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The Paris Review, Issue 224, Spring 2018
Charles Johnson on the Art of Fiction: "A novel is a special site where philosophy and fiction can meet, and that's what I’m interested in." Elena Poniatowska on the Art of Fiction: "One does not develop a style. One develops oneself."
The second installment of a novel by Katharine Kilalea. New fiction by Kathleen Collins, Rachel Cusk, Danielle Dutton, Chia-Chia Lin, JoAnna Novak, and Joy Williams.
Poems by Peter Cole (with art by Terry Winters), Mónica de la Torre, Michael Hofmann, Ishion Hutchinson, Major Jackson, Nick Laird, Dorothea Lasky, Ange Mlinko, and Alejandra Pizarnik.
A portfolio by Etel Adnan.
The second installment of a novel by Katharine Kilalea. New fiction by Kathleen Collins, Rachel Cusk, Danielle Dutton, Chia-Chia Lin, JoAnna Novak, and Joy Williams.
Poems by Peter Cole (with art by Terry Winters), Mónica de la Torre, Michael Hofmann, Ishion Hutchinson, Major Jackson, Nick Laird, Dorothea Lasky, Ange Mlinko, and Alejandra Pizarnik.
A portfolio by Etel Adnan.
200 pages, Perfectbound
First published March 1, 2018
32 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 23, 2018
If I had to choose an issue highlight, it would probably be Cary Goldstein's "Art of Fiction" interview with Charles Johnson.
June 28, 2018
My first time reading an issue of the Paris review, I found it to be a lovely composition of art. Beautiful layout and design. The interviews are smart and intriguing.
April 23, 2018
Great choice for a 4 hour plane trip, excellent interviews with Elena Poniatowska and Charles Johnson, funny story about family jealousy by Rachel Cusk and my favorite was Practicing by Chia-Chia Lin, about a young girl learning to make shelters in the woods. We all need a safe place to escape to now and then...
April 8, 2018
Reading the NYT’s interview with John Lewis Gaddis this morning and he notes the genres he tends to avoid, which includes anything self-indulgent. In my opinion this issue is full of self-indulgent navel-gazing, the serialized novel being exhibit A. I quit partway through installment 2 as the narrator ruminates on a whole lot of nothing, reminiscent of Rachel Cusk’s serialized novel in last year’s issue. (Speaking of which, Cusk’s short story in which an interviewer engages in a soliloquy that would never happen in the real world is another fine example in this issue.) It’s unfortunate how much of this blather is dominating the publishing houses these days.
June 3, 2019
Some have criticized Rachel Cusk and Katherine Kilalea for their non-traditional representations here, and while I can certainly agree that these aren't for everyone, I found both to be fantastic. I’m eager to pick up some of Cusk’s work, and have already purchased O.K. Mr. Field in support of Kilalea. Quite frankly, I read the Paris Review to discover these divergences from the norm and might suggest that others looking for more standard fiction, like the also good ‘Practicing’ by Chia-Chia Lin, look to more traditional publications. That said, sure, the ‘navel-gazing’ can get tiresome, if indeed that’s what’s going on, but to suggest that Kilalea and Cusk are doing that here - contributing to a genre of self-indulgence - I feel is a sophomoric conclusion. More likely this metaphorical and introspective style is grating to readers specially seeking an easily defined plot, and should be consumed in smaller doses (if at all) than this issue provided.
The interview with Charles Johnson I found inspiring, and has encouraged me to shift away from the self-indulgent cash grab of publishable fiction to the more personal and meaningful writing unlikely to see the light of day - - in my own writing. (Alas, neither are likely to see the light of day).
The poetry this issue for me mostly missed, but I did quite like Michael Hoffman’s.
The interview with Charles Johnson I found inspiring, and has encouraged me to shift away from the self-indulgent cash grab of publishable fiction to the more personal and meaningful writing unlikely to see the light of day - - in my own writing. (Alas, neither are likely to see the light of day).
The poetry this issue for me mostly missed, but I did quite like Michael Hoffman’s.
October 13, 2018
Normally, I rate each story/interview I read and average it for my rating. And though the stories averaged about a 3, The Art of Fiction #239 interview of Charles Johnson is, alone, worth this issue.
Excerpts:
"A novel is a special site where philosophy and fiction can meet, and that's what I'm interested in. I'm not interested in writing novels for the sake of writing novels."
"The novel is capacious because it doesn't have a rigid form....There are rigid forms in genre fiction that you don't depart from, when you can't do everything. Like romance novels - they have very strict rules. But in a literary novel that's inventive, you can have stories within stories,...or forms within forms."
