“I’m gregarious with writers and never with manuscripts . . . I [like to] create the illusion of seamless perfection, so I alone know the flawed homely process along the way.”

At the age of eighteen, my mother ­embarked on a movie career in her ­native city of Antwerp. Until then, she had worked for the gas company and taken some elocution courses, but when a studio was built on the Pyckestraat, at the initiative of a certain Jan Vanderheyden, she walked in the door and was hired.

In my twenties, when I got hard-ons all the time, sometimes for no good reason, as though in a vacuum, I might have gone for someone like her. 

John Ashbery was a prolific contributor to The Paris Review. Over the years we published forty of his poems, plus two long prose pieces, a series of collages, and an Art of Poetry interview.

Have a question for the editors of The Paris Review? Email us.     Dear Paris Review, My writing mentor said that if I want to raise my writing to the next level, then I have to learn to write suggestively in addition to writing descr…

I’m the only child of a single mom, who’s obviously been my best friend from the start. But here’s the thing: after twenty-six years, she recently remarried.

Dear Paris Review, I’m suspicious of memoirs. I don’t think people remember things as well as the genre suggests they do, and life doesn’t play out so neatly.

When I suggest he read something, my dad always says, “I’m waiting for the movie to come out,” just to rankle me. I’ve been meaning to send him a stack of films that are truly good adaptations. What should I send?

I had been invited to Morning Joe as the editor who’d published “Historically Speaking,” the same poem that haunted me all through the election.

The New York Times called our Writers at Work interviews “the best party in town.” Now we’re asking our readers to help keep the party going.

In the last six or seven months I’ve heard a lot of talk about the importance of the arts. Maybe you have too. In certain circles, it’s become a sort of refrain: we need the arts more than ever.

We at The Paris Review will mourn Bob, not just as a hero of American letters, but as a beloved friend to this magazine.

Recently, thanks to heavy wait times at the twenty-four-hour Genius Bar on Fifth Avenue, I found myself killing an evening at the Plaza with nothing to read but the galleys of a book of art criticism, How to See, by the painter David Salle. It turne…

Ever since I started editing The Paris Review, I’ve wished we could interview Merle Haggard. No songwriter means as much to me. Unfortunately, the Review doesn’t have a series on the Art of Songwriting (and for good reasons), so for the past six ye…

Readers of the Review know that the Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier is one of our favorite young directors. (See Issue 203 for a discussion of his first two features, Reprise and Oslo, August 31st.) His new English-language debut, Louder than Bombs…

As Paris Review subscribers know, every once in a while we serialize a novel. That is, we publish it in sections, usually over the course of a year, with recaps to bring new readers up to date. And we hire the best illustrators we can find—a stable…

Starting with our Summer Issue, the novelist and critic Adam Thirlwell will join The Paris Review as London editor—our first in ten years. In that time, we’ve been admiring Adam’s fiction and criticism, as well as his editorial work for McSweeney’s. …

Although Rachel Cusk’s Outline has not been available in hardcover until today, it’s already enjoyed a wild succès d’estime with some of our favorite critics. Last Wednesday, in the New York Times, Dwight Garner called it “transfixing … You find …

This essay prefaces Matteo Pericoli’s Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views, out this week. We’ve featured Matteo’s work for years on the Daily, and his sketch of the view from our old office graced the cover of our Summer 2011 issue. To c…

For the last two years, a small group of American writers and critics has convened in Oslo for a series of informal lectures, interviews, and discussions. Dubbed the Norwegian-American Literary Festival, this unlikely gathering has introduced packed …

On April 8, at our Spring Revel, we’ll honor Frederick Seidel with the Hadada Award. In the weeks leading up the Revel, we’re looking at Seidel’s poems.Over the weekend, I turned on Studio 360. A cardiologist was describing the health benefits…

In the first three years that I edited The Paris Review—a reader pointed out last spring—we never published a short story from a child’s point of view. This wasn’t a matter of principle. I just like stories in which the narrator knows as mu…

This essay may sound strange, read by a man—it is very specifically a woman’s essay. But Dombek’s voice is so powerful, every time I read “Letter from Williamsburg,” I hear it in my head. It’s like a song I want to sing along to. In fact, I…

Our friend Toby Barlow has written a novel, set in Paris in the 1950s, in which an expat literary magazine gets embroiled in a CIA plot. Naturally the whole thing is fiction … or is it? Here Barlow describes the genesis of Babayaga and his valiant …

The proofs of our Summer issue just arrived at Twenty-Seventh Street from the printer. This afternoon is our last chance to catch any mistakes. You always find a few typos—and we have more names to spell-check than usual, because this issue conta…

