{"id":56,"date":"2010-06-01T09:30:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T13:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=56"},"modified":"2014-08-14T11:57:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T15:57:16","slug":"a-letter-from-the-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/01\/a-letter-from-the-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter from the Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To the Reader:<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the <em>The Paris Review<\/em> Daily, a culture gazette brought to you by the editors of <em>The Paris Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Since its founding in 1953, <em>The Paris Review<\/em> has devoted itself to publishing \u201cthe good writers and good poets,\u201d regardless of creed or school or name-recognition. In that time the <em>Review<\/em> has earned a reputation as the chief discoverer of what is newest and best in contemporary writing.<\/p>\n<p>But a quarterly only comes out\u2026well, you know. We have been looking for a way to keep in touch with our readers between issues, and to call attention to our favorite writers and artists in something close to real time. \u00a0If the <em>Review<\/em> embodies a sensibility, this Daily will try, in a casual and haphazard and at times possibly frivolous way, to put that sensibility into words.<\/p>\n<p>Taking inspiration from the <em>Review<\/em>\u2019s founding editor, George Plimpton, our mode will be participatory journalism, our beat the arts. We will write about what we love, not as critics, but as participants\u2014as amateurs in the Plimptonian sense of the word. That anyway is our aim. Furthermore we hope that you will enjoy the Daily and\u2014most of all\u2014that you&#8217;ll write in and tell us what you think.<\/p>\n<p>If you are like us, you hear a lot of gloomy talk about the future of reading, but you don&#8217;t quite recognize yourself in these discussions: books are the reading you care most deeply about, and you doubt that\u2019s going to change. You love your favorite blogs, but you also know when to turn off your devices. You read your favorite magazines faithfully\u2014and if sometimes you skip the fiction, it\u2019s not because you think new writing is in some sort of inevitable decline. It\u2019s probably because you are what Roberto Bola\u00f1o called a \u201cdesperate\u201d reader, on the lookout for a story that will speak more directly to your condition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerhaps the critics are right,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/theparisreview.org\/viewmedia.php\/prmMID\/5220\">wrote William Styron<\/a> half a century ago, in the <em>Review<\/em>\u2019s first issue: \u201cthis generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation\u2014who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him\u2014but he must go on writing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the same spirit, we say there is plenty to interest us in the writing of our moment, and not only in the writing. Everywhere we look, whether it\u2019s the new painting, film, or YouTube clip, we find beauty sufficient unto the present day, the only one we\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n<p>Ever faithfully yours,<\/p>\n<p>Lorin Stein<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the Reader: Welcome to the The Paris Review Daily, a culture gazette brought to you by the editors of The Paris Review. Since its founding in 1953, The Paris Review has devoted itself to publishing \u201cthe good writers and good poets,\u201d regardless of creed or school or name-recognition. In that time the Review has [&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":[26],"tags":[18,15,17,16,14,24,25,13,11],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-letter-from-the-editor","tag-amateurs","tag-arts","tag-books","tag-culture","tag-george-plimpton","tag-roberto-bolano","tag-the-future-of-reading","tag-the-paris-review-daily","tag-william-styron"],"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>A Letter from Editor Lorin Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Welcome to The Paris Review Daily, a culture gazette brought to you by the editors of The Paris Review.\" \/>\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\/01\/a-letter-from-the-editor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Letter from the Editor by Lorin Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 1, 2010 \u2013 To the Reader: Welcome to the The Paris Review Daily, a culture gazette brought to you by the editors of The Paris Review. 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