The Paris Review, Issue 240, Summer 2022

by Emily Stokes (Editor)

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o on the Art of Fiction: "Often you can see things that the reader from the colonizing country cannot see. Your perspective is different."

Sigrid Nuñez on the Art of Fiction: "I grope my way forward blindly. The less you know about what's going to happen, the more room there is for your imagination."

Prose by Esther Yi, Rachel B. Glaser, Leonard Cohen, and Emma Cline.

Poetry by Terrance Hayes, Katrina Haddad, Jeet Thayil, and Elisa Gonzalez.

Art by Marc Hundley.

Cover by Stanley Whitney.

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories, Fiction

248 pages, Perfectbound

First published June 1, 2022

Reviews

[Kira L'Dante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, Emma Cline really wrote a story about an ex-alcoholic LA scriptwriter cheating on his spouse - truly groundbreaking stuff!

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Harder #15 Read a new to you literary magazine. Eclectic collection of short stories and poetry. An interview with Sigrid Nuñez. I’ve read two of her books, interesting.The writing was very good.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first time reading a literary journal like this, and surely not the last! A great way to get exposed to some modern poetry, a major blind spot for me, and other new fiction writers I might not have taken a chance on. I especially loved the Esther Yi and Emma Cline stories.

[Amie]

I love love loved Moon by Esther Yi. Will be following that person now. The two interviews were good. Terrance Hayes' poem and the poem by Chard deNiord I liked. I liked Riccardo by Dan Bevacqua. Some of the other pieces I actively disliked !

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interview was interesting and the stories were superb.

[Adrian Doan]

Perhaps overly dry pieces of prose. Dispassionate (not quite the right word) snapshots of modern Americans. The interviews were incredible. A couple enjoyable poems.

[Harris Walker · Rating 1 out of 5]

This issue is worth buying for the interview with Sigrid Nunez alone. But whilst the poetry is more accessible than one might usually find, I had a problem with the prose pieces all being similar. I found they were mostly a kind of American write-it-as-you-see-it, dry observations, shallow-ish, a succession of prosaic passages that begged you to find them charming: I didn't find it possible to do that either with the writing or any of the characters. Paris Review is great but this one was a bit of a slog