The Paris Review
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The Rumpus Interview with Jennifer Michael Hecht
Poet, historian, and philosopher Jennifer Michael Hecht talks about Thomas Aquinas, Robin Williams, and her most recent book, Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It.
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True Detective
Voltaire became steeped in the country’s rules of criminal procedure, a labyrinth he found appalling: “As there are half-proofs, that is to say, half-truths, it is clear that there are half-innocent and half-guilty persons. So we start by giving them…
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This Week in Short Fiction
Leave it to The Toast to give us a story told by a mermaid as opposed to a story about one. And leave it to The Toast to find a very good mermaid storyteller indeed. On Wednesday, they released “Mermaids at…
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The First (Not-So-Great) American Novel
He dearly yearns for Harriot as his mistress: “Shall we not,” he asks her, “obey the dictates of nature, rather than confine ourselves to the forced, unnatural rules of—and—and shall the halcyon days of youth slip through our fingers unenjoyed?”…
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One Man Choir
In the wake of D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, Dan Piepenbring waxes poetic on R&B groups, the state of the genre, and how, when it comes down to it, the swinging feel of a swinging chorus is all but irreplaceable: Not that…
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The Lives and Deaths of Lit Mags
With the Canadian publication Descant announcing it will come to an end this month, Juan Vidal reflects on the state of literary magazines for NPR.
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Public Domain Has It
My heart pounded and my breath choked in my windpipe. I had stumbled on an accidental mention of a totally unfamiliar race. Obviously non-Terrestrial. Yet, to the characters in the book, it was perfectly natural—which suggested they belonged to the…
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Duchamp, [Redacting], and Readymades
The latest release from Gauss PDF, Marcel Duchamp’s The [Creative] Act, turns the Dada mastermind’s short lecture into a madlib-like text, rife with lacunae for reader participation and the sort of “No Image Available” error messages that indicate image errors…
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Nell Zink, International Woman of Mystery
Nell Zink’s debut novel, The Wallcreeper, offers a dark coming-of-age story of a married woman not all that dissimilar from Zink herself. Zink has lived a global lifestyle, picking up and moving to various cities on a whim. Matthew Jakubowski…
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The Fantastic Joseph Conrad
In honor of Joseph Conrad’s birthday on December 3, the Paris Review blog posted Conrad’s author’s note to The Shadow Line, which ruminates on marvels and mysteries.
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Finding Dublin in Joyce’s Dubliners
Why would a writer elicit that kind of hatred? What kind of threat did he pose? I asked my dad if I could borrow a copy of Ulysses, went to my room and began to read. An hour later I…
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Designing the Future with the Past
Holding it in your hand now, we hope it feels familiar and warm, at once reminding you of the great history of The Review, while also giving you a sense that you’re being handed the very future of writing and…