{"id":93938,"date":"2016-01-29T17:33:38","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T22:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93938"},"modified":"2016-01-30T17:06:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T22:06:50","slug":"staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Bears, Bellies, Blackmail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mickalene<\/a>

Mickalene Thomas, Lovely Six Foota<\/em>, 2007, color photograph.<\/p><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

The first entry in New York Review Books\u2019s new comics series is Mark Beyer\u2019s Agony<\/em><\/a>, a graphic novel about two regular working people just trying to get by and the ceaseless horrors visited on them. Amy and Jordan endure acid baths, bear and monster attacks, unemployment, boring friends, prison beatings, armed robbery, an apartment flooded with blood, and deaths in the family, among other cataclysms; they bear it all with the same gaunt, anxious expressions, and usually they speak only in affectless expository sentences. E.g.: \u201cI\u2019ve been swallowed by the same fish that ate Amy\u2019s head, and my legs have been bitten off. I\u2019ve got to get out of here!\u201d As Colson Whitehead writes in the introduction, how hard you laugh at all this depends on \u201chow you feel about relinquishing the logic of realism in favor of the logic of undying despair.\u201d I couldn\u2019t get enough of their misery: I finished it in one sitting and flipped back to the beginning. \u2014Dan Piepenbring<\/strong><\/p>\n

My traveling companion these days has been the late poet Frank Lima and his newly collected Incidents of Travel in Poetry<\/a><\/em>. The book, beautifully culled by editors Garrett Caples and Julien Poirier, comprises the breadth of Lima\u2019s work, from his early poems written as a heroin-addicted New York School outsider to his later surrealistic ones informed by freewriting. Many are autobiographical, making this one of the heavier, more affecting collections I\u2019ve read in a while. His poems are laced with incest and smack and guns: he writes of his stay on Hart\u2019s Island, where he tries to get clean, and of his mother who, \u201cwhen I awoke \u2026 was a warm mist hovering, suspended over me, \/ naked, \/ \u2026 sweeping my body away \/ into the cumulus clouds \/ of black pubic hair.\u201d Lima\u2019s verse is uninhibited and unafraid; he writes with pungent frankness. My favorite lines, though, are the playful, tender ones. From \u201cmorning sara\u201d: \u201cI am hungry and go thru your underwear \/ give me some hot soup or \/ I\u2019ll suck on the curtains!\u201d; from \u201cMi Tierra\u201d: \u201cWhen I touch you \/ I see Utah \/ your flat white sandy belly \/ the powdered dust devils in your navel \/ the white nipples of the Rocky Mountains.\u201d \u2014Caitlin Youngquist <\/strong>
<\/p>\n

When I was twenty-two, spending all day at the local Barnes & Noble to avoid the computer at home, I used to judge novels by whether I\u2019d die to have written them. (As in, type the last word and keel over.) I called this game Lucky Jim, after the book that first gave me the idea. Now, thanks to New York Review Classics, I\u2019ve found a Kingsley Amis novel I like even better. Take a Girl Like You<\/em><\/a> is about a sexually innocent schoolteacher who falls in love with a creepy, alcoholic Casanova. Or maybe it\u2019s the other way around: Amis inhabits both protagonists with a kind of double vision that can make you laugh on one page and leave you queasy on the next. One doesn\u2019t ordinarily think of Amis as a feminist writer, but like his friend Philip Larkin, he seems deeply at home in the soul of a lonely young woman. I don\u2019t play Lucky Jim anymore\u2014I\u2019d forgotten all about it\u2014but Take a Girl Like You<\/em> brought it rushing back. \u2014Lorin Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Pages<\/a>