Hats off to our beloved contributor Lydia Davis, who was just awarded the Man Booker International Prize, Great Britain’s most prestigious prize for fiction. In the judges’ citation, Sir Christopher Ricks asked how best to describe Davis’s work…

Over the years The Paris Review has been nominated several times for a National Magazine Award, and even won a couple, but we never won the prize for General Excellence—until last night. The other finalists in our category included The New Republic…

  It’s the end of an era here at The Paris Review: after eight years in TriBeCa, today we’re packing up and heading north to our new Twenty-Seventh Street digs. While it’s bittersweet, we look forward to making new memories in Chelsea. And, yes,…

Readers of The Paris Review will remember a portfolio and a novel excerpt by Rachel Kushner in our Winter issue. Now that book—The Flamethrowers—is out and earning raves (“It unfolds on a bigger, brighter screen than nearly any recent American no…

On the eve of celebrating our sixtieth birthday, The Paris Review is up for two National Magazine Awards: Fiction and General Excellence. Our fiction finalist is Sarah Frisch, whose story “Housebreaking” appeared in issue 203. These nominations …

What follows is the Editor’s Note from issue 204. For the cover of our sixtieth-anniversary issue, we asked the French artist JR to make a giant poster of George Plimpton’s face and paste it up on a wall in Paris, as a symbolic homecoming and a tr…

We are sad to learn that Evan Connell has died. An early contributor to The Paris Review, Connell was and is a quiet hero of contemporary literature. His novels Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge have been cited as a crucial influence by writers as differen…

If you grew up going to church, you already know Psalm 139. Even if you didn’t, parts of it are floating around your brain. It is a favorite of pro-life people, because it talks about God recognizing us in the womb, taking care of us, and knowin…

As we have now and then had occasion to point out, Daily editor Sadie Stein and I are not married. Nor is either one of us a parent. But that won’t stop us from competing for your love. Tomorrow at seven: Join Sadie and Doree Shafrir at KGB Bar fo…

We are sad to learn of the death of David Rakoff, at forty-seven, after a long battle with cancer. Rakoff’s essays and contributions to This American Life include what must be the most melancholy humor writing of our time, or else the funniest mel…

Dear Editors: Have made writing full time. Have novel and short essays. Attended NYU’s Summer Writer program last year. Would you have a good list of places for submissions beyond The Paris Review, The New Yorker and The New York Times? Thank you …

My predecessor George Plimpton was known for cycling around New York  before it was either cool or safe (before, some would say, it was sane). And nowadays, we at TPR are still devoted city bikers; our rides can be found chained up and down White…

For their fiction issue, Vice magazine asked Sadie and me to write the Dos and Don’ts. A dream come true! Except it turns out to be much harder than it looks. Eventually Sadie connected with her inner mean kid … but some of us just will never b…

A few months ago our friend Kirk Miller, of Miller’s Oath, made a small batch of Paris Review ties–twenty-four, to be exact. I bought one. Several members of our board did the same. We have four ties left—one of each! So, as you see, this is a true l…

How do I improve my prose? The poet and diplomat Paul Claudel once wrote, “To beware the adjective is the beginning of style.” I ought to have written “the French poet and diplomat” or “the great French poet and diplomat,” because some…

I’ve been reading a few things lately on the subject of walking, including treatments philosophical (Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Thoreau’s “Walking”), narrative (Walser’s The Walk, new from New Directions next month), and poetic (O’…

I am a student interested in working for The Paris Review one day. What steps would you recommend to get there? Read lots. That’s the main thing. And not just the books they assign you in class. The Daily gives you a pretty good idea of what books…

To East Villagers of a certain age, it came as a blow: after sixteen short years on Avenue B, the Lakeside Lounge has closed. For many of us, that bar was like our living room. I don't mean that my friends and I spent a lot of time there—I me…

Dear Paris Review,
I’ve just finished Dr. Zhivago and am on the hunt for a palate cleanser. I’ve been left with romance on the mind and would like to stay in this vein. I don’t want to go too lowbrow, like toward trashy romance novels, but someth…

My apartment is infested with evil roommates and sad vibes. Being unemployed, I have no refuge. But I refuse to be depressed! Mornings I pack a small bag of books, take to the streets, wander around. But one can only sit on so many benches. Am curiou…

Nothing against Swamplandia! or The Pale King, but we can‘t help wishing the Pulitzer Board had gotten its act together—and chosen Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, the novella that appeared in our Summer 2002 issue. That would have been our first Pulitz…

Dear Paris Review, I’m a second-semester senior in high school and currently find myself with a lot of empty time. I also have an open summer ahead with plenty of time to read books. Do you have any novel recommendations for someone about to enter…

