The Paris Review: Difference between revisions

*The Paris Review*
	File:Paris Review No.9 Summer 1955.jpg The Paris Review, Summer 1955
Editor	Lorin Stein
Categories	Art, culture, interviews, literature
Frequency	Quarterly
Publisher	Antonio Weiss
First issue	Spring 1953
Company	The Paris Review Foundation
Country	United States
Based in	New York City
Language	English
Website	wwww.theparisreview.org
ISSN	0031-2037

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The Paris Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. Plimpton edited the Review from its founding until his death in 2003. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Adrienne Rich, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Jean Genet, and Robert Bly, and it has since become one of the world's leading outlets for emerging and established writers.

The Review's highly regarded Writers at Work series has showcased interviews with Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, T. S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bishop, and Vladimir Nabokov, among many others, and has been called "one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world."^[1]

The Paris Review is currently edited by Lorin Stein.

History

The Paris Review was founded in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. A simple editorial statement, penned in the inaugural issue by William Styron, stated the magazine's aim: "The Paris Review hopes to emphasize creative work—fiction and poetry—not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines. […] I think The Paris Review should welcome these people into its pages: the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they're good."^[2]

The Review's founding editors include William Pène du Bois, Thomas Guinzburg, Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton, and John P. C. Train. The first publisher was Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. George Plimpton was the publication's editor until his death in 2003. Du Bois, the magazine’s first art editor, designed the iconic Paris Review eagle to include both American and French significance: an American eagle holding a pen and wearing a Phrygian cap.

The magazine’s first office was located in a small room of the publishing house Éditions de la Table ronde. Staff members of The Paris Review were not given keys to the office, so those who worked late would have to climb out of the window, hang from the ledge, and jump, often mistaken for burglars by passing gendarmes. Other legendary locations of The Paris Review include a Thames River Grain Carrier anchored on the Seine from 1956 to 1957, where editorial conferences were punctuated by jam sessions by musicians such as Alan Eager, Chet Baker, Peter Duchin, Kenny Clarke and David Amram. For practical reasons the office was soon relocated, owing in no small part to the lack of telephone communication. The Café de Tournon in the rue de Tournon on the Rive Gauche was the meeting place for staffers and writers, including du Bois, Plimpton, Matthiessen, Alexander Trocchi, Christopher Logue and Eugene Walter.

The first-floor and basement rooms in George Plimpton's 72nd Street apartment became the headquarters of The Paris Review when the magazine moved from Paris to New York City in 1973.

In 2005 The Paris Review was accused by the Underground Literary Alliance of exercising covert influence over the editorial policy of The London Review of Books.^[3] In 2007, an article published by the New York Times supported the claim that founding editor Peter Matthiessen was in the CIA, but stated that the magazine was used as a cover, rather than a collaborator, for his spying activities.^[4] In a May 27, 2008 interview with Charlie Rose, Matthiessen stated that he "invented The Paris Review as cover" for himself when a CIA agent.^[5]

The Review has consistently introduced the leading writers of the day. Adrienne Rich was first published in its pages, as were Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward P. Jones, and Rick Moody. Selections from Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy appeared in the fifth issue, one of his first publications in English. The magazine was also among the first to recognize the work of Jack Kerouac with the publication of his short story, "The Mexican Girl," in 1955. Other milestones of contemporary literature, now widely anthologized, also made their first appearance in The Paris Review: Italo Calvino's Last Comes the Raven, Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus, Donald Barthelme's Alice, Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries, Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga, Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.

Time magazine has hailed The Paris Review as "The biggest 'little magazine' in history," and Margaret Atwood said "The Paris Review is one of the few truly essential literary magazines of the 20th century—and now of the 21st."

The Paris Review accepts, year-round, submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art. Submissions are accepted only by postal mail. Submission guidelines are available on The Paris Review's website.

Interview Series

The interviews in The Paris Review […] are about as canonical, in our literary universe, as spoken words can be. They long ago set the standard […] for what well-brewed conversation should sound like on the page.

Dwight Garner, The New York Times ^[6]

An interview with E. M. Forster—an acquaintance of Plimpton's from his days at King's College, Cambridge—became the first in a long series of now-legendary author interviews. Now known as the Writers at Work series, the Paris Review interviews quickly became a trademark of the magazine, lauded for their groundbreaking insights into the life and craft of the writer. Despite their venerable history, some of the interviews succeeded almost in spite of themselves: Graham Greene’s interview almost ended before it began when one of the interviewers turned up hungover and threw up in his hat on Greene’s doorstep; Nabokov's was cut short when Jeopardy! came on.

Early interview subjects include W. H. Auden, John Berryman, Saul Bellow, Jorge Luis Borges, William S. Burroughs, Truman Capote, John Cheever, Joan Didion, Isak Dinesen, T. S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Marianne Moore, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Dorothy Parker, Harold Pinter, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Evelyn Waugh, E. B. White, William Carlos Williams, P. G. Wodehouse.

More recent interviews include Woody Allen, Maya Angelou, John Ashbery, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Ray Bradbury, Joseph Brodsky, Raymond Carver, R. Crumb, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, Jonathan Franzen, William Gaddis, Seamus Heaney, Michel Houellebecq, Eugene Ionesco, Milan Kundera, Fran Lebowitz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ian McEwan, Arthur Miller, David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Stephen Sondheim, Susan Sontag, George Steiner, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Print Series

In 1964 The Paris Review initiated a series of prints and posters by major contemporary artists with the goal of establishing an ongoing relationship between the worlds of writing and art^[7]—Drue Heinz, then publisher of The Paris Review, shares credit with Jane Wilson for initiating the series. In the half century since its inception, the series has featured many of the leading artists to pass through New York in the postwar decades—from Louise Bourgeois to William de Kooning to David Hockney, Helen Frankenthaler, Keith Haring, Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol.^[8]

The series was suspended after George Plimpton's death in 2003. A relaunch is planned for April 2011.

The Magazine Today

Our generation grew up with the Review as a fact of life. It was America’s literary magazine. To our minds, it still is. It has launched our favorite writers. It has made a special claim for the quarterly as such, being both timely and lasting, free of the news of the day or the pressure to please a crowd. Most of all, the Review has shown, repeatedly, that works of imagination can be as stylish and urgent as the flashiest feature reporting, and can do more to refocus our picture of the world.

Lorin Stein, The Paris Review, Fall 2010 ^[9]

Philip Gourevitch was chosen in by the Review's board of directors as George Plimpton's successor in 2005. Gourevitch had previously garnered accolades as a staff writer at The New Yorker and as the author of A Cold Case (2001) and We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (1998), the latter of which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. Under Gourevitch's leadership, the Review began incorporating more nonfiction pieces and, for the first time, began regularly publishing a photography spread. The Paris Review also announced, in 2006, the publication of a four-volume set of Paris Review interviews. The Paris Review Interviews, Volumes I-IV were published by Picador from 2006–2009. Gourevitch announced his departure in the fall of 2009, citing a desire to concentrate more fully on his writing.^[10]^[11]^[12]

Lorin Stein was appointed editor of The Paris Review in April 2010. The subsequent redesign of the magazine's print edition and website were both met with critical acclaim.^[13]^[14]^[15] The Review also made available online its entire archive of interviews.^[16]

The new staff of The Paris Review includes Robyn Creswell (Poetry Editor), Thessaly La Force (Web Editor), Charlotte Strick (Art Editor), and John Jeremiah Sullivan (Southern Editor).^[17] Their goal is to rededicate the magazine to its original mission of promoting "fiction, poetry, belles lettres, essays."^[18] La Force has also increased the magazine's web presence, both through its website and through social-media outlets.

In June we started an online arts gazette called The Paris Review Daily. […] But the core of our business, as long as I'm editor, is going to be putting out a paper magazine. […] We want the reader to be absorbed. It's not a thing to skim; it's a thing to read and to really get lost in. It's a refuge.
— Lorin Stein, September 2010 ^[19]

Prizes

Three prizes are awarded annually by the editors of The Paris Review: the Paris Review Hadada, the Plimpton Prize, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor. Winning selections are celebrated at the annual Spring Revel. No application form is required. Instead, winners are selected from the stories and poems published the previous year in The Paris Review.

