{"id":82001,"date":"2015-01-23T18:46:42","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T23:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=82001"},"modified":"2015-01-23T21:32:25","modified_gmt":"2015-01-24T02:32:25","slug":"staff-picks-country-life-city-life-future-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/23\/staff-picks-country-life-city-life-future-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Country Life, City Life, Future Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"91w8S8JboDL\"<\/a>

From the cover of The Edge Becomes the Center<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

When we ran Sylvain Bourmeau\u2019s interview with Michel Houellebecq<\/a> earlier this month, a number of readers tweeted their distaste for Houellebecq\u2019s new novel, as described by Bourmeau and by Houellebecq himself. They may want to think again. To American eyes (at least, to mine), Soumission<\/em> is not a xenophobic screed, nor is it a dire prediction that Muslims will take over France. In the book, Muslims certainly do take over France and impose a form of Sharia. They also impose economic policies based on the theories of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, and appoint a minister of education with links to the Belgian far right. This is, in other words, a fairy tale premise, played deadpan; Houellebecq uses it to make fun of, and to vent his scorn upon, the firmly secular France of today. Whether it is tactful (or prudent) to invent a Muslim Brotherhood party led by Chestertonians is a fair question, but Houellebecq has never been celebrated for his tact or, thank heavens, for his good sense. \u2014Lorin Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before I picked up DW Gibson\u2019s The Edge Becomes the Center<\/a><\/em>, I would\u2019ve told you it was impossible to write a significant book about gentrification, as fraught and ubiquitous as it is. But Gibson\u2019s oral history, out in May, is a generous, vigorous, and enlightening look at class and space in New York; it ought to be required reading for the next generation of transplants. In the stories of tenants, buyers, landlords, architects, real estate agents, contractors, and politicians, Gibson has found vibrant humanity in a subject that is, paradoxically, lacking in it. If it seems obvious that gentrification is about people, then why has a book like this been so long in coming? The Edge Becomes the Center<\/em> raises critical questions about what we expect from our cities and how groups become communities. Mainly, though, it\u2019s a joy to read, its chorus of voices a reminder of oral history\u2019s power. Anyone who cares about the shape and gestalt of life in New York\u2014and anyone who believes in cities as centers of culture\u2014will come away moved. \u2014Dan Piepenbring<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a number of reasons to love Pitchfork<\/i>\u2019s new interview with Bj\u00f6rk<\/a>: the unabashed feeling with which she discusses her new album; the way she describes trying to unite (sometimes unsuccessfully) motherhood, family, and work; and the glimpse into her extraordinary mind. It\u2019s most important, though, for the candor with which she admits to finding it difficult to be a working woman, that despite her fame and success and obvious talent, she has felt the need to have her ideas annexed by men in order to have them heard. After at least a decade of seeing her own creative efforts passed off in the press as belonging to men, she exhorted herself to speak out: \u201cYou\u2019re a coward if you don\u2019t stand up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.\u201d Her experiences\u2014for instance, that \u201ceverything a guy says once, you have to say five times\u201d\u2014are now a refrain among women. (How did we cope before we\u2019d coined\u00a0mansplaining<\/em>?) But the elephant turd on the carpet, as Rebecca Solnit once called it, should be pointed out at every opportunity.\u00a0\u2014Nicole Rudick<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first heard about Ben Metcalf\u2019s Against the Country<\/em><\/a> from The Paris Review<\/em>\u2019s Southern editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan. Set in poor, rural Virginia, Against the Country <\/em>is narrated by an unnamed farm boy who was \u201cworked like a jackass for the worst part of my childhood, and offered up to climate and predator and vice, and introduced to solitude, braced against hope, and dangled before the Lord our God, and schooled in the subtle truths and blatant lies of a half life in the American countryside.\u201d The narrator\u2019s father wants to flee town for a simpler life, so the family moves from suburban Indiana to Goochland, Virginia, where the narrator spends his later days ruminating over the evil they found in the country soil. Against the Country<\/em> doesn\u2019t preach against rural America\u2019s perceived moral superiority\u2014it holds it up, allowing readers to examine its farcical nature. Hilarious and dark, like most of Metcalf\u2019s writing<\/a>, the novel and its thick, rambling sentences had control of me from beginning to end. \u2014Jeffery Gleaves
<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWords \u2026 aren\u2019t the same as the things themselves,\u201d Herta M\u00fcller says in her interview<\/a> with The Paris Review.<\/em>\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s never a perfect match.\u201d I\u2019d never read any of M\u00fcller\u2019s books, but her concept of language led me to The Appointment<\/a><\/em>, her 1997 novel, which takes place in Romania during Ceau\u015fescu\u2019s regime. Riding the tram to her interrogation, the narrator, a young factory worker, reflects on the terrors that she, her friends, and her family have been subjected to by the state. M\u00fcller draws from personal experience\u2014she was persecuted by the Secutariat of Romania in the seventies\u2014and her prose, like the movement of the tram, is steady and unswaying. M\u00fcller has a way with figurative language: eyes that \u201cflashed like greased bullets,\u201d cheeks \u201clike frozen crusts of bread,\u201d fingernails that \u201clooked like ten roasted pumpkin seeds.\u201d Her metaphors are unusual, but there is an underlying force to them. \u201cEvery object is steeped with meaning,\u201d she explains in her interview, \u201cbut the meanings change with the experience of the viewer.\u201d \u2014Cassie Davies<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Early reviewers of Maggie Nelson\u2019s The Argonauts<\/a><\/em>, out in May, describe the slim volume as a hybrid of Nelson\u2019s two previous books\u2014the lyrical and heartbreaking Bluets<\/em> and the Sontag-esque The Art of Cruelty. <\/em>In The Argonauts, <\/em>Nelson turns her wit and haunting prose to her most intimate subject to date: her family. In chronicling her relationship with the gender-fluid artist Harry Dodge, Nelson explores the language of sexuality, gender, and erotics, blending memoir with a study of semantics, gender politics, and queer parenting, pulling in sources from Wittgenstein to Winnicott. The Argonauts <\/em>finds Nelson at her most vulnerable, arguing for a radical rethinking of the terms in which we express love.\u00a0\u2014Catherine Carberry<\/strong><\/p>\n

