Chekhov’s Mistess

The New Paris Review: Is it Good?

A few days ago I lamented the cozy relationship between The Paris Review’s former poetry editor Richard Howard and its contributors, who often just happened to be Howard’s very own students. The Old Hag put it better and Sam Jones had an angle on TPR’s nepotism.

Ah, but back scratching and nepotism are an age old reality and I wouldn’t be complaining if I was born with an ivy laurel wrapped around my tiny little head.

So let’s move on (he says to himself).

The article in the New York Observer I quoted was written about The Paris Review’s post-Plimpton upheaval:

“We have a new office. The staff is pretty much entirely new. The paper, the shape of the magazine, the printer, the distributor, the mailing house, the font, the typography are new. New designer, new poetry editors … we have a new format for presenting poetry,” said Philip Gourevitch, 43, the editor of The Paris Review.

I’m not a nostalgic person so change is an inevitable consequence of striving in my eyes. With that in mind, I took a look at the new Paris Review:





The Bigness

The first thing you notice about the new Paris Review is that it no longer looks like a book. Issue 173 was an inch thick with 371 pages of content. Back when an annual subscription cost only $4, an issue would be half its recent size, bloated and daunting next to the usual burgeoning stack of to-be-reads.

The new, more manageable issue stands physically close to the size of Tin House, slightly smaller than Swink, yet shadows over Poetry. So far, so good.

The Poetry

I complained in my last post about the magazine’s new strategy of publishing only poets with a large body of existing work. The purpose, I failed to mention, was not to exclude newer poets necessarily, but to offer a more concentrated offering of a poet’s current writing.

The truth is the long list of poems scattered throughout the old magazine made finding them a chore. Perhaps like the plays my mother-in-choice put on in her junior high school, they had to fit in all those students of Mr. Howard. I always liked the idea of discovering someone new, but one poem doesn’t make a poet and rarely would I be so impressed by any one piece to track down anything else or remember their name.

This issue features 16 poems by three writers, five of which are couched in a prose piece called “Notebooks” with scans from the poet Elizabeth Bishop’s notebooks.

Now the poems stand on their own, like the stories, and are open to more consideration. I always look at poetry with skepticism, but at least now it’s easier, if there’s any spark at all, to look at them again whenever I pick up the magazine.

The Rest of the Content

This happens to be a particularly impressive issue. The piece of debut fiction by Lisa Halliday is a charming and quite polished story about the vicissitudes of talent, called “Stump Louie.” Chosen by the new associate editor (I can’t remember his name, but I know he’s Frank Rich’s son) from the slush pile, my guess is the author was hand-held into publication, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t look like a promising writer – it’s a thoroughly enjoyable story.

In “Encounter,” a multi-segment piece from the book Interviews from the Bottom Rung of Society running throughout the issue, Liao Yiwu paints a fascinating picture of one stratum of Chinese culture. This is an excerpt from an interview with Li Changgeng, a professional mourner:

I entered the mourning profession at the age of twelve. My teacher forced me to practice the basic suona tunes, as well as to learn how to wail and chant. Having a solid foundation in the basics enables a performer to improvise at ease, and to produce an earth-shattering effect. Our wailing sounds more authentic than that of the children or relatives of the deceased.




Most people who have lost their family members burst into tears and begin wailing upon seeing the body of the deceased. But their wailing doesn’t last. Soon, they’re overcome with grief. When grief reaches into their hearts, they either suffer from shock or pass out. But for us, once we get into the mood, we control our emotions and improvise with great ease. We can wail as long as requested. If it’s a grand funeral and the money is good, we do lots of improvisations to please the host.

This juxtaposition of death and the business or mourning is pretty incredible and it gets more so as the interview goes on. The next “encounter” is with a human trafficker, and even though Liao seems fairly matter-of-fact throughout most of the pieces, he ends this interview by saying “If I were the judge I would start by cutting off your tongue.” His subject replies, “It deserves to be cut off.”

The Art of Fiction interviews continue – as they must but for an all-out revolt of their readership – and this issue’s is with Salman Rushdie, which is interesting if for nothing else than getting into his feelings on the famous fatwa over Satanic Verses:

Why shouldn’t literature provoke? It always has. And this idea that somehow the person under attack is responsible for the attack is a shifting of the blame – which seemed easy to do in 1989. Recently, in England, in the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda bombings, there’s been a lot of journalistic comment saying it all began with The Satanic Verses, and there’s total sympathy now for what was happening to me then. Nobody these days is saying it was my fault and I did it on purpose, because people understand the nature of radical Islam better.




INTERVIEWER: So, what – we’re all Salman Rushdie now?

These have been the consistently best interviews I’ve read and it looks like nothing will change there.

So what Say Ye Mr. Mistress?

What we have here is a basic regard for the laws of competition in publishing. Maybe no one thought it before Mr. Plimpton died, but the venerable old magazine did need an update. There are a lot of great choices in literary journals and it’s not quite enough just to be “The Paris Review.”

