Clik here to view.
The Picasso of Golf Course Designers, and Other News
Juan Gris, Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1912. On James Merrill, whose work “exists in part to reverse our bias against trivia”: “His work is replete with the transfigured commonplace, bits of the world...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Staff Picks: Grim Reaper Hex, Ouija Board Sex
Iris Apfel, in Iris. The artist Jim Shaw began collecting printed media when he was still a teenager, and his extensive archive, which serves as a primary source of inspiration for his paintings, was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Raising Poets from the Dead, and Other News
Ouija board. Photo: Dave Winer. Given our newfangled penchant for the darker arts, it’s probably time for a James Merrill revival. I do not mean this literally: we should not raise James Merrill from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Watching Screwball Comedies with Harry Mathews
Harry Mathews. Harry Mathews began publishing in The Paris Review in 1962, with an excerpt from his first novel, The Conversions. After that, he gave us poems, translations, and more fiction, much...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Do Poets Talk About?
J. D. McClatchy with his husband, Chip Kidd. J. D. McClatchy, one of America’s foremost men of letters, died in his home Tuesday at the age of seventy-two. He was the author of eight volumes of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
J. D. McClatchy, Darlingissimo
J. D. McClatchy. Photo: Henri Cole. We must have met in 1980, when I was twenty-four. I was a graduate student in New York City. Sandy was teaching in New Haven. This was before email, Facebook, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Leaves of Grass: Writing Under the Influence
To celebrate today’s holiday, we bring you an excerpt from our latest Paris Review Editions book, The Writer’s Chapbook: A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from “The Paris Review”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Life of Reading Is Never Lonely
Photo by Nadja Spiegelman. Reading is at once a lonely and an intensely sociable act. The writer becomes your ideal companion—interesting, worldly, compassionate, energetic—but only if you stick with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Redux: James Merrill’s Ouija Board
Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Past, Present, Perfect: An Overdue Pilgrimage to Stonington, Connecticut
James Merrill with wisteria in Charlottesville, 1976. Photograph by Rachel Jacoff. In French the word merle means blackbird, a dark bird of the thrush family. A blackbird’s song marks its territory....
View Article
