Syllabus: Diaries
The Paris Review Magazine
by Jhumpa Lahiri
3h ago
Lahiri at Boston University, where she attended graduate school, in 1997. “I’ve kept [a journal] for decades—it’s the font of all my writing,” Jhumpa Lahiri told Francesco Pacifico in her Art of Fiction interview, which appears in the new Spring issue of The Paris Review. “That mode, which involves carving out a space in which no one is watching or listening, is how I’ve always operated.” She described a class she recently taught at Barnard on the diary, and we asked her for her syllabus for our ongoing series; hers includes a wide range of texts which all carve out that particular, intimat ..read more
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See Everything: On Joseph Mitchell’s Objects
The Paris Review Magazine
by Scott Schomburg
1d ago
Photograph by Therese Mitchell. Courtesy of Nora Sanborn and Elizabeth Mitchell. A black-and-white photograph, three and a half by five inches, shows a figure in profile—a silhouette in suit and hat, alone on a giant heap of demolished buildings far above the cathedral tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. I found it in a stack of photos stored inside a small envelope with a handwritten label: “NY Downtown, Summer 1971.” The man’s expression is hidden, but his stooped posture and tiny scale against the massive pile make the picture feel lonely. His eyes are fixed on something beyond the frame, but t ..read more
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With Melville in Pittsfield
The Paris Review Magazine
by J. D. Daniels
2d ago
View of Mount Greylock from Herman Melville’s desk in Pittsfield. Licensed under CCO 4.0, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The fictional Pittsfield, Massachusetts, native Mack Bolan first appeared in Don Pendleton’s 1969 novel The Executioner #1: War Against the Mafia. A self-righteous vigilante (“I am not their judge. I am their judgment”), the by-now-lesser-known Bolan was the inspiration for the popular Marvel ­Comics antihero Frank Castle, also called the Punisher, who made his debut in 1974’s The Amazing Spider-Man #129 and who has been played by Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane, and Ray Steve ..read more
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A Conversation with Louise Erdrich
The Paris Review Magazine
by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain
2d ago
Photograph by Angela Erdrich. The Paris Review’s Writers at Work interview series has been a hallmark of the magazine since its founding in 1953. These interviews, often conducted over months and sometimes even years, aim to provide insight into how each subject came to be the writer they are, and how the work gets done, and can serve as a kind of defining moment—crystallizing a version of the writer’s legacy in print. Of course, after their interviews appear in our pages, many writers just keep going, and their lives undergo further twists and turns. Sometimes, too, there are gaps and omiss ..read more
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A Well-Contained Life
The Paris Review Magazine
by Isabelle Rea
6d ago
Photographs courtesy of the author. What can’t be contained? Not much. We are given the resources, mental or physical, to contain our emotions and our belongings. Failing to do so often registers as weakness.  The smallest container you can buy at the Container Store is a rectangular crystal-clear plastic box available in orange, purple, and green. It can contain one AA or two AAA batteries, half a handful of Tic Tacs, or a folded-up tissue. The largest container you can buy at the Container Store is a four-tiered metal shelving unit. It can contain other containers. Containers mediate ..read more
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The Disenchantment of the World
The Paris Review Magazine
by Byung-Chul Han
1w ago
Waste collection trucks and collectors in a landfill in Poland. Cezary p, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The children’s author Paul Maar tells the story of a boy who cannot tell stories. When his little sister, Susanne, is struggling to fall asleep, tossing and turning in her bed, she asks Konrad to tell her a story. He declines in a huff. Konrad’s parents, by contrast, love telling stories. They are almost addicted to it, and they argue over who will go first. They therefore decide to keep a list, so that everyone gets a go. When Roland, the father, has told a story, the mother puts a ..read more
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Announcing Our Spring Issue
The Paris Review Magazine
by Emily Stokes
1w ago
Early in the new year, returning home from the office one evening, I picked up a story by the Argentinean writer Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell. The opening pages of “An Eye in the Throat” place us in the thrall of an escalating family emergency, one that might belong to a work of autofiction. But in time, the nature of the story’s reality transforms. On finishing—I had to unclench my jaw and pour myself a drink—I realized that the narrative, like a tormenting Magic Eye, could be read in at least two distinct, and equally haunting, ways. Like Schweblin’s story, several of the ..read more
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“It’s This Line / Here” : Happy Belated Birthday to James Schuyler
The Paris Review Magazine
by Ben Lerner
1w ago
James Schuyler at the Chelsea Hotel, 1990. Photograph by Chris Felver. I’d planned to write about one of my favorite James Schuyler poems in time for the centenary of his birth last November, but   Past is past, and if one remembers what one meant to do and never did, is not to have thought to do enough? Like that gather- ing of one of each I planned, to gather one of each kind of clover, daisy, paintbrush that grew in that field the cabin stood in and study them one afternoon before they wilted. Past is past. I salute that various field.  The tiny, beloved “Salute”—which is ..read more
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The Celebrity as Muse
The Paris Review Magazine
by Philippa Snow
1w ago
Sam McKinniss, Star Spangled Banner (Whitney), 2017. Courtesy of the artist. 1. The Divine Celebrity “There isn’t really anybody who occupies the lens to the extent that Lindsay Lohan does,” the artist Richard Phillips observed in 2012. “Something happens when she steps in front of the camera … She is very aware of the way that an icon is constructed, and that’s something that is unique.” Phillips, who has long used famous people as his muses, was promoting a new short film he had made with the then-twenty-five-year-old actress. Standing in a fulgid ocean in a silvery-white bathing suit, her ..read more
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At Miu Miu, in Paris
The Paris Review Magazine
by Sophie Kemp
2w ago
Photograph by Sophie Kemp. Inside the Palais d’Iéna, it was dark-colored carpets and dark-colored walls. Chocolaty and rust-colored and warm. There was music that was playing and it was ambient, it was a shudder of synthesizers, it sounded like a womb. A loop of a video made by the Belgian American artist Cécile B. Evans was projected on screens set up on all sides of the room. I was not sure what to do during this time before the show started. I decided that a good thing to do while waiting for the fashion show to start was to orient myself in the space. I watched girls take selfies. I walk ..read more
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