impressions both old and new, Gornick revisits the work of Marguerite Duras<\/a>, D.\u2009H. Lawrence, Colette, Elizabeth Bowen, Natalia Ginzburg, and more. It\u2019s a testament to how a reader\u2019s life is, in a way, lived through books\u2014memories as filtered through fiction. I already can\u2019t wait to reread it\u2014though maybe after unpacking a few boxes. \u2014Rhian Sasseen<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few weeks back, a friend of mine told me about his recent reading of E.\u2009B. White<\/a>\u2019s \u201cDeath of a Pig<\/a>\u201d following the death of one of his own chickens. Now, I\u2019d read plenty of White\u2019s work in the past: the obligatory Charlotte\u2019s Web<\/em> in grade school, Elements of Style <\/em>in high school, and \u201cHere Is New York\u201d toward the beginning of this global pandemic, when New York became its national epicenter. What I\u2019ve learned about White\u2019s writing, but more precisely his essays, in all this time is that he elevates the seemingly mundane and lends it space deep in his interiority. The pig\u2019s death signifies personal weakness, individual shortcoming, but its death came prematurely; he had planned to butcher it later. Moreover, White didn\u2019t cause the pig\u2019s illness; it appeared seemingly out of thin air. Despite these facts, White coaxes the reader into a serene empathy through his own profound vulnerability buried in lean, gorgeous writing. This prosaic elegy mourns the loss of a living thing, a portion of White himself. My friend\u2019s description of the recent death of his chicken followed the same tragic trajectory as White\u2019s pig: confusion leading into a mounting loss of control. But White reveals that honestly recording the hopeless process allows us to reclaim some semblance of autonomy. \u2014Carlos Zayas-Pons<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the surface, Raven Leilani\u2019s Luster<\/em><\/a> might seem familiar. Edie is a millennial with an uninspiring job in the publishing industry, a rat-infested Bushwick apartment, and a bank account that keeps teetering toward the red. She\u2019s struggling to come of age in a world where adulthood holds little appeal beyond proving that one is capable of survival. Cross the disaffected wit of Halle Butler\u2019s The New Me<\/em> with the bold bodily grossness of Ottessa Moshfegh<\/a>\u2019s Eileen<\/em> and the brazen sexual anger of Katherine Faw Morris<\/a>\u2019s Ultraluminous<\/em>\u00a0and you might get close. The past few years have been boom times for novels like this one, stories about young women who refuse to be docile, who revel in the takeout cartons strewn across their beds, and who use sex as a means of voracious, delicious self-destruction\u2014self-destruction being the one thing over which they have agency. But beneath that veneer of trend, Luster<\/em> feels new. For one thing, Edie, as she says in a tongue-in-cheek paraphrase of the language her date might use, \u201chappens to be Black,\u201d and her sharp analysis of race and class cuts through every interaction. For another, the novel grapples deeply with the very idea of surface, of what might lie beneath the breathless present tense of youth, the trappings that make up a life. As Edie finds herself at the center of a bizarre love triangle, invited into her older white lover\u2019s New Jersey home by his wife, the connections she forms are anything but expected. More of a ghost than a guest, she observes and catalogues the minutiae of their lives, their scheduled weeknight sex and the gun beneath their bed. The prose wrestles Edie\u2019s soul against this barrage of descriptors until the title, Luster<\/em>, can be read only as a noun, not about sheen or sparkle but about what it means to be one who is driven by desire. \u2014Nadja Spiegelman<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Raven Leilani. Photo: \u00a9 Nina Subin.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 moves down the block, gathers the shards of Jenny Erpenbeck\u2019s life, and reads Raven Leilani.<\/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":[438],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 moves down the block, gathers the shards of Jenny Erpenbeck\u2019s life, and reads Raven Leilani.\" \/>\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\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 28, 2020 \u2013 This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 moves down the block, gathers the shards of Jenny Erpenbeck\u2019s life, and reads Raven Leilani.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/\" \/>\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=\"2020-08-28T18:26:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-08-28T19:08:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"784\" \/>\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=\"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\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e\"},\"headline\":\"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-28T18:26:47+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-28T19:08:21+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/\"},\"wordCount\":1381,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"This Week\u2019s Reading\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/\",\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers by The Paris Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-28T18:26:47+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-28T19:08:21+00:00\",\"description\":\"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 moves down the block, gathers the shards of Jenny Erpenbeck\u2019s life, and reads Raven Leilani.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers\"}]},{\"@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":"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers by The Paris Review","description":"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 moves down the block, gathers the shards of Jenny Erpenbeck\u2019s life, and reads Raven Leilani.","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\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers by The Paris Review","og_description":"August 28, 2020 \u2013 This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 moves down the block, gathers the shards of Jenny Erpenbeck\u2019s life, and reads Raven Leilani.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2020-08-28T18:26:47+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-08-28T19:08:21+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":784,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.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":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/"},"author":{"name":"The Paris Review","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e"},"headline":"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers","datePublished":"2020-08-28T18:26:47+00:00","dateModified":"2020-08-28T19:08:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/"},"wordCount":1381,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg","articleSection":["This Week\u2019s Reading"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/","name":"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers by The Paris Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg","datePublished":"2020-08-28T18:26:47+00:00","dateModified":"2020-08-28T19:08:21+00:00","description":"This week, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 moves down the block, gathers the shards of Jenny Erpenbeck\u2019s life, and reads Raven Leilani.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/erpenbeck-jenny-credit-nina-subin.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/28\/staff-picks-rats-rereaders-and-radio-towers\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Staff Picks: Rats, Rereaders, and Radio Towers"}]},{"@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\/147092","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=147092"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147230,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147092\/revisions\/147230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}