What 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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This week in New York Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood holds a reading series, Threepenny Review celebrates its thirtieth birthday, A Public Space throws a launch party for Issue 10, Paris Review holds a Fiction Salon, Meghan O’Rourke reads, Ryan McGinley shows some new photographs of more young naked people and the Guggenheim opens its “Haunted” show of mostly old but still good stuff.
...more“For me, if there’s a piece of writing that I care about, I want to have the physical object,” says Brigid Hughes, editor of the literary journal A Public Space. “There’s a permanence to it, a different kind of permanence than if you find it on a website.
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