{"id":20987,"date":"2011-09-19T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=20987"},"modified":"2011-09-19T09:50:22","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T13:50:22","slug":"no-sandals-allowed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/19\/no-sandals-allowed\/","title":{"rendered":"No Sandals Allowed"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We begin the week with a quote from The New York Times Book Review<\/em>, where Anthony Doerr reviews Denis Johnson<\/a>\u2014and compares The Paris Review<\/em> to a giant rock:<\/p>\n

\n

Sometimes, if you wander long enough out-of-doors, you look up and find yourself in a suddenly devastating place: on a glittering slab of granite, say, hanging a thousand feet above a mountain lake. Your blood quickens, the clouds stretch, the light turns everything to gold and something enters you, shakes you, seizes some root of your soul and pulps it. Maybe you make your way down to the lake for a swim, or just sit beneath the sky for an hour, dazzled, but what lasts is the feeling that you have found something important, something precious, something that would be world-renowned if only it weren\u2019t so hard to find.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a proprietary feeling, too, when you find a place\u2014or a song, or a painting, or a sandwich\u2014that you love, that moves you. You want to share it with only a few other souls, believers, maniacs, folks who won\u2019t trample on it. Because who wants to see her sacred meadow flattened by the sandals of tourists?<\/p>\n

I first read Denis Johnson’s\u00a0novella \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d in a bright orange 2002 issue of The Paris Review<\/em> and felt that old thrill of discovery …\u00a0It\u2019s a love story, a hermit\u2019s story and a refashioning of age-old wolf-based folklore like \u201cLittle Red Cap.\u201d It\u2019s also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Click here <\/a>to own the bright orange issue in question and here<\/a> to subscribe.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We begin the week with a quote from The New York Times Book Review, where Anthony Doerr reviews Denis Johnson\u2014and compares The Paris Review to a giant rock: Sometimes, if you wander long enough out-of-doors, you look up and find yourself in a suddenly devastating place: on a glittering slab of granite, say, hanging a […]<\/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":[2559],"tags":[3943,2530,3945,3946,3944],"class_list":["post-20987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bulletin","tag-anthony-doerr","tag-denis-johnson","tag-little-red-cap","tag-the-new-york-times-book-review","tag-train-dreams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNo Sandals Allowed by Lorin Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 19, 2011 \u2013 We begin the week with a quote from The New York Times Book 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