What’s in a Name?
If there are indeed an infinite number of universes, it’s nice to think there might be one where all of the books we have come to know bear their original,…
Posts by tag
The Paris Review
86 posts
From Pen to Pentium
For many writers, after all, a word processor was as much an appliance as it was a deeply individualized instrument—more fax machine than fountain pen. … Still, the plastic, glass,…
Serendipity in Life and Literature
Be unpredictable, including to yourself. So there’s the question of how do you go about finding things—or better their finding you? You have to be open to surprise and at…
A Major Poet of Quiet
Keith Waldrop is a quiet major poet, a major poet of quiet. His accomplishment is difficult to describe because his work refuses, in Bartleby-like fashion, the twin traps of impassivity…
The Last Pilot
Most writers have imagined the scene of their own death—in the hopes of stylizing the moment or savoring the thought of someone sifting through and publishing their old manuscripts. It…
Just Dance
Well, that’s the point of being alone—it’s not anything to do with you. It’s about being something in someone else’s life, and no one ever knows the difference, or the…
Have Fish, Will Travel
Italian novelist, essayist, and scholar Umberto Ecco passed away last Friday. The Paris Review has republished an essay by Ecco that originally appeared in its pages back in 1994. “Traveling with a…
Ben Lerner’s First Time
If you’re referring to a bomb as a daisy cutter it’s easier to distance yourself from the embodied reality of the consequence of a policy. The Paris Review talks with…
A Visual Guide for “How to Be Perfect”
Count among your true friends people of various stations of life. Do not exclaim, “Isn’t technology wonderful!” Learn how to whistle at earsplitting volume. Still hunting for a good New…
Displaced in the Grotesque
O’Connor is so often remembered as a misanthropic homebody—but she was comforted by the idea of a God that gave preferential treatment to the most vulnerable among us. For the…
Student and Teacher, Man and God
At the Paris Review, H.S. Cross analyzes Ernest Raymond’s 1922 novel, Tell England. He explores the unique and charged relationships between a schoolteacher, Radley, and his students, Ray and Doe. The boys…
Lorin Stein, Defender of Ambiguity
With a very few exceptions, everything in the book was written by someone in his or her 30s. Nowadays that seems to be the age at which many writers come…