Excerpts:
"A novel is a special site where philosophy and fiction can meet, and that's what I'm interested in. I'm not interested in writing novels for the sake of writing novels."
"The novel is capacious because it doesn't have a rigid form....There are rigid forms in genre fiction that you don't depart from, when you can't do everything. Like romance novels - they have very strict rules. But in a literary novel that's inventive, you can have stories within stories,...or forms within forms."
May 16, 2020
Really enjoyed the Chia-Chia Lin, and the Cusk (not a shocker.) The Charles Johnson interview was really inspiring in some funny ways. I think I stopped to write notes about projects a dozen times as I read it.
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October 13, 2018My favorite story of the collection was Rachel Cusk's "Justice" The set up is intriguing and a bit odd and displaced. It's an interesting way to set up a plot for what is a very plot focused short story. And I was further intrigued by the use of distance to get at intimacy. There is very much a confessional nature to this story and yet it's mediated. There is almost two layers of performance to it. And the fact that this confession is delivered by the "interviewee," a person normally assigned to asking the questions instead of answer them, adds further intrigue and style to the story's content.
"'I imagined my husband at home in our house beside the canal, with our sons and his hobbies and his friends, and it seemed to me he might also be relieved,' she said, 'because over the two decades of our marriage, our male and female qualities had become blunted on one another. We lived together like sheep, grazing side by side, huddled next to one another in sleep, habituated and unthinking.'"
"'We had been married for twenty years,' she said, 'and he could easily live twenty more, the doctors had told him, each day losing some facet of his autonomy and potency, a reverse kind of evolution that would require him to pay back every single thing he had taken from life. And I, too, would have to pay,' she said, 'because the on thing that was forbidden to me was to desert him in his time of need, despite the fact that I no longer loved him and perhaps had never really loved him, and that, equally he might not have ever loved me either. This would be the last secret we had to keep,' she said, 'and the most important one, because if this secret got out, all the others would too, and the whole picture of life and of our children's lives we had made would be destroyed.'"
"'You asked me earlier,' she said to me, 'whether I believed that justice was merely a personal illusion. I don't have the answer to that,' she said, 'but I know that it is to be feared, feared in every part of you, even as it fells your enemies and crowns you the winner.'"
"Flour" by Joy Williams
"When the light changes and the truck accelerates, a dense cloud of black smoke erupts from the tailpipe. People spend more than a thousand dollars to customize their vehicles for this effect, which honors freedom and individuality. It takes a moment for the simple clarity of the air and sky to reassert itself."
Of the poems, I thoroughly enjoyed Monica de la Torre's "Boxed In" and Dorothea Lasky's "A Hospital Room' which had the lines below that continue to mystify and haunt me.
"Eagle wrapped around this disaster for so many years
Nothing more unnerving than being a thing"
"'I imagined my husband at home in our house beside the canal, with our sons and his hobbies and his friends, and it seemed to me he might also be relieved,' she said, 'because over the two decades of our marriage, our male and female qualities had become blunted on one another. We lived together like sheep, grazing side by side, huddled next to one another in sleep, habituated and unthinking.'"
"'We had been married for twenty years,' she said, 'and he could easily live twenty more, the doctors had told him, each day losing some facet of his autonomy and potency, a reverse kind of evolution that would require him to pay back every single thing he had taken from life. And I, too, would have to pay,' she said, 'because the on thing that was forbidden to me was to desert him in his time of need, despite the fact that I no longer loved him and perhaps had never really loved him, and that, equally he might not have ever loved me either. This would be the last secret we had to keep,' she said, 'and the most important one, because if this secret got out, all the others would too, and the whole picture of life and of our children's lives we had made would be destroyed.'"
"'You asked me earlier,' she said to me, 'whether I believed that justice was merely a personal illusion. I don't have the answer to that,' she said, 'but I know that it is to be feared, feared in every part of you, even as it fells your enemies and crowns you the winner.'"
"Flour" by Joy Williams
"When the light changes and the truck accelerates, a dense cloud of black smoke erupts from the tailpipe. People spend more than a thousand dollars to customize their vehicles for this effect, which honors freedom and individuality. It takes a moment for the simple clarity of the air and sky to reassert itself."
Of the poems, I thoroughly enjoyed Monica de la Torre's "Boxed In" and Dorothea Lasky's "A Hospital Room' which had the lines below that continue to mystify and haunt me.
"Eagle wrapped around this disaster for so many years
Nothing more unnerving than being a thing"
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews