#AmyHempel does not enjoy interviews. She quotes her friend Patty Marx: “I’m not good at small talk; I’m not good at big talk; and medium talk just doesn’t come up.” Talking about the self is both unseemly and unnerving, she feels, and dissecting her own deliberate process of composition through, in her words, “pointy-headed questions,” tends to provoke her exasperation...
Interviewed by Paul Winner
in #ParisReview 166, Sum2003
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/227/the-art-of-fiction-no-176-amy-hempel

“There are two perfumes to a book.
If a book is new, it smells great.
If a book is old, it smells even better.
It smells like ancient Egypt.
A book has got to smell.”

#RayBradbury vis #ParisReview #bookstodon

https://theparisreview.org/interviews/6012/the-art-of-fiction-no-203-ray-bradbury?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-parisreview&utm_content=later-36583758&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkin.bio

"I have a theory that people who don’t read much before the age of fourteen never fully develop areas in the brain that process text into images or experiences. If you become a serious reader only in college, you interpret everything analytically. I sometimes see this in academic critics—they’re so intelligent, and yet something eludes them."

Brilliant take by Olga Tokarczuk in the #ParisReview #ArtOfFiction258 #Literature #Learning #ReadingIsFundamental

Can’t get James Lasdun’s story “Helen” out of my head (latest Paris Review). Best short fiction I’ve read in months. #parisreview #jameslasdon

Can’t get James Lasdun’s story “Helen” out of my head (latest Paris Review). Best short fiction I’ve read in months. #parisreview #jameslasdon

The Paris Review - Camus’s New York Diary, 1946 - The Paris Review

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/03/14/camuss-new-york-diary-1946/ #ParisReview #Existentialism

Interview with the marvellous Jane Gardam #janegardam #parisreview #oldfilth https://theparisreview.org/interviews/7878/the-art-of-fiction-no-251-jane-gardam

This piece, comparing Leonard Cohen (quite positively) to Bob Dylan using the lyrics of "I'm Your Man," gets to the core of why Leonard was able to connect with people (not just women) right to the very end of his life.

The Paris Review - Love Songs: “I’m Your Man”
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/02/14/love-songs-im-your-man/

#leonardcohen #bobdylan #parisreview

"Have you ever smoked a cigarette in a small room...? Cigarette smoke is distilled in the lungs, and upon exhalation, the nicotine adheres to the moisture in the environment, the droplets land, the nicotine is absorbed, and the poison never leaves. The interior of the house had a layer of nicotine varnish that made everything sepia and gross. You cannot scrub this stuff off anything except, maybe, stainless steel." Ottessa Moshfegh, "The Smoker"

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/02/07/the-smoker/?mc_cid=92ad0102cb&mc_eid=26d4e3eb79

#ParisReview #Smoking

"Have you ever smoked a cigarette in a small room...? Cigarette smoke is distilled in the lungs, and upon exhalation, the nicotine adheres to the moisture in the environment, the droplets land, the nicotine is absorbed, and the poison never leaves. The interior of the house had a layer of nicotine varnish that made everything sepia and gross. You cannot scrub this stuff off anything except, maybe, stainless steel."

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/02/07/the-smoker/?mc_cid=92ad0102cb&mc_eid=26d4e3eb79

#ParisReview #Smoking

"Cigarette smoke is distilled in the lungs, and upon exhalation, the nicotine adheres to the moisture in the environment, the droplets land, the nicotine is absorbed, and the poison never leaves. The interior of the house had a layer of nicotine varnish that made everything sepia and gross. You cannot scrub this stuff off anything except, maybe, stainless steel."

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/02/07/the-smoker/?mc_cid=92ad0102cb&mc_eid=26d4e3eb79

#ParisReview #Smoking

On the Bus with Pavement: Tour Diary

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/01/26/on-the-bus-with-pavement-tour-diary/?mc_cid=036b42659d&mc_eid=26d4e3eb79

#music #parisreview

The #ParisReview "daily" seems stuck on 1/24. 😞

Way way back, before the big bang...
I studied piano with a Scriabin scholar: He was already in Who's Who. I certainly wasn't ignorant of Scriabin before college, but try playing one of his pieces. 🙄
To make sense of this, you'd have to read something by George Plimpton before he ran the #ParisReview - Maybe like "The Bogey Man", except trying to play piano. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263834.The_Bogey_Man I can't beleive they only gave it 3.68 stars. no no no, at least 4 now come on

re: #literature #ParisReview

“INTERVIEWER:
So, for example, does what you’re reading influence what you write?

OZICK:
Not precisely. I read in order to find out what I need to know: To illuminate the riddle.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2693/the-art-of-fiction-no-95-cynthia-ozick?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-parisreview&utm_content=later-31622870&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkin.bio

Well, I can relate to this because I've been having this trembly feeling for at least eight months:

"Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through." #JoanDidion
#ParisReview

#writing
#WritingCommunity

I loved this interview in the Paris Review. #ParisReview
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7929/the-art-of-fiction-no-255-helen-garner

“For something of this longing will, like the blue of distance, only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition and arrival…”

Another charming article from the ‘Hue’s Hue’ column of the #ParisReview. This time, on #Marian #blue.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/06/marian-blue-color-angels-virgins-untouchable-things/

One of the more unusual columns in the #ParisReview, but one I enjoyed tremendously: ‘Hue’s Hue’, all about specific colours, their history and meanings. I particularly enjoyed this article on #Verdigris, touching on the Statue of Liberty, #DaVinci, Farrow & Ball and more.

“To use verdigris was to accept that your lovingly rendered scene would one day sour…Such is the nature of beauty.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/11/24/verdigris-the-color-of-oxidation-statues-and-impermanence/

What I read in October 2022. #amreading #parisreview #ladychurchillsrosebudwristlet #marissalingen #jimharrison #poetry