{"id":80924,"date":"2014-12-16T18:53:31","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T23:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80924"},"modified":"2019-04-03T17:24:34","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T21:24:34","slug":"happy-haneke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Haneke"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cMy students, meanwhile, pitch only the gravest of topics. For them it\u2019s always got to be the Holocaust. I usually tell them, Back off. You have no idea what you\u2019re talking about. You can only reproduce what you read or heard elsewhere. Others who actually lived through it have said it much better than you ever could. Try to create something that springs organically from your own experience. For only then does it stand the slightest chance of being genuinely interesting.\u201d \u2014Michael Haneke, the Art of Screenwriting No. 5<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I felt enormously clever writing that pun up there. Then I remembered that it\u2019s already been used\u2014it\u2019s the title of Anthony Lane\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2009\/10\/05\/happy-haneke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">excellent 2009 profile of Haneke<\/a> in <em>The New Yorker<\/em>. Tant pis!<\/p>\n<p>Even so, my point stands: tonight marks the first night of Hanukkah, and our new issue features <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/6354\/the-art-of-screenwriting-no-5-michael-haneke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the Art of Screenwriting No. 5<\/a>, an interview with Michael Haneke, whose name is pronounced in very nearly the same fashion. Coincidence? Yes, absolutely, nothing more.<\/p>\n<p>And yet.<\/p>\n<p>You may consider, during these eight nights of gift-giving, capitalizing on the Haneke\/Hanukkah near-homonym and presenting your loved one with a subscription to <em>The Paris Review<\/em>, starting with our Haneke issue\u2014just forty dollars for a year\u2019s supply of fiction, poetry, interviews, and art, including a postcard announcing your gift with a personal message. They make a great present for aspiring writers, who should, in the words of William Kennedy, \u201cread the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of <em>The Paris Review<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMy students, meanwhile, pitch only the gravest of topics. For them it\u2019s always got to be the Holocaust. I usually tell them, Back off. You have no idea what you\u2019re talking about. You can only reproduce what you read or heard elsewhere. Others who actually lived through it have said it much better than you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2559],"tags":[451,16395,5398,15869,1444],"class_list":["post-80924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bulletin","tag-gifts","tag-hanukkah","tag-holidays","tag-michael-haneke","tag-subscriptions"],"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>Happy Haneke by Dan Piepenbring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 16, 2014 \u2013 \u201cMy students, meanwhile, pitch only the gravest of topics. For them it\u2019s always got to be the Holocaust. I usually tell them, Back off. 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You have no idea\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-12-16T23:53:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-04-03T21:24:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\"},\"headline\":\"Happy Haneke\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-12-16T23:53:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-04-03T21:24:34+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/\"},\"wordCount\":266,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"gifts\",\"Hanukkah\",\"Holidays\",\"Michael Haneke\",\"subscriptions\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Bulletin\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/happy-haneke\/\",\"name\":\"Happy Haneke by Dan Piepenbring\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-12-16T23:53:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-04-03T21:24:34+00:00\",\"description\":\"December 16, 2014 \u2013 \u201cMy students, meanwhile, pitch only the gravest of topics. 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