I recently read Poets in Their Youth, by Eileen Simpson. Now I’ve taken to doubting my every turn. Am I a lout? A drag on my partner’s freedom and happiness? Am I going to drink myself into a coronary or into some sort of baking mishap? Is there …

Faithful readers, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that our senior editor, Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, is ditching us for Harper’s magazine. It is a grievous blow. During Deirdre’s tenure as editor of the Daily, our readership has do…

My father-in-law, a fiercely intelligent Irishman in his late sixties, has just been diagnosed with cancer. As he is facing a long period of being confined to quarters, I'd like to send him some books to help pass the time. However, he has candidly…

Watching a marathon of Twin Peaks has gotten me thinking about camp. There are movies and television shows that we delight in, and discuss seriously, though the content may not be “serious.” What can be said about campy contemporary fiction? Plea…

Spring is upon us! Or almost. What poems will get my mind off wintertime? More than the other seasons, spring is a state of mind. As you know, it can strike in the dead of winter or go AWOL all April and May. It is the season of initiation, of myste…

Hi, I’m planning a trip to Southeast Asia later in the year, and I’m looking for fiction set in the countries I’ll be visiting. For the most part I've managed to find books that fit the bill—Graham Greene’s The Quiet American for Vietnam, André …

Last week Wisława Szymborska died in Kraków at the age of eighty-eight. Szymborska received the Nobel Prize in 1996 and was Poland’s best-loved living poet. Her poem “Negative” appeared in issue 144 of The Paris Review, translated by Joanna Trzeciak:…

The Downton Abbey craze has led to a plethora of recommendations for books on the World War I era of Britain. I’m interested in this era for the States. What good novels are out there about this time frame, preferably set in New England? Much obl…

I recently got out of serious relationship. Since then I have not been able to read, though I usually love sad, sappy love stories. Can you recommend some books that have zero romance or love in them? Some good post-breakup fiction? Readers of this …

Dear The Paris Review, Last week’s question on the topic of books you should read when young got me thinking: Can you provide a warning, or cautionary note, to attach to any books that may prove to be catastrophic when read at too y…

I take great and perverse joy in reading insulting, inflammatory, and slanderous correspondence between authors, publishers, and celebrities. Could you recommend some particularly bilious rivalries? As Mr. Wilson so justly proclaims in the beginni…

Dear Lorin, May I once more avail myself of the generous hospitality of your advice column to help solve another of my small mysteries? I am currently editing the 1852–54 journal kept on the Australian goldfields by the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor T…

How do you manage to apologize to someone when you think you also deserve an apology (but believe you are never going to get one, and the conflict remains unresolved)? Is there some way to prove a point while also expressing a sincere desire to be fr…

Okay, I have a question about the ideal sort of job for a young writer. If not ideal, then certainly better. I am a gallery manager in Manhattan. It is an exhausting, constantly detail-oriented job that does not pay especially well. Work frustrations…

I’ve never read Moby-Dick or War and Peace, but people think I have, because I told them so. What is the great book you have never—but should have—read? Just this morning—at five o’clock, to be exact—I was staring at the ceiling, thinking about Krap…

It takes guts to apostrophize a heavenly body. Everybody’s seen them: Sappho, Keats, Mayakovsky, O'Hara, you name it. After all these millions of years, what’s left to say? And to write a poem addressing the moon herself—a breakup poem, no less…

Great news in this morning’s Observer: Cooper Union has agreed to give St. Mark’s Bookshop a break on the rent, and the store will remain open. Many thanks to our readers who helped save St. Mark’s, whether by signing the petition or just by pic…

What are the most successful romantic gestures in literature? I need to win someone back, stat. Failing that, can you recommend reading to mend a broken heart? Levin wins back Kitty after behaving like a complete ass, but you may not have time to re…

Last spring our Southern editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan, came up to New York to give a little reading here on White Street. The surprising but true story he read, about living on the set of One Tree Hill—because it was his family’s house—just appea…

The Paris Review congratulates Tomas Tranströmer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature. A valued contributor to the Review, Tranströmer is a poets’ poet, one whose name has come up in several of our interviews. Jorie Graham and Robert Bly bo…

St. Mark’s Bookshop is the one of the last booksellers in the East Village. Since 1979 it has been famous for its collection of fiction, poetry, and criticism. With just 2,700 square feet, it always manages to stock the best new books and literary …

I know that I am not alone in sometimes craving nothing more than a nice, long browse through the self-help section of the bookstore. But I know that I’m alone in admitting it to The Paris Review! My question is, do you know of any authors writing …

