{"id":152699,"date":"2021-05-25T13:00:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T17:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=152699"},"modified":"2021-05-25T13:24:55","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T17:24:55","slug":"redux-a-good-reading-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2021\/05\/25\/redux-a-good-reading-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: A Good Reading Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, the editors of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review\u00a0lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine\u2019s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by\u00a0signing up for the Redux newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Richard Powers.<\/p><\/div>\n

This week at The Paris Review<\/em>, we\u2019re counting the weekdays. Read on for Richard Powers\u2019s Art of Fiction interview<\/a>, Gish Jen\u2019s short story \u201cAmaryllis<\/a>,\u201d and Wayne Miller\u2019s poem \u201cReading Sonnevi on a Tuesday Night<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0The Paris Review<\/em>? You\u2019ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Or,\u00a0subscribe to our new bundle<\/a>\u00a0and receive\u00a0Poets at Work<\/em>\u00a0for 25% off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Richard Powers, The Art of Fiction No. 175<\/a>
\nIssue no. 164 (Winter 2002\u20132003)<\/em><\/p>\n

In the early eighties, I was living in the Fens in Boston right behind the Museum of Fine Arts. If you got there before noon on Saturdays, you could get into the museum for nothing. One weekend, they were having this exhibition of a German photographer I\u2019d never heard of, who was August Sander. It was the first American retrospective of his work. I have a visceral memory of coming in the doorway, banking to the left, turning up, and seeing the first picture there. It was called Young Westerwald Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, 1914<\/em>. I had this palpable sense of recognition, this feeling that I was walking into their gaze, and they\u2019d been waiting seventy years for someone to return the gaze. I went up to the photograph and read the caption and had this instant realization that not only were they not on the way to the dance, but that somehow I had been reading about this moment for the last year and a half. Everything I read seemed to converge onto this act of looking, this birth of the twentieth century\u2014the age of total war, the age of the apotheosis of the machine, the age of mechanical reproduction. That was a Saturday. On Monday I went in to my job and gave two weeks notice and started working on Three Farmers<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Amaryllis<\/a>
\nBy Gish Jen
\nIssue no. 179 (Winter 2006)<\/em><\/p>\n

In the meanwhile there was Tara\u2019s grandfather in Flushing to think about\u2014Yah Yah, Tara called him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to want you to give him a bath,\u201d she warned. \u201cJust say no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo baths,\u201d promised Amaryllis.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he goes to get groceries in Manhattan Chinatown on Wednesdays. Don\u2019t ask why, we\u2019re just glad he still knows when it\u2019s Wednesday. So if you go and don\u2019t see him, that\u2019s where he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow old is he?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow old is he. Ninety-one, we think, though he seems younger. He\u2019s outlived both his kids. He\u2019s more agile than I am. This doctor is always asking him what he eats.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Reading Sonnevi on a Tuesday Night<\/a>
\nBy Wayne Miller
\nIssue no. 172 (Winter 2004)<\/em><\/p>\n

A film of mist clings to the storm windows
\nas the thunder gets pocketed and carried away
\nin the rain\u2019s dark overcoat. A good reading night\u2014<\/p>\n

car wheels amplified by the flooded street,
\nleaf-clogged gutters bailing steadily, constant
\nmotion beyond my walls echoing<\/p>\n

my body\u2019s gyroscopic stillness. Sonnevi says
\nOnly if I touch do I dare let myself be touched,<\/em>
\nand that familiar and somewhat terrifying curtain<\/p>\n

of reading slips around me \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you enjoyed the above, don\u2019t forget to\u00a0subscribe<\/a>! In addition to four print issues per year, you\u2019ll also receive complete digital access to our sixty-eight years\u2019 worth of archives. Or,\u00a0subscribe to our new bundle<\/a>\u00a0and receive\u00a0<\/em>Poets at Work\u00a0for 25% off.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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