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The Paris Review Issue 251
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya on the Art of Fiction: “Don’t you know my life story by now? I don’t experience fear.”
Margo Jefferson on the Art of Criticism: “You can be willing to be wrong if you have enough confidence in your brain.”
Prose by Amie Barrodale, A. M. Homes, Marie NDiaye, Domenico Starnone, Miriam Toews, and Zheng Zhi.
Poetry by Abigail Dembo, Nora Fulton, Susan Howe, D. A. Powell, Nasser Rabah, Edward Salem, and Nanna Storr-Hansen.
Art by Em Kettner, Agosto Machado, and Lady Shalamar Montague; cover by Anna Weyant.
Margo Jefferson on the Art of Criticism: “You can be willing to be wrong if you have enough confidence in your brain.”
Prose by Amie Barrodale, A. M. Homes, Marie NDiaye, Domenico Starnone, Miriam Toews, and Zheng Zhi.
Poetry by Abigail Dembo, Nora Fulton, Susan Howe, D. A. Powell, Nasser Rabah, Edward Salem, and Nanna Storr-Hansen.
Art by Em Kettner, Agosto Machado, and Lady Shalamar Montague; cover by Anna Weyant.
228 pages, Paperback
First published March 18, 2025
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33 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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April 24, 2025My favorite prose pieces in this issue were "A Truce That Is Not Peace" by Miriam Toews and "Monsieur Matin" by Marie Ndiaye (trans. from French by Jordan Stump). The piece about the supreme court justices in the post-society bunker will stick with me for awhile as well. The interview with Margo Jefferson is lovely. The interview with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was lovely too, but less gentle.
May 8, 2025
The Art of Criticism No. 6 - Margo Jefferson, Three Stories - Domenico Starnone
April 20, 2025
I liked the interview with Petrushevskaya and “A Truce That Is Not Peace”
November 23, 2025
QUOTES:
# from https://www.theparisreview.org/fictio...
- Amie Barrodale
"You want to talk about love," Clarence thought. "I was a person forever in love, forever unrequited. Jacking off to memories of glances. The ones I thought were my big loves at the time? In retrospect I can see they were just an elaborate form of striving.
Wanting to be in an imagined social place, feeling an imagined way. That's romantic love, at least for this young man. Of course, none of that's calculated. It's all very innocent, very visual. So for me it culminated in what? The bitch. I liked bitches.
#### interview with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
What else was I supposed to do in all those orphanages and san-atoriums? Every night before bed I'd tell the whole ward a scary story— the kind that makes people hold their breath, which is the only kind of story that people really listen to. Humor doesn't cut it, or romance, or lyricism-no, no, no. Only terror works.
- maybe look up music of Novella Matveyeva
There is a cloud above the earth, above our world, that contains all ideas. The cloud receives all of humanity's thoughts, and not only that, it produces more thoughts and then sends them back down to Earth again. Everything we write passes through the cloud -all our music, everything we call art. I believe that each of my stories was sent to me.
# from https://www.theparisreview.org/fictio...
- Zheng Zhi
We climb upward all our lives, until finally we're at the tip, the narrowest point. I said, Where have you climbed to? He said, The turning point-it's all dust here. But you have to keep climb-ing. In this family, you and I have the most to say. Haven't you real-ized? Even though you have trouble talking.
#### from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
- Danielle A. Jackson
In the novel, fish does not refer to a seafaring creature, but to the quality, the essence of being fish, which is Black gay slang for real-live woman. In the disco-and drug-fueled seventies and early eighties, some transgender sex workers smeared themselves with fish oil, insisting that they'd smell more authentic — more like the fleshy parts of people born biologically female. Nettie also took inspiration from Jean Toomer, using an excerpt from one of his poems for the novel's epigraph: "The human fish is intricate and hidden; the appearance of his fins are deceptive."
"It was a wandering life," Nettie writes, in the afterword published in Fish Tales's newest edition. The slim novel has no filler, none of the laborious context-setting that many editors demand. It simply moves from moment to moment, from obstacle to pleasure and back again. The way human beings, Black, female, and everything else, actually live.