We begin the week with a quote from The New York Times Book Review, where Anthony Doerr reviews Denis Johnson—and compares The Paris Review to a giant rock: Sometimes, if you wander long enough out-of-doors, you look up and find yourself in a…

I am an architecture student who is allergic to The Fountainhead. Can you recommend some books to counter with when well-meaning people, upon hearing that I’m studying architecture, ask whether I like it? Tell them to read Complexity and Contradi…

Why is it that when I ask people in Los Angeles if they have heard of The Paris Review, they either know exactly what I am talking about or look at me with utter confusion?
—Susan, Los Angeles Funny, the same thing happens back East. The fact is, …

Dear Mr. Stein, May I take advantage of the hospitality of your letters column to ask if you or your readers can help me to solve a small puzzle? I have come across an epigraph ascribed to Proust that heads the first chapter of Hamish Miles’s En…

You may have heard by now that there’s a Paradise Lost movie in the works, starring Bradley Cooper as the Devil—WTF?! Do you think film adaptation is a good or bad thing for books, particularly ones with wide recognition to begin with? —Liesel WTF…

Inspired by the new hashtag sensation, who are your top “undateable” literary characters (and your top “dateable”)? —Rhonda Heathcliff is definitely up there. So is Cathy. (My favorite entry is “Detective, possibly with Asperger Syndrome, opium …

Dear Thessaly, You’re probably still in bed, or finishing up a short story, but here in Paris it’s four o’clock; across the street from my hotel the bells of Nôtre Dame are playing “Three Blind Mice”; and I owe you an update from the Vi…

Having been a reader of the Review for some time now, I’ve seen your publication evolve and change over the years. I’m curious about the reasoning behind one of these changes: the disappearance of political reporting and socially minded nonfictio…

Hi Mr. Stein. I went to a talk you gave many months ago at McNally Jackson about The Paris Review. You said something that has stayed in my mind, especially now that President Obama has said that we will be withdrawing from Afghanistan. You said that…

Dear Mr. Stein,
A few of the pieces in your most recent issue—particularly Mr. Seidel’s and Ms. Barrodale’s—strike me as rather vulgar. I’d be interested to hear your opinion on why so many contemporary writers, when dealing with sexual con…

Dear Lorin:
Father’s Day is coming up, and this year I want to get my dad something he’ll actually read. The last three books I am certain he has read are: something by George Pelecanos, Lush Life by Richard Price, and certainly something by Sue Graft…

In a 1974 interview with The Paris Review, Archibald MacLeish adamantly insisted that the writer must engage with the world around him in order to create art, not act as a mere outside observer commenting on the play at hand. “The subject of art is…

Dear Lorin,
The Portuguese word saudade connotes this beautiful expectation of nostalgia for a current moment. There’s a word that describes the place where your collarbone meets the neck. Tom Robbins makes up erleichda, a combination of a command, …

Kurt Andersen had his list of “Words We Don’t Say.” As the editor of The Paris Review, what are some of yours? —Tom Michaels Usage snobbery is a poor man’s snobbery. It has no place at The Paris Review. When Kurt Andersen compiled his list of peeves…

Since being diagnosed with various health and digestive problems, I’ve had to change my diet and lifestyle drastically. In order to feel more as if it’s my decision and not my doctor’s, I have read various books on diet and nutrition, like Lore…

Starting in July The Paris Review—and the Daily—will have a new senior editor: Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn. Deirdre comes to us from The New Yorker, where she is currrently an assistant editor and has worked with Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, and Za…

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel has converted me back to reading short stories. Where would you go next after Hempel? Isn’t she good! If you want to expand on that Hempelian mood of yours, I suggest—in no particular order—any of the col…

Dear Lorin:
This Mother’s Day, I’d like to give my mom a thoughtful gift as a gesture of my deep love and respect for her. I’d like to give her a book with a strong, wise female character whom she might resemble. Do you have any suggestions?
Laurel…

At the risk of, um, tweeting our own horn, this month’s Paper Magazine singles out our own Thessaly La Force and Sadie Stein, plus Daily contributors Maud Newton and Emma Straub, as New York's most “influential, fun, and fabulous” Twitterers. Bu…

Our Southern Editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan, has gone and won himself a Pushcart Prize with his essay “Mister Lytle” from our fall issue. Richly deserved, we say! An excerpt: There had been different boys living at Lytle’s since not long afte…

Dear Mr. Stein,
This summer my husband and I will be taking a train from Portland, Oregon, to Whitefish, Montana. Can you recommend any novels set in that region? I’ve read Jim Harrison, Michael Dorris’s A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Stegner’s Angle …

