{"id":1472,"date":"2010-06-21T16:31:02","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T20:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2010-10-27T13:10:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T17:10:34","slug":"the-poor-mans-paris-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/the-poor-mans-paris-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poor Man&#8217;s Paris Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/TheParisMagazine.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"233\" height=\"330\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1486\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/TheParisMagazine.jpg 233w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/TheParisMagazine-211x300.jpg 211w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/>This morning we received a copy of <em>The Paris Magazine<\/em>, which bills itself as \u201cThe Poor Man&#8217;s <em>Paris Review<\/em>\u201d and has appeared exactly four times since its founding in 1967. This isn&#8217;t very often for a quarterly magazine. Like a blazing comet with an extremely irregular orbit, issue four of The Paris Magazine is not to be missed. I commend to your attention\u2014just for example\u2014Todd McEwen on growing up Thoreauvian: \u201cIt was Thoreau&#8217;s slow, almost maddeningly slow, description of leaves, of trees, that drew me in. Right away I recognized in Thoreau a fellow connoisseur of depression &#8230; \u201d (This called to mind a favorite paragraph from Sam Munson&#8217;s recent novel <em><span class=\"annotation\">The November Criminals<\/span><\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Instead of answering several important e-mails, I also read Rivka Galchen&#8217;s essay on the DSM, Ferlinghetti&#8217;s game attempt to translate \u201cLe Pont Mirabeau,\u201d and a rangy essay by Michel Houellebecq on contemporary architecture, including these memorable last lines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A society which has attained an overheated level doesn&#8217;t necessarily melt, but it is unable to produce meaning, since all its energy is taken up with the description of its random variations. Every individual is however capable of producing a sort of cold <em>revolution<\/em> within himself by stepping outside the infomercial flow. It&#8217;s very easy to do. It has in fact never been simpler than today to adopt an <em>aesthetic position<\/em> in relation to the world: all you have to do is take a step to the side. And this step in the final instance is itself useless. It is enough to pause; to switch off the radio, unplug the television; not to buy anything else, not to want to buy anything else. It is enough to no longer take part, to no longer know; to temporarily suspend all mental activity. It is enough, literally, to be still for a few seconds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which is exactly what I was! Congratulations to the new editor of <em>The Paris Magazine<\/em>, Fatema Ahmed, and to its publisher, the much-loved Shakespeare and Company. May they too find some momentary stillness\u2014and yet manage to produce their next issue before 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning we received a copy of The Paris Magazine, which bills itself as \u201cThe Poor Man&#8217;s Paris Review\u201d and has appeared exactly four times since its founding in 1967. This isn&#8217;t very often for a quarterly magazine. Like a blazing comet with an extremely irregular orbit, issue four of The Paris Magazine is not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[135,268,269,270,267,266],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-editing","tag-fatema-ahmed","tag-magazines","tag-paris","tag-shakespeare-company","tag-the-paris-magazine"],"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>The Poor Man&#039;s Paris Review by Lorin Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 21, 2010 \u2013 This morning we received a copy of The Paris Magazine, which bills itself as \u201cThe Poor Man&#039;s Paris Review\u201d and has appeared exactly four times since its\" \/>\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\/2010\/06\/21\/the-poor-mans-paris-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Poor Man&#039;s Paris Review by Lorin Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 21, 2010 \u2013 This morning we received a copy of The Paris Magazine, which bills itself as \u201cThe Poor Man&#039;s Paris Review\u201d and has appeared exactly four times since its\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/the-poor-mans-paris-review\/\" \/>\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=\"2010-06-21T20:31:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2010-10-27T17:10:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/TheParisMagazine.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"233\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"330\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lorin Stein\" \/>\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=\"Lorin Stein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/the-poor-mans-paris-review\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/the-poor-mans-paris-review\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lorin Stein\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ccd66e9829fecb87371ce574d778e34b\"},\"headline\":\"The Poor Man&#8217;s Paris Review\",\"datePublished\":\"2010-06-21T20:31:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-10-27T17:10:34+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/the-poor-mans-paris-review\/\"},\"wordCount\":350,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/the-poor-mans-paris-review\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/TheParisMagazine.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"editing\",\"Fatema Ahmed\",\"magazines\",\"Paris\",\"Shakespeare &amp; 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