The Paris Review Hadada — a bronze statuette to be "awarded annually to a distinguished member of the literary community who has demonstrated a strong and unique commitment to literature."^[20] The award may go to a writer, reader, editor, publisher, publication, or organization. Past winners include John Ashbery, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton, Barney Rosset, William Styron, and, most recently, Philip Roth.
The Plimpton Prize — $10,000 (and an engraved ostrich egg) awarded for the best work of fiction or poetry by an emerging or previously unpublished writer. Recent winners include Caitlin Horrocks, Alistair Morgan, Jesse Ball, and Benjamin Percy.
The Terry Southern Prize for Humor

Previous Paris Review awards include the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Bernard F. Conners Prize for Poetry. A complete list of previous winners can be found on The Paris Review's website.

Notable Contributors

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References

^ Joe David Bellamy, Literary luxuries: American writing at the end of the millennium, p. 213
^ William Styron, The Paris Review No. 1, pp. 11–12
^ Cummings, Richard (2005-05-23). "The Fiction of the State". Underground Literary Alliance. Retrieved 2007-01-20.
^ McGee, Celia (2007-01-13). "The Burgeoning Rebirth of a Bygone Literary Star". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-01-15.
^ Matthiessen, Peter (2008-05-27). "The Charlie Rose Show". 15:30-15:41 of interview. pp. 15:30-15:41 of interview. Retrieved 2008-09-14. I went there as a CIA agent, to Paris... I invented The Paris Review as cover.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
^ Paris Review Editor Frees Menagerie of Wordsmiths, The New York Times
^ The Paris Review Print Series, The Paris Review
^ The Paris Review Print Series, The Paris Review
^ Lorin Stein, Editor's Note, The Paris Review No. 194, p. 8
^ Philip Gourevitch Stepping Down as Editor of The Paris Review
^ [1]
^ [2]
^ Get Ready
^ Looking at the Redesign of The Paris Review
^ [3]
^ Paris Review Editor Frees Menagerie of Wordsmiths, in The New York Times, October 2010
^ [4]
^ A Q and A with Lorin Stein, March 2010
^ [5]
^ The Paris Review Prizes, The Paris Review

External Links

Paris Review Editor Frees Menagerie of Wordsmiths in The New York Times, October 2010
Thomas Guinzburg, Paris Review Co-Founder, Dies at 84 in The New York Times, September 2010
ArtsBeat in The New York Times, March 2010
Arts, Briefly: Gourevitch Is to Leave The Paris Review in The New York Times, November 2010
The Paranoiac and The Paris Review in The New York Times, February 2008
Moving Day for The Paris Review in The New York Times, May 2005
Does The Paris Review Get a Second Act? in The New York Times, February 2005
George Plimpton and The Paris Review: Famed Literary Journal Celebrates 50th Anniversary in NPR, August 2003

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[1] Joe David Bellamy, Literary luxuries: American writing at the end of the millennium, p. 213

[2] William Styron, The Paris Review No. 1, pp. 11–12

[3] Cummings, Richard (2005-05-23). "The Fiction of the State". Underground Literary Alliance. Retrieved 2007-01-20.

[4] McGee, Celia (2007-01-13). "The Burgeoning Rebirth of a Bygone Literary Star". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-01-15.

[5] Matthiessen, Peter (2008-05-27). "The Charlie Rose Show". 15:30-15:41 of interview. pp. 15:30-15:41 of interview. Retrieved 2008-09-14. I went there as a CIA agent, to Paris... I invented The Paris Review as cover.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)

[6] Paris Review Editor Frees Menagerie of Wordsmiths, The New York Times

[7] The Paris Review Print Series, The Paris Review

[8] The Paris Review Print Series, The Paris Review

[9] Lorin Stein, Editor's Note, The Paris Review No. 194, p. 8

[10] Philip Gourevitch Stepping Down as Editor of The Paris Review

[11] [1]

[12] [2]

[13] Get Ready

[14] Looking at the Redesign of The Paris Review

[15] [3]

[16] Paris Review Editor Frees Menagerie of Wordsmiths, in The New York Times, October 2010

[17] [4]

[18] A Q and A with Lorin Stein, March 2010

[19] [5]

[20] The Paris Review Prizes, The Paris Review

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