My girlfriend insisted that I read some Philip Roth and gave me a copy of Portnoy’s Complaint. I can’t decide if I should keel over laughing because of its impeccable comedic timing or froth at the mouth because of its meticulous rendering of nearl…

This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Poetry goes to our contributor Kay Ryan for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. We featured Ryan in our winter 2008 issue. Click here to read one of her poems and here to read her Art of Poetry interview. Congratu…

I’m having trouble finding nature poems that deal with outer space (planets, galaxies, and weird phenomena like black holes, and so on). Has a true artist ever written on this theme? It would have to be someone with intellect and sensibility, not j…

Starting next month Jezebel fashion and arts correspondent Sadie Stein will join The Paris Review (and The Daily) as a contributing editor. Sadians stay tuned!

Come to Housing Works this evening to hear our poetry editor, Robyn Creswell, talk with New York Times critic (and culture diarist?) David Orr about his new book together with Sam Tanenhaus, Dwight Garner, Laura Miller, and Tree Swenson. On the FSG W…

I always tell people that my favorite book is Infinite Jest, and even though I haven’t gotten halfway through it, it’s still the best half of a book that I have ever read! Do you have any guilt from unread books floating around? Hmm. You mean book…

The Paris Review has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards: general excellence in a literary magazine, for our summer, fall, and winter issues and best essay or criticism for “Mister Lytle: An Essay,” by our Southern editor, John Jeremi…

Dear Mr. Stein,
I recently got back from Germany, where they’ve had Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 for months. After reading it (and already having read most of his other works several times), I’m interested in finding books by other authors that will cr…

As the late Édouard Levé once wrote, “I like watching anything shot on Super 8, even though that is in such predictable good taste.” We feel the same. So imagine our delight to discover this video of the melifluous and virtuosic Barry Yourgrau …

As readers of the Daily know, we don’t publish criticism. But over at his day job, our Southern Editor has written a deep review of David Foster Wallace’s posthumous novel, The Pale King—a review that is really an essay on Wallace and his peculiar pl…

“Writing about music is like cooking about architecture” is a quote that has been variously ascribed to Frank Zappa, Elvis Costello, and Brian Eno, but can you suggest any books that suggest contrariwise? Or should I set to work on that cassoule…

On Tuesday, April 12, The Paris Review will single out two young writers at its Spring Revel. April Ayers Lawson will receive the Review’s Plimpton Prize for “Virgin,” which appeared in our fall issue and marked Lawson's national debut. E…

For a long time now, we’ve been thinking that our friends over at The Awl should start a culture diary of their own—and now they have! And with no less an eminence than David Orr, poetry critic of The New York Times Book Review. Hot, hot, hot!

I really loved The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery and am looking to read more contemporary literature in translation. Are there any books you would recommend for starters? Well, I’m in the middle of a new translated novel that I can’…

Hello! I am a student. During my study time I should put my concentration to to study. But I can’t do it cuz of daydream. What should I do? —Anik Khan Hello there, my distant twin! Isn’t daydreaming insidious? For you it’s study time. For me it…

We are all very sad to hear that Open City magazine has closed up shop after twenty years of downtown glory. We looked up to them as big brothers- and sisters-in-arms. As Thessaly put it just now, every issue got you on its wavelength—and that …

Wasn’t this a nice morning surprise! Everyman Espresso, in Manhattan’s East Village, is giving away free coffee with every purchase of our winter issue. If you want your local café to stock the Review, tell them to get in touch. We’ll be happy to …

We just came across this interesting exchange between our poetry editor, Robyn Creswell, and the blogger known as The Angry Arab. TAA challenged Robyn to name “one important literary book written during the Sadat era.” Click here to see Robyn…

I’m remarrying at “a certain age.” My mother once said “You’d make some man a lovely wife if you weren’t a writer.” We can chortle at this or, do you think, we can agree that to have a life partner, male or female, hunkering down on a…

Is there an age requirement in submitting to magazines? I am seventeen years old, and I’ve wanted to be a professional writer since I was thirteen. I feel like I am ready to submit my work to publications like The Paris Review. But it seems like the …

What would you recommend as a good, raw novel/short story about characters with distorted sexuality? —Shira, Israel Distorted—such an interesting word! If I understand your question, you’re looking for fiction about characters who feel that thei…

At which New York City bars can one sit, read, write … and drink? Yes, all at the same time. —Charlie As you may have noticed, lower Manhattan has many more hospitable bars than hospitable cafés. This is especially true of my neighborhood, the …

I love books, like Nicholson Baker’s U & I and Ian Hamilton’s In Search of J. D. Salinger, that are as much explorations of one writer’s obsession with another as the critical studies or biographies they purport to be. Can you recommend anything el…