How did this happen? Creston Lea\u2019s debut collection, Wild Punch<\/a><\/em>, flew entirely under the radar, and now a small band of readers keeps a terrible, beautiful secret. Well, be clean, conscience! I\u2019m sharing.\u00a0If you wish there were more Breece Pancakes or Pinckney Benedicts in the world, then Lea is your man. If you have no idea what the hell I\u2019m talking about, let\u00a0Wild Punch<\/em>\u00a0be your entry into a brand of rural fiction that illuminates certain facets of American experience in a kind yet unflinching light. Understated and perceptive, the stories in this indispensable volume will stay with you like your own memories.\u00a0\u2014Emilia Murphy<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we ran Sylvain Bourmeau\u2019s interview with Michel Houellebecq earlier this month, a number of readers tweeted their distaste for Houellebecq\u2019s new novel, as described by Bourmeau and by Houellebecq himself. They may want to think again. To American eyes (at least, to mine), Soumission is not a xenophobic screed, nor is it a dire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[16751,10899,16753,16750,6699,15144,16752,822,4495,1279],"class_list":["post-82001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-ben-metcalf","tag-bjork","tag-creston-lea","tag-dw-gibson","tag-gentrification","tag-herta-muller","tag-maggie-nelson","tag-michel-houellebecq","tag-pitchfork","tag-sylvain-bourmeau"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Michel Houellebecq, Ben Metcalf, Bj\u00f6rk, and More<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What\u2019s the staff of \u201cThe Paris Review\u201d reading this week?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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