The Paris Review, Issue 183, Winter 2007

by Philip Gourevitch (Editor)

Kenzaburo Oe on winning the Nobel Prize: “One earns a kind of currency that one can use in a much wider realm. But for the author, nothing changes.”

New fiction: Jesse Ball on early death, György Dragomán on the end of the world, and Graham Joyce on war.

New poems by Louise Glück, Steven Gizitsky, and Bob Hicok.

Liao Yiwu returns to China's lower depths: “Everyone stood up and began to applaud rhythmically while saying in unison, The communal kitchen is good, we have excellent food. Before their slogan shouting ended, several people collapsed to the floor—they were too weak to stand up for so long.”

Plus photographs by Nicolás Haro and a debut story from Alistair Morgan.

202 pages, Perfectbound

First published December 1, 2008

About the author

Gourevitch was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to painter Jacqueline Gourevitch and philosophy professor Victor Gourevitch, a translator of Jean Jacques Rousseau. He and his brother Marc, a physician, spent most of their childhood in Middletown, Connecticut, where their father taught at Wesleyan University from 1967 to 1995. Gourevitch graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Gourevitch knew that he wanted to be a writer by the time he went to college. He attended Cornell University. He took a break for three years in order to concentrate fully on writing. He eventually graduated in 1986. In 1992 he received a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction from the Writing Program at Columbia University. Gourevitch went on to publish some short fiction in literary magazines, before turning to non-fiction.

Reviews

[Priscilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay issue. Bought it because it was $10 and had Louise Gluck poems. I’m finding with most Paris reviews I read, the last piece is always the heaviest hitter.

[Chris Gager · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the Winter of 2007 - another rescued book. This one has Kenzaburo Oe(interview), and Louise Gluck(poet) for authors I've actually heard of and a bunch of strangers to me. We'll see! the last one I read was pretty good. If you need to see the cover image search Icebergs by Alistair Morgan ...

Started with a SS by S. African(I assume) writer Alistair Morgan. Then poems by Bob Hicok and now an interview with Kenzaburo Oe. Good stuff so far!

Finished the Oe interview. Now I have to read one of his books!

Photographic essay by Nicholas Haro about Los Pequenos in Spain - dwarf comic bullfighters! Then a couple of amusing interview/encounters in China by Liao Yiwu and five poems by Louise Gluck. Interesting but rather melancholy...

Next up: a First Gulf War story from Brit author Graham Joyce: "An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen."

Last night - a short story("End of the World") about the bleak life inside that "Iron Curtain." Written by Gyorgy Dragoman - translated from Hungarian.

Finished up yesterday with poems by Steven Gizitsky and a very weird and nasty tale by Jesse Ball: "The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp and Carr." Well-crafted but about what exactly I couldn't say.