Pages from Mark Beyer\u2019s Agony<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mickalene Thomas is one of my favorite artists at work today\u2014I can\u2019t resist her baroque of textures, patterns, and color\u2014and Aperture has just opened a humdinger of a show<\/a>: a selection of Thomas\u2019s photographs, collages, and Polaroids, as well as a tableau that serves as the setting for many of her images; plus, a mini exhibition, called \u201ct\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate\u201d and curated by Thomas, that features the work of ten other artists (including Carrie Mae Weems, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Malick Sidib\u00e9, and Zanele Muholi) who together produce a kind of call-and-response around notions of sexuality, race, and culture. There\u2019s plenty of playacting in Thomas\u2019s work: blaxploitation, black power, and Ebony<\/em>, but also \u00c9douard Manet, classicism, and studio portraiture. A Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em> album sits in the background of the large photograph La le\u00e7on d\u2018amour<\/em>, in which one woman is draped dramatically across another woman\u2019s lap. It\u2019s a piet\u00e0 in which \u201cMary\u201d dons a white Afro and pumps, and \u201cJesus\u201d is a sultry, supple lady who looks unequivocally at the viewer and is very much alive. That gaze between subject and viewer, which is a hallmark of Thomas\u2019s work, is what she describes as \u201crecognition and acknowledgement and validation: you see me and I see you.\u201d It can be difficult to tear yourself away from those gazes. But then, why would you want to? \u2014Nicole Rudick<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amber Sparks\u2019s new collection of stories, The Unfinished World<\/a><\/em>, is a welcome foray into Kelly Link territory: the outlandish and the otherworldly. In \u201cThe Cemetery of Lost Faces,\u201d the book\u2019s most devastating story (and my favorite), a father mentors his impassive daughter in his lifelong passion of taxidermy because he requires someone \u201cwho would remain impartial in the face of accurate observation, for without it, what did we have but the terrors of the imagination?\u201d So many of these stories read in this spirit: as observational field notes for Sparks\u2019s characters, with narratives that arise only from the delicate reportage of their eccentricities. Every scene is, almost always, softly and meticulously arranged, like tableaux of preserved butterflies. And yet, as real as these characters are, everything about The Unfinished World<\/em> remains somehow fantastic, dreamed up in Sparks\u2019s own terror of an imagination\u2014like the librarian who\u2019s dedicated her life to studying and archiving human fevers. At the beginning of \u201cLost Faces,\u201d the parents argue over what it might mean to train their children in taxidermy, strange as it is. They conclude such an art is as much a lesson in how to live in this world as it is in learning to leave it. So, too, are the best parts of Sparks\u2019s collection. \u2014Daniel Johnson<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was younger, I secretly aspired to make a grand, sweeping film inhabited by big-name celebrities with a marketing budget to match\u2014and I wanted the film to be about nothing. No real plot, no moral convictions, nothing. I wanted to create something huge that, at its core, had nothing to do with anything at all, that made viewers unsure whether to demand a refund. But after watching the Coen brothers\u2019 2008 film Burn After Reading<\/a><\/em>, I realize it\u2019s been done. A spy comedy chock-full of the kind of a priori humor for which the Coens have become famous, Burn<\/em> features Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand as a pair of personal trainers trying their hand at blackmail in Laurel-and-Hardy fashion. Their target is a former spy played by John Malkovich, a casting decision that plays out on the screen as ridiculously as it looks on this page. Rounding out the cast is George Clooney, exuding the kind of self-assured idiocy that has become a Coen brothers staple. What follows is a chaotic ballet of nihilistic incompetency that refuses to aspire to anything\u2014any philosophy, principle, even plot. It is hilarious and not much else, which is okay, because humor is all that Burn After Reading<\/em> pursues. I think. \u2014Rakin Azfar<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first entry in New York Review Books\u2019s new comics series is Mark Beyer\u2019s Agony, a graphic novel about two regular working people just trying to get by and the ceaseless horrors visited on them. Amy and Jordan endure acid baths, bear and monster attacks, unemployment, boring friends, prison beatings, armed robbery, an apartment flooded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[20956,19571,4113,20961,3184,3853,131,71,79,20958,20957,20959,17132,120,6425,20955,20954,3136,100,165,17996,20960],"class_list":["post-93938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-agony","tag-amber-sparks","tag-brad-pitt","tag-burn-after-reading","tag-coen-brothers","tag-colson-whitehead","tag-comics","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-frances-mcdormand","tag-frank-lima","tag-incidents-of-travel-in-poetry","tag-kelly-link","tag-kingsley-amis","tag-lucky-jim","tag-mark-beyer","tag-mickalene-thomas","tag-new-york-review-classics","tag-photography","tag-poetry","tag-take-a-girl-like-you","tag-the-unfinished-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Mark Beyer, Kingsley Amis, Amber Sparks<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What the staff of The Paris Review is reading this week.