I love reading authors talking about their own reading experiences—it seems like such a beautiful way to understand how and why they write. I recently read Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting,” and I wa…

I would love to read a book with really excellent dialogue (as in, clever but recognizable as spontaneous human speech). I feel that reading good dialogue will both make me a better conversationalist and save me a lot of head banging in my living roo…

I am preparing to tackle Marcel Proust’s mammoth, his tomb of involuntary memories and I cannot decide on a translation. Should it be the original English translation by Moncrieff? Or the revision of Moncrieff by Kilmartin? Or the revision of the r…

Early readers of the Daily may remember a little set-to we had, back in June, with our friends at The Awl over our use of the word snuck. We had forgotten all about it, until we received an interesting item from special U.S. Open correspondent (a…

I have this compulsion where I read the first one hundred pages of a book, and then stack it on my bedside table. I never finish them—call me promiscuous. But I feel guilty not finishing books! What do you advise? —P. There’s nothing wrong w…

Jonathan Franzen has just given the deepest, most searching and revealing interview of his career. And we don’t mean on Oprah. You won’t find this interview on TV, on YouTube, or anywhere else on the Web. You can only find it in the winter issu…

I’m dating an athlete—more problematically, he’s a great watcher of sports. I was raised on football, so I have no problem screaming at the television with him when pass interference doesn't get called, but baseball and basketball leave me cold…

First The Paris Magazine, now this! We like to think of The Paris Review as the little magazine that launched a thousand little magazines. And yes, in our book, imaginary magazines count extra. We wish “The Oakland Review” a long and happy life .…

We just came up with a brilliant idea, if we do say so ourselves. For the first time ever, you can give our winter issue—plus a year’s subscription and a sexy new Paris Review T-shirt—in time for Christmas. Just order before December 20th and …

I finally started reading The Lord of the Rings. I love the films so much that my friend told me, “Oh, you’ll love the books.” Lies. I’m only one hundred pages in and already I think, Really? Another five-page song about a tree or something? …

Decorator and diarist Rita Konig was recently commissioned to design a model penthouse for Manhattan House, the white brick landmark on 66th Street. We attended the unveiling of Rita’s apartment and were delighted to discover The Paris Review occ…

Michel Houellebecq has finally received the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize. As Susannah Hunnewell suggested in our current issue, the honor is overdue. Click here to read the most in-depth interview with Houellebecq availab…

I was having this argument with my friend recently about award-winning novels. I find them stodgy and inaccessible. She thinks I’m not applying myself to the pages long enough to get it. In defense, I invoked a literary heavyweight—Martin Amis. …

Last week you asked for Hallowe’en reading. This week we asked our favorite cineaste, Richard Brody, to recommend a scary movie: Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face. It’s from 1960 and it’s still pretty damn creepy. It’s a mad-scientist sto…

Last night, ten writers “of exceptional talent and promise in early career” received $50,000 each from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. We proudly lay claim to two of them: Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, whose story, “Most Livable City,” appeared our…

I recently found myself craving some terrifying literature—the idea of reading something frightening feels so seasonally appropriate. That said, I’d like to avoid fiction that panders to generic tropes and also isn’t by Irving or Poe. Could you…

I'm a student at the Tisch School for the Arts in New York City, where I concentrate in writing for musical theater. I'd like to adapt a novella or short story for the stage and was hoping you might have some suggestions. Thanks,
Leslie Since yo…

Carla Cohen died yesterday. For twenty-six years she and her partner, Barbara Meade, ran what was and is the best bookstore in Washington, DC: Politics and Prose. They did it by being tireless and intrepid. They opened a café when that wasn’t an o…

Dear Lorin, I am giving my first ever “real” poetry reading in a few weeks. Whenever I go to readings, the writers are charming and chatty and tell stories in between selections of their work. How do you do that? I am not at all confident in my …

I always forget how giant Chicago is. How giant, how elegant, and how proud. Under Culture Commissioner Lois Weissberg, the city has come into possession of an exact replica of Maxim’s, the Paris restaurant, in the basement of a Gold Coast cond…

According to the timetable of the Capitol Limited, I spent exactly twenty-four hours and one minute in Pittsburgh. It felt, I am pleased to report, more like a week. In the first place, I met one of my literary heroes, Chuck Kinder. Chuck is a le…

I liked your response on what to give the person who has read everything. But what about the person who, well, fancies herself an “intellectual” (she goes to book parties at least) but doesn't read a damn thing! What will perk someone’s brain, …

