{"id":154363,"date":"2021-08-31T13:29:10","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T17:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=154363"},"modified":"2021-08-31T13:29:10","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T17:29:10","slug":"redux-knowing-it-would-end-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2021\/08\/31\/redux-knowing-it-would-end-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Redux: Knowing It Would End"},"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

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Toni Morrison, ca. 2008. Photo: Angela Radulescu.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This week at The Paris Review<\/em>, as summer winds down, we\u2019re thinking about endings. Read on for Toni Morrison\u2019s Art of Fiction interview<\/a>, Steven Millhauser\u2019s short story \u201cFlying Carpets<\/a>,\u201d and Alex Dimitrov\u2019s poem \u201cImpermanence<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe<\/a> to The Paris Review<\/em>? You\u2019ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Or, take advantage of this last week of our summer bundle<\/a> and purchase a year\u2019s worth of The Paris Review<\/em> and The New York Review of Books<\/em> for $99.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134<\/a>
\nIssue no. 128 (Fall 1993)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What about plot? Do you always know where you\u2019re going? Would you write the end before you got there?<\/p>\n

MORRISON<\/p>\n

When I really know what it is about, then I can write that end scene. I wrote the end of Beloved<\/em> about a quarter of the way in. I wrote the end of Jazz<\/em> very early and the end of Song of Solomon<\/em> very early on. What I really want is for the plot to be how<\/em> it happened. It is like a detective story in a sense. You know who is dead and you want to find out who did it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo: Doug Coldwell. CC BY-SA 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Flying Carpets<\/a>
\nBy Steven Millhauser
\nIssue no. 145 (Winter 1997)<\/em><\/p>\n

In the long summers of my childhood, games flared up suddenly, burned to a brightness, and vanished forever. The summers were so long that they gradually grew longer than the whole year, they stretched out slowly beyond the edges of our lives, but at every moment of their vastness they were drawing to an end, for that\u2019s what summers mostly did: they taunted us with endings, marched always into the long shadow thrown backward by the end of vacation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo: Aaron Burden. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Impermanence<\/a>
\nBy Alex Dimitrov
\nIssue no. 227 (Winter 2018)<\/em><\/p>\n

The first ending. And knowing it would end
\nI wanted another. Lover, summer,
\npen with which to write it all down.
\nThe first disappointment. Which is not
\nremembered but lives in the body.
\nAnd how familiar it became \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,\u00a0choose our new summer bundle<\/a>\u00a0and purchase a year\u2019s worth of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>The New York Review of Books\u00a0for $99 ($50 off the regular price!).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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