# from https://preview.theparisreview.org/in...
- Margo Jefferson
Or it does, but the point is the maintenance of this implacably correct world. Now, within that, you could be naughty and give dinner parties where some woman would descend from the ceiling in a basket and everybody would have a great time. There's that kind of upper-middle-class wantonness. We can do what we want when the world is ours.
Not defensiveness. You knew that the caste marks of race were on you, but because of the shelter of being economically and socially upper middle class—and that was a shelter-you also always knew that you had as much as the white kids did. Of course, that security could get rattled, it could get shaken by all kinds of remarks or exchanges, which weren't always meant to be cruel.
I'm very aware of when any writer's rhythm is too much for me. It's pushing me off or it's making me feel a little shallow, or demanding that I submit in some way that I don't want to.
Interviewer Hilton Als
- I find that I wish that they would not write in absolutes, which is something that you don't do at all.
I was certainly interested in how you can write interestingly— and with some kind of authority-ambivalently. Because I wasn't always sure. So how do you find ways to give order to uncertainty, to conflicted feelings? I would periodically take on writers like Fitzgerald for some centenary piece, so I could test my interest and my commitment and, in some cases, my love.
That's partly because I'm a writer. You do have to hold on. If something has offered you what you hadn't had or hadn't been before, then it's worth remembering. It's worth holding on to.
# from https://www.theparisreview.org/fictio...
- Amie Barrodale
"You want to talk about love," Clarence thought. "I was a person forever in love, forever unrequited. Jacking off to memories of glances. The ones I thought were my big loves at the time? In retrospect I can see they were just an elaborate form of striving.
Wanting to be in an imagined social place, feeling an imagined way. That's romantic love, at least for this young man. Of course, none of that's calculated. It's all very innocent, very visual. So for me it culminated in what? The bitch. I liked bitches.
#### interview with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
What else was I supposed to do in all those orphanages and san-atoriums? Every night before bed I'd tell the whole ward a scary story— the kind that makes people hold their breath, which is the only kind of story that people really listen to. Humor doesn't cut it, or romance, or lyricism-no, no, no. Only terror works.
- maybe look up music of Novella Matveyeva
There is a cloud above the earth, above our world, that contains all ideas. The cloud receives all of humanity's thoughts, and not only that, it produces more thoughts and then sends them back down to Earth again. Everything we write passes through the cloud -all our music, everything we call art. I believe that each of my stories was sent to me.
# from https://www.theparisreview.org/fictio...
- Zheng Zhi
We climb upward all our lives, until finally we're at the tip, the narrowest point. I said, Where have you climbed to? He said, The turning point-it's all dust here. But you have to keep climb-ing. In this family, you and I have the most to say. Haven't you real-ized? Even though you have trouble talking.
#### from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...
- Danielle A. Jackson
In the novel, fish does not refer to a seafaring creature, but to the quality, the essence of being fish, which is Black gay slang for real-live woman. In the disco-and drug-fueled seventies and early eighties, some transgender sex workers smeared themselves with fish oil, insisting that they'd smell more authentic — more like the fleshy parts of people born biologically female. Nettie also took inspiration from Jean Toomer, using an excerpt from one of his poems for the novel's epigraph: "The human fish is intricate and hidden; the appearance of his fins are deceptive."
"It was a wandering life," Nettie writes, in the afterword published in Fish Tales's newest edition. The slim novel has no filler, none of the laborious context-setting that many editors demand. It simply moves from moment to moment, from obstacle to pleasure and back again. The way human beings, Black, female, and everything else, actually live.
# from https://preview.theparisreview.org/in...
- Margo Jefferson
Or it does, but the point is the maintenance of this implacably correct world. Now, within that, you could be naughty and give dinner parties where some woman would descend from the ceiling in a basket and everybody would have a great time. There's that kind of upper-middle-class wantonness. We can do what we want when the world is ours.
