{"id":148823,"date":"2020-11-02T14:12:03","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T19:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=148823"},"modified":"2020-11-02T14:35:27","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T19:35:27","slug":"the-art-of-distance-no-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/11\/02\/the-art-of-distance-no-32\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Distance No. 32"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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 selection below.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA biographer, a novelist, and a poet walk into a voting booth. This isn\u2019t the setup to a joke\u2014it\u2019s the truth of election week in America: writers, among millions of other Americans, are casting their votes for the next president of the United States. Around the office we\u2019ve been talking about how literature can help us understand this challenging moment and how it might help us persevere. I don\u2019t expect literature to keep up with this week\u2019s news cycle. Nor do I expect literature to eclipse the news: sometimes there are actions (like voting) that need to be taken away from the page. But I do believe what Charles Johnson said in his Art of Fiction interview<\/a>, quoting Ishmael Reed: \u2018A novel can be the six o\u2019clock news.\u2019 Literature can hold the truth, can assess current events and predict future outcomes with insight and nuance absent from punditry and statistical analysis. So while we\u2019re all watching the news, I encourage you to occasionally click away from Twitter feeds and cable stations. Make space for literature this week. I think writers\u2019 insights might be particularly valuable in the days ahead, as a clarifying lens and a countervailing force, a decoder ring and, sometimes, a balm. As Manuel Puig put it<\/a>, \u2018I like to re-create reality in order to understand it better.\u2019 May we all understand the world a bit better once this week is through.\u201d \u2014EN<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy Dwight Burdette \/ Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Whatever your political leanings, this is going to be a complicated week. There\u2019s no one literary mood or mode that\u2019s right for today, so here, in addition to the unlocked interviews quoted in the GIF above (Robert Caro<\/a>, Ali Smith<\/a>, and Rae Armantrout<\/a>), are a handful of pieces that offer passionate engagement with the past and present, and a look at the relationship between literature and politics. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe personal is especially political when it spreads fingers out into the world,\u201d says Grace Paley in the Art of Fiction no. 131<\/a>, in which she goes far in explaining how all stories have their political dimensions.<\/p>\n

Kevin Young\u2019s elegy and tribute \u201cHomage to Phillis Wheatley<\/a>\u201d speaks for and about uniquely American brands of ambivalence and passion, of a \u201csadness too large to name\u201d and also \u201cleaning, learning\u2009\/\u2009to write\u201d in the light cast by a foundational poet\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

Mary Szybist\u2019s gorgeous \u201cThe Molten Saints inside Me Do Not Quiet<\/a>\u201d conjures a familiar sort of inner restlessness and global emergency (\u201cthe world is burning, the world is burning\u201d), which surprisingly gives way to a kind of heartfelt abandon.<\/p>\n

James Baldwin, in the Art of Fiction no. 70<\/a>, says, \u201cThe whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don\u2019t want to know.\u201d He holds up many mirrors in his interview, mirrors that are as important to look into today as they were when the interview was published almost forty years ago.<\/p>\n

The British author John Wain\u2019s poem \u201cThe New Sun<\/a>\u201d invokes the dawn of a new era, with its attendant terrors and ecstasies, asking \u201chow to bear the pain of renewal.\u201d It seems like the right place to pause this little journey into the unknown.<\/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\u2019s The Art of Distance examines the relationship between literature and politics.<\/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-148823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-art-of-distance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Art of Distance No. 32 by The Paris Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week\u2019s The Art of Distance examines the relationship between literature and politics.\" \/>\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\/11\/02\/the-art-of-distance-no-32\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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