The Paris Review Whistle-stop Tour of 2010 (aka The Choo-Choo Revue) got off to an intimate start Saturday at Politics and Prose. It was a shimmering semitropical September afternoon. The Washington sun was shining. So were the faces of the staff…

My ex-boyfriend’s birthday is fast approaching. He’s not just any ex—he’s The Ex, the one responsible for approximately ninety percent of my current taste in books, film, and music. We’re still friends, and I want to buy him a book, but I…

April Ayers Lawson’s short story “Virgin” appears in our new issue. It is Lawson’s first appearance in a magazine with national circulation. Last week she was kind enough to answer a few questions from her home in Greenville, South Carolina. In …

Which books would you recommend to a smart, bored, somewhat alienated teenage girl trapped in the suburbs?
—Alice The first recommendation that leaps to mind is Jean-Christophe Valtat’s novella 03—a book all about being a smart, bored, and extrem…

As Paris cultural institutions go, they're babies—but for the last two decades Les Inrockuptibles has been the great arbiter of Parisian pop cult. (Think Spin in its heyday, plus The Village Voice ditto, plus a music label and a funny accent.) Today …

Two days to go before we officially launch the fall issue—and with it, the redesigned Paris Review. We are told that copies have already arrived at a bookstore near us. Maybe also at one near you. For the curious, the contents include: inte…

Dear Readers of "Ask The Paris Review": Several of you have written in to enquire after my health. I'm touched by your solicitude ... and very sorry to have no advice for you this week. All of us here on White Street and at Tierra Innovation are s…

Any reading material for a pathologically shy 33-year-old woman? Who misses sex and fucking and making love and all that? Who even misses blowjobs. Who hasn't gone out with a man in ages? How do people even talk to each other anymore? I've forgotten.…

I'm young, poor, and unemployed in New York. I have no family connections, and my friends are all similarly destitute. I want an inspirational text; are there any novels about sympathetic social-striver types who pull themselves up by their own boots…

Is there a story or book that can shed light on whether a woman should sleep with men she doesn't love or know very well? Younger men, specifically? —A. Chesterfield You're in luck! This is pretty much the animating question behind French literatu…

In recent weeks I've been told by three separate (male) friends that I talk about sex perhaps a bit too freely. What should I read to restore my sense of conversational decency? —Gretchen, Berlin As Daniel Piepenbring observed earlier this week,…

Can you recommend any books that will make interesting people approach me if I read them on the subway? During A Moveable Feast, people came up and quoted entire passages verbatim, and it really enhanced the reading experience. —Alexandra Petri …

To MFA or not to MFA. That is the question. —D. G. It depends on how you feel about putting off the inevitable. That’s what writing programs are for—to give young writers one or two years of camaraderie before they face the market, where wri…

The Paris Review wishes to congratulate our contributor Damon Galgut, whose novel In a Strange Room has been nominated for the MAN Booker Prize. Click here to read the excerpt that ran in the Winter 2008 issue of The Paris Review.

I read a Richard Yates novel. And I'm fucking depressed. Like wow, what a downer. Give me something to cheer me up. —Jeff Swift Like, you can't get out of bed? Get someone to bring you the Jeeves novels of P.G. Wodehouse. They are extra-strength…

I'm looking for good books about New York to give as host/hostess gifts. What would you recommend? —Elizabeth P., New York City There is always E. B. White's little classic Here Is New York. The old edition is the one to buy for its beautiful jack…

Girls. I'm girl crazy. It's 'cause it's summer. I'd like to calm myself down. What should I do? —Ronnie Oh, Ronnie. One feels you. I take it you’ve tried self-love and cold showers? If all else fails and you hear the first garbage trucks and a…

It won't be news to aficionados, but this spring the gospel historian and producer Anthony Heilbut released a new compilation, How Sweet It Was: The Sights and Sounds of Gospel's Golden Age. A copy arrived last week at White Street. The CD contains s…

I need to buy a present for a thirteen-year-old boy. His parents suggested "a good book." This thirteen year-old is not that interested in literature, so I want this book to be a gateway to good, weird literature for him. Suggestions? —James in Pro…

We congratulate W. S. Merwin on being named Poet Laureate of the United States. Merwin published his first poem with the Review in 1955, and we have been proud to publish him ever since. Herewith, to celebrate his appointment (and for the pleasure of…

As we come to the end of Terry Southern Month—and our first month in operation—I wish to thank all of you who wrote in, whether on the comments page or privately, to say how much you love Southern's work. We had no idea how many other fans were o…

The Paris Review salutes Ben Sonnenberg, the founding editor of Grand Street, who died last Thursday at the age of seventy-three. He was a hero to many of us. Although Grand Street may never have had more than a few thousand subscribers, it was one o…