Not defensiveness. You knew that the caste marks of race were on you, but because of the shelter of being economically and socially upper middle class—and that was a shelter-you also always knew that you had as much as the white kids did. Of course, that security could get rattled, it could get shaken by all kinds of remarks or exchanges, which weren't always meant to be cruel.
I'm very aware of when any writer's rhythm is too much for me. It's pushing me off or it's making me feel a little shallow, or demanding that I submit in some way that I don't want to.
Interviewer Hilton Als
- I find that I wish that they would not write in absolutes, which is something that you don't do at all.
I was certainly interested in how you can write interestingly— and with some kind of authority-ambivalently. Because I wasn't always sure. So how do you find ways to give order to uncertainty, to conflicted feelings? I would periodically take on writers like Fitzgerald for some centenary piece, so I could test my interest and my commitment and, in some cases, my love.
That's partly because I'm a writer. You do have to hold on. If something has offered you what you hadn't had or hadn't been before, then it's worth remembering. It's worth holding on to.
December 17, 2025
Good stories:
- Walter, Like Water by A.M. Homes - aware of its place in the ridiculousness of California, inward reflection of a flawed, passive protagonist.
- A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews - also passivity with a dark humour. Mental health, suicide, healing in the end.
Some quotes from the latter:
“Between the beginning and the end of civilization, the Parthenons and the pelting of stones, is the narrow corridor, the spit of land, where writing lives.”
“Narrative as something dirty, to be avoided——I understand this. Failure *is* the story, but the story itself is also failure.”
Decent: Three Stories by Domenico Starnone - dealing with teachers, teaching in contemporary Italy
Interesting poems:
- The Common Era by Abigail Dembo
- The War Is Over by Nasser Rabah
- La Comédie-Française by Nora Fulton - this last one is enigmatic, terse, might be worth returning to in the future.
Two interesting write-ups about the contemporary Russian writer [[Ludmilla Petrushevskaya]] and the writer-critic [[Margo Jefferson]].
- Walter, Like Water by A.M. Homes - aware of its place in the ridiculousness of California, inward reflection of a flawed, passive protagonist.
- A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews - also passivity with a dark humour. Mental health, suicide, healing in the end.
Some quotes from the latter:
“Between the beginning and the end of civilization, the Parthenons and the pelting of stones, is the narrow corridor, the spit of land, where writing lives.”
“Narrative as something dirty, to be avoided——I understand this. Failure *is* the story, but the story itself is also failure.”
Decent: Three Stories by Domenico Starnone - dealing with teachers, teaching in contemporary Italy
Interesting poems:
- The Common Era by Abigail Dembo
- The War Is Over by Nasser Rabah
- La Comédie-Française by Nora Fulton - this last one is enigmatic, terse, might be worth returning to in the future.
Two interesting write-ups about the contemporary Russian writer [[Ludmilla Petrushevskaya]] and the writer-critic [[Margo Jefferson]].
June 23, 2025
Not one of the better issues. The Miriam Toews piece was worth the sticker price. The Crystal Palace piece about current US Supreme Court justices post apocalypse is mildly amusing but forgettable. The interview sections were good to read but no new insights in them. On balance, a light issue.
November 7, 2025
Best stories: The Hedgehog by Zheng Zhi and A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews. Truly standout. Loved the trio of stories by Domenico Starnone as well. Overall I did not find the poetry in this issue particularly compelling, but it's a matter of personal taste.
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June 12, 2025Loved the final story, “A Truce That is Not Peace” - so much so I was reading it while walking. That’s when you know !
July 19, 2025
A. M. Homes "Walter, Like Water"
Miriam Toews "A Truce That Is Not Peace"
Miriam Toews "A Truce That Is Not Peace"
August 5, 2025
I didn't enjoy any of the stories, poems, or art in this issue. The interview with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was funny and engaging, though, and saved this from only getting one star!
August 6, 2025
Two stars at least for the interviews, as basically always, but I found everything else in this issue pretty much unreadable. Disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews