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From Stephen Elliott
This was my first experience of being fictionalized. I still recall the yellow-white flash of queasiness, the mortification: a sense of powerlessness and an utter lack of recourse.
What if a writer friend—or, worse, relative—of yours turned you into one of his characters, maybe in an unflattering way?
...moreLet’s dedicate this week to the publications, editors, and benevolent marketing gurus who unleashed a whole bunch of quality FREE short fiction to us. Under the shadow of the FCC’s impending decision as to whether or not net neutrality will continue, these all-you-can-read buffets taste even sweeter.
...moreThe Baffler has a newly designed website, which includes all of its 25 issues, available for free. With so much talk about the New Yorker opening its digital gates this summer, let’s not forget “the Journal that Blunts the Cutting Edge.” If you need some ideas of where to start, Dan Piepenbring has recommendations at the Paris Review.
...moreDan Piepenbring writes at the Paris Review about the universe inside industrial-supply catalogs, which offer a different kind of poetry to readers:
...moreAnd so I often reach for it in pursuit of a kind of materialist awe. It makes for a reading experience more engaging, imaginative, and informative than almost anything that passes as literature.
Carol Muske-Dukes, a former poet laureate of California, discusses the role poetry plays in modern life at the Paris Review. She considers whether people think poetry is relevant or accessible, as well as how we approach it differently today than we have in the past:
...moreThe reality is that we live in an age that works against poetry.
(adj.) wandering through or amongst the clouds; moving through air; from the Latin nubes (“cloud”) and vagant (“wandering”), c. 1656.
...moreI wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Coming off the holiday weekend, the trusted dispensary of short fiction, Joyland, published “The History of Hanging Out“ by Kevin Mandel. Mandel’s story lives up to its title, encapsulating the bundled, sparking energies of a group of young creators.
...moreRumpus contributor Shane Jones‘s new novel, Crystal Eaters, is out this month from Two Dollar Radio. He’s been exchanging emails with Laura van den Berg about the new book, parenthood, and death, and the resulting interview is now out on the Paris Review.
...moreWe’ve all gotten texts like these, though perhaps not from these particular writers…
Jessie Gaynor’s ”More Drunk Texts from Famous Authors,” over at the Paris Review, features the fictitious (and very buzzed) Roald Dahl, T.S Eliot, and William Blake, among others.
...moreThe Metropolitan Museum of New York just released into the public domain more than 394,000 images from its collection.
Dan Piepenbring filtered through the newly released database, sorting to show only books, and published a selection of the most interesting images from the 2,701 results on the Paris Review.
...moreShould art and literature be treated independently? The Paris Review Daily reports that the British Library has recently released an online collection of 1,200 Romantic and Victorian texts in the first phase of a plan to digitize various literary periods. Notably included is The Yellow Book, a literary quarterly that strictly distinguished between the two mediums.
...moreThe Gabriel García Márquez accolades continue to roll in—over at The Paris Review, the complete text of Silvana Paternostro’s oral biography of Márquez is available. It’s full of enlightening tidbits from the author’s friends and family, like:
...moreGUILLERMO ANGULO: His greatest inspiration was his grandmother.
Two mid-century writers you don’t hear a lot about are getting some attention: Penelope Mortimer at The Daily Beast, and Phyllis McGinley at The Paris Review. Though they shared publication histories (and initials), their styles couldn’t have been more different.
...moreWhat do Amish Friendship Bread, poetry and chain letters have in common?
Sadie Stein opened her inbox the other day to find an email about a poetry chain, she writes at the Paris Review. Although participating in the chain left her “feeling a bit like someone’s aunt,” the email project was ultimately inspiring, and reminded Stein of the last chain she’d taken part in—the act of baking and passing along to neighbors strange bread made from instant vanilla pudding.
...more...more“Maybe it’s the glow from the new miniature lamppost from the Caroler collection my brother ordered that literally cast my mother’s dolls in a new light or the realization that they’ve been with our family for so long, but I’m regarding the arrangement on the bay window sill of my parents’ house—their own and no longer in Germantown—with less skepticism this year.
Over at The Millions, several esteemed editors discuss their journals’ rejection policies. Magazines represented include The Paris Review, Hobart, The Rattling Wall, The Harvard Review, and others. It is wonderfully humbling as a writer to be reminded how difficult the task of rejecting good work can be.
...moreReleased just the other day, the new Paris Review app is slender, simple and, for the cost of absolutely nothing, is already worth as much, nay more, than any MFA education now on the market. Why? Because the free app gives you access to an amazing assortment of the magazine’s storied interviews from the 1950s to the current issue.
...moreWilliam Dereseiwicz’s luminous response to Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre recently printed by the Library of America, is a critique as much as it is hero-worship.
Dereseiwicz confronts Vonnegut’s novels from his earliest to his last, focusing on Vonnegut’s zenith in moral seriousness and the long, personal road to Slaughterhouse-Five.
...moreCarlos Fuentes has died at 83. Here’s an extensive 1981 conversation between the Paris Review and the author.
“I think all writers live off of obsessions. Some of these come from history, others are purely individual, and still others belong to the realm of the purely obsessive, which is the most universal thing a writer has in his soul.
...moreAt the Paris Review, Rumpus artist Jason Novak has created a ten-foot tall panel illustration of Sigrid Unset’s Gunnar’s Daughter, a novel with “the great dark and bizarre appeal of Icelandic legend recycled for an Edwardian audience ready to be shocked.”
...moreThe Paris Review shares an interview with Pablo Neruda conducted in 1970 just before the poet withdrew his presidential candidacy.
“I have never renounced the expression of loneliness, of anguish, or of melancholia. But I like to change tones, to find all the sounds, to pursue all the colors, to look for the forces of life wherever they may be—in creation or destruction.”
...more“Cappadocia had been cobwebbed by trade routes in those days and was constantly under attack; the underground cities served as fortification from invaders…What made me curious was that the ancient inhabitants were believed to live underground for months at a time.”
At The Paris Review, Will Hunt writes about his explorations in subterranean colonies, ants, and the Thames Tunnel.
...moreIs the airline safety card more a work of the imagination than an actual instructional manual? This article guides us through the history of the often ignored “art of airline crisis.”
“Is it possible that in the golden age of aviation even the crashes were glamorous?
...moreToday would have been the 112th birthday of Jorge Luis Borges, the esteemed Argentine writer who championed the science fiction genre with his depictions of unreality.
This is an archived Paris Review interview he did back in July of 1966 that tracks his daily routine, notes the idiosyncrasies of his speech and the epic qualities that he admires in West Side Story.
...moreFour days ago was the anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov’s death and this Paris Review blog remembers the wordsmith/butterfly catcher as the compelling professor and famous author that he became.
There’s even a vague Lady Gaga comparison/reference. And did you know he’s the only author to strictly abide by the self-interview rules?
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The most important—and surprising—thing about this issue of The Paris Review: Roberto Bolaño’s lost novel.
This is very exciting for fans of the Chilean writer (I happen to be a somewhat obsessive one) and even more so because The Paris Review will be publishing this “lost” novel in its entirety over the course of four issues.
...moreAn enlightening Paris Review interview with Robert Gottlieb, a veteran editor/publisher whose editorial touch you have undoubtedly experienced.
The editorial process is after all, its own art form that is not wholly visible to readers. Esteemed authors (Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller and Michael Crichton, to name a few) and Gottlieb himself discuss the author-editor working relationship, the hidden intricacies of the editorial process and how the publishing industry has changed our understanding of the editor.
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