I am eternally that girl who guys want to be friends with, and I am fed up with it. Where can I turn to help me with my predicament? And don't say Jane Austen. —Jessica, New York City
I wasn’t going to say Jane Austen! I find her deeply, deeply…

We are delighted to announce that Robyn Creswell will join our masthead this fall as poetry editor. A critic, translator, and scholar, Robyn has written about contemporary poetry and fiction for Harper's magazine, The Nation, Raritan, n+1, and oth…

This morning we received a copy of The Paris Magazine, which bills itself as “The Poor Man's Paris Review” and has appeared exactly four times since its founding in 1967. This isn't very often for a quarterly magazine. Like a blazing comet with an …

You answered how to be an asshole. But how about what to do when you've been dealt one? In other words: I got dumped. Quick: where's the revenge section of the bookshop? —Greta, New York City In Patrick Hamilton's 1947 novel The Slaves of Solitud…

In the Spring 1959 issue, readers were introduced to "grand Guy Grand," a billionaire trickster who sows confusion wherever he goes. The story was adapted from Terry Southern's novel The Magic Christian, published later that year. In the late sixties…

It has been brought to our attention that June, 2010—Terry Southern Month—happens also to be the pub month for David Tully's critical bio "Terry Southern and the American Grotesque." A sample: Southern was a Southwestern humor variation on …

During the height of the Vietnam War, Michael O’Donoghue, the late editor of National Lampoon, asked Terry Southern to submit pieces to the magazine. O’Donoghue published this letter under the banner “#1 in a Series of Correspondence with Disting…

I am leaving my girlfriend and I keep trying to be “nice” about it, but I don't think it's helping either of us. In fact, it's just making this painful process take longer. I really need to be an asshole and steep myself in assholedom. Any sugges…

In the early eighties Terry Southern sent his Saturday Night Live collaborator Nelson Lyon an envelope containing three tabloid clippings and a letter written on ten sheets torn from a legal pad. Lyon calls this document “The Worm-ball Man Letter…

Chapeau! to the Parisians among the newly announced New Yorker 20. Chris Adrian, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, Nicole Krauss, Yiyun Li, and Wells Tower—we salute you! Further chapeaux to our colleagues at The New Yorker for assembling th…

I’m in a bad spot in my reading habits. I’ve been watching a lot of reality television, and I’ve cracked open half a dozen books, and abandoned them all. What would be good to get my reading mojo back?
—S. Johnson, New York City Elmore Leonard, Rum…

It’s buck season, the sun is defying all forecasts, the Vanity Fair softball team is atremble at the prospect of tonight’s grudge match, and to greet the arrival of summer we at The Paris Review Daily are hereby declaring June 2010 “Terry Southern …

To the Reader: Welcome to the The Paris Review Daily, a culture gazette brought to you by the editors of The Paris Review. Since its founding in 1953, The Paris Review has devoted itself to publishing “the good writers and good poets,” regardle…

Like many of you, we at the Review spend more and more time listening to podcasts. (We take longer doing the dishes, we do extra laps around the block, we keep one earbud in at the drugstore . . . ) So when the audio company Stitcher proposed that we make a podcast of our own, we threw on our headphones and got to work.

Our brand-new digital archive includes modern classics like “Goodbye, Columbus,” “The Basketball Diaries,” and “The Virgin Suicides” in their original form, and other groundbreaking works, by everyone from Adrienne Rich to Edward P. Jones to David Foster Wallace. 

For the cover of our sixtieth-anniversary issue, we asked the French artist JR to make a giant poster of George Plimpton’s face and paste it up on a wall in Paris, as a symbolic homecoming and a tribute to the patrie. 

There are two basic rules for running a literary quarterly: a) it should come out four times a year; b) after five or ten or fifteen years, with the passing of its generation, it should die. The Paris Review has failed to observe either of these rules. Fifty-nine years after George Plimpton and his friends launched their first issue, here we are, celebrating issue two hundred—nine years late, and with no plans on giving up the ghost.

Reader, we are constantly told that there aren’t enough of you anymore. Experience teaches us otherwise. Even “difficult” writing will find readers, if it is good, and if it comes from a trusted source. Growing up, our generation trusted The Paris Review because the editors knew contemporary writing in a cosmopolitan way. They followed their taste wherever it led and never lost the thrill of discovery. Our hope, as new editors of the Review, is that we will live up to their legacy and rival it, that being the best imitation there is.

When I was young, I thought Life: A User’s Manual would teach me how to live and Suicide: A User’s Manual how to die. I don’t really listen to what people tell me. I forget things I don’t like. I look down dead-end streets.