\" \/>\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\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff Picks: Bears, Bellies, Blackmail by The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 29, 2016 \u2013 The first entry in New York Review Books\u2019s new comics series is Mark Beyer\u2019s Agony, a graphic novel about two regular working people just trying to get by\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/\" \/>\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=\"2016-01-29T22:33:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-01-30T22:06:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"968\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\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=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e\"},\"headline\":\"Staff Picks: Bears, Bellies, Blackmail\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-29T22:33:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-30T22:06:50+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/\"},\"wordCount\":1261,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2-1024x826.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Agony\",\"Amber Sparks\",\"Brad Pitt\",\"Burn After Reading\",\"Coen brothers\",\"Colson Whitehead\",\"comics\",\"fiction\",\"film\",\"Frances McDormand\",\"Frank Lima\",\"Incidents of Travel in Poetry\",\"Kelly Link\",\"Kingsley Amis\",\"Lucky Jim\",\"Mark Beyer\",\"Mickalene Thomas\",\"New York Review Classics\",\"photography\",\"poetry\",\"Take a Girl Like You\",\"The Unfinished World\"],\"articleSection\":[\"This Week\u2019s Reading\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/\",\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Mark Beyer, Kingsley Amis, Amber Sparks\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2-1024x826.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-29T22:33:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-30T22:06:50+00:00\",\"description\":\"What the staff of The Paris Review is reading this week.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2.jpg\",\"width\":1200,\"height\":968,\"caption\":\"Mickalene Thomas, Lovely Six Foota, 2007, color photograph.\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Bears, Bellies, Blackmail\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/parisreview\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Staff Picks: Mark Beyer, Kingsley Amis, Amber Sparks","description":"What the staff of The Paris Review is reading this week.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Staff Picks: Bears, Bellies, Blackmail by The Paris Review","og_description":"January 29, 2016 \u2013 The first entry in New York Review Books\u2019s new comics series is Mark Beyer\u2019s Agony, a graphic novel about two regular working people just trying to get by","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2016-01-29T22:33:38+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-01-30T22:06:50+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":968,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"The Paris Review","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"The Paris Review","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/"},"author":{"name":"The Paris Review","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e"},"headline":"Staff Picks: Bears, Bellies, Blackmail","datePublished":"2016-01-29T22:33:38+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-30T22:06:50+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/"},"wordCount":1261,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2-1024x826.jpg","keywords":["Agony","Amber Sparks","Brad Pitt","Burn After Reading","Coen brothers","Colson Whitehead","comics","fiction","film","Frances McDormand","Frank Lima","Incidents of Travel in Poetry","Kelly Link","Kingsley Amis","Lucky Jim","Mark Beyer","Mickalene Thomas","New York Review Classics","photography","poetry","Take a Girl Like You","The Unfinished World"],"articleSection":["This Week\u2019s Reading"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/","name":"Staff Picks: Mark Beyer, Kingsley Amis, Amber Sparks","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2-1024x826.jpg","datePublished":"2016-01-29T22:33:38+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-30T22:06:50+00:00","description":"What the staff of The Paris Review is reading this week.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/mt_lovely_six_foota_hr2.jpg","width":1200,"height":968,"caption":"Mickalene Thomas, Lovely Six Foota, 2007, color photograph."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/staff-picks-bears-bellies-blackmail\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Staff Picks: Bears, Bellies, Blackmail"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/4a14f739935c82f100675b84e220252e","name":"The Paris Review","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c15ccd1e2629bc3b1a8aa1a407e1186742acfaf923abe2addfec0885197794ff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"The Paris Review"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/parisreview\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93938"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93979,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93938\/revisions\/93979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}