Paris Review
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How to Buy Heidi Julavits’s Self on eBay
Author Heidi Julavits’s predominant self is hiding inside this matryoshka doll. Over at the Paris Review, in an interview with Leanne Shapton, Julavits answers each question with an eBay auction listing. What listing would you choose to answer the query, “What…
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The Scatology of Karl Ove Knausgaard
Finally, the Paris Review answers the question we’ve all been wondering about Karl Ove Knausgaard and his mega-novel My Struggle: what’s with all the shitting? That gratuitous attention to detail may explain why these scenes jump out at readers, but…
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The Narrative of Zelda
In response to the news that Nintendo and Netflix may be developing a Legend of Zelda TV series, Ted Trautman at the Paris Review blog examines the character development and narrative structure (or lack thereof) of video games and wonders…
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The Multitalented Victor Hugo
Although Victor Hugo is best known for his novels, the author had an avid interest in the visual arts as well. However, Hugo didn’t publish his visual artwork, fearful that his drawings might interfere with his literary projects. According to…
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Chekhov in His Own Words
All that is nonsense though. Write what you like. If you haven’t facts make up with lyricism. In 1892, Anton Chekhov sent a letter to V. A. Tihonov including a fictitious 200-word bio. 123 years later to the day, the…
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Plotting Plot
With the help of math and computers, a University of Nebraska English professor has been plotting the basic shapes of novels (spoiler: there are six), but this time in a new way. Instead of focusing on plot as action, Matthew…
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Searching for Cervantes
After a Times article last March criticized Spain (and its literary establishment) for failing to unravel the mystery of the precise location of Miguel de Cervantes’s grave, a reinvigorated search may have finally yielded results. Cervantes was buried in Madrid’s…
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Word of the Day: Frigiferous
(adj.); bearing or bringing cold; from the Latin frigus (“cold”) There’s no denying it, as much as we might wish to: the Northern Hemisphere is in the midst of the coldest part of the year. We temper the icy storms…
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Mark Strand, 1934–2014
And when you report back to your own daily world after experiencing the strangeness of a world sort of recombined and reordered in the depths of a poet’s soul, the world looks fresher somehow. To pay homage to the passing…
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The Disaster of the American Book Awards
In essence, the American Book Awards are to the National Book Awards as New Coke is to Coca-Cola Classic, i.e., a complete fucking disaster, one that all parties involved would prefer to forget. The Paris Review takes a look at…
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Discovering a Smart Poet
Smart was known, with his “disturbed mental state,” for his loud, feverish, constant praying, and you can read some of that catatonia in Jubilate, with its litany of “for”s and its incantatory quality. Over at the Paris Review, Dan Piepenbring…
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Crashing on Ice
The sound you hear when you put ice cubes into warm (but not hot) water—that subtle but quick crackling—is the sound all around you in the summer fjords near glaciers. There is ice everywhere in the water, the size of…