I like the new magazine. It’s manageable, as shallow as that might sound, and the first indications on the ability of the editors is good. The early questions about Gourevitch’s direction – for fear of shying from literature into the marketable arms of journalism – remain, but this issue gets a high placement on the stacks.

comments

I was happy to see you posting an extensive comment about The Paris Review in its new clothes, partly because it’s a journal I’ve long admired for its varied and well-considered contents but also because it’s far easier to respond to someone else’s (a.k.a. the venerable C’s Mistress)comments than to construct one’s own from scratch.

I’d agree that the new “look” of PR is attractive, cover stock arguably more(shall we say it?) “tactile”,even sensual: good feel to it, and nicely laid out, with the appeal of the contents listed in more detail and on the front cover. For the first time, I really noticed the traditional pen-clutching birdman logo because of its larger size. The whole mag trimmer and leaner overall, and (therefore?) easier to hold open (major consideration for one-handed subway reading) and especially pleasing are the ample margins at the bound edge. All in all a good-looking item and not so much taller that one would have to reorganize one’s bookshelf spacing to lodge the new issues next to the earlier ones bought occasionally over time. (Note: not a full set. Never subscribed to it personally, as Cdn. subs prohibitively costly, especially re postage. Issue #174 includes a subscription postcard with no rates provided for non-U.S. residents. Hmm. Also we Canucks pay CDN$16 when actual conversion of US$12 translates to CDN$14.05 these days, suggesting an arcane punishment for supposed Cdn. subsidies for softwood lumber by overcharging said Cdns for U.S. lit printed on paper possibly made from said softwood lumber . . ."but we’re not bitter")

Weightier matters, anent some of your comments.

“There are a lot of great choices in literary journals and it’s not quite enough just to be ‘The Paris Review’ . . .”—raises the point: is it really The PR in more than name, now that Plimpton is gone? or a different mag using the same moniker for nostalgic literati? I really know nothing of Gourevitch and his direction or possible temptation into the “marketable arms of journalism”, but what about the in-between market of people who don’t really want to read “literature” BUT want to look as if they really ARE reading “serious” literature so they will pick up something from the name-brand Paris Review with the more alluring title of e.g. “The Paris Review Book of People with Problems/Heartbreak/Stuck in Waiting Rooms/Etc.” ) as advertised on the inside back cover? While this may open the market for book sections in elevators and waiting rooms, just as Heather Riesman in Canada has moved into the hospital gift shop market with her gifts and books to replicate her big-barn Chapters/Indigo stores that sell gifts and books, will it bode well for the continued inclusion in The Paris Review itself of writers in translation like Liao Yiwu and Etgar Keret, and stories from the likes of Damon Galgut or photo essays like those of Peress? I really hope there will be a continuing commitment to international literature.

As to poetry: I wonder if your skepticism is at all related to my skepticism. There used always to be an “Art of Poetry” interview, and while you maintain that there would be “an all-out revolt of their readership” were The PR to drop its Art of Fiction interviews, will there be a similar revolt (except for me that is: for the record, I am revolted) over the loss of the poetry interview?

Finally, there is a more fundamental question: there may be hesitant or disillusioned or even disgruntled readers of the transmogrified PR, but is it still the case that “ELAINE loves The Paris Review”? The full-page advert is not in this issue. There are fewer ads throughout, including (and especially) those from literary presses and events. Apart from TPR being kin to such publications, there is the baser business of advertising revenue. There are also about half the number of pages of the previous issue (albeit some colour photos and reproductions), with the same cover price.

Judgment to be deferred pending subsequent issues, and I know you will be keeping an eye on the mag. As a news stand lit mag junkie, so will I. With TPR’s growth in height, it’s bound to stand up at least as tall as Tin House, and alas now a good half-inch taller than Brick.

    – Norma (09/26  at  10:59 PM)

A follow-up to last night’s comment: this morning a friend e-mailed me, serendipitously, a posting from Maud Newton’s archives, June 08, 2004, “Interview with Brigid Hughes on unsolicited submissions and emerging writers” at The Paris Review. This interview will now be part of my breakfast (yes it’s late, tho I was up at 7 a.m., had coffee, and have been too busy so far to eat, thanks to the enticements of various blogs plus planning my re-entry into that world) and Maud’s posting will go into the brew with other items about TPR to be stirred and digested along with the contents of Issue 174 itself.

    – Norma (09/27  at  10:50 AM)

Now for a second (sorry) postscript to my previous comment, which was a p.s. to my first comment on The Paris Review noting Maud’s June ‘04 interview of Brigid Hughes in which the young fiction writer Yiyun Li was discussed (draw breath here): I just stumbled upon a brief item in today’s Guardian (http://books.guardian.co.uk/), “Inaugural short story award goes to debut author” viz, Yiyun Li for her first collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Now to track down a copy of the book itself, which is said to be available now in the U.S. According to Carol, among the team at A Different Drummer in Burlington, Ontario (one of this country’s finest independent bookstores), the book is available north of 49 from Random House, and will be added to my stash at the store.

    – Norma (09/27  at  12:55 PM)

Hi Norma,

It’s good to hear from you! Thanks for the comments too - I think that the PR will indeed continue to have the “Art of Poetry” interviews as well as the fiction ones. Sorry if I implied otherwise by omitting them in my comment, which I only did because this one happened to be a fiction writer.

As far as my comments on “Gourevitch’s direction - for fear of shying from literature into the marketable arms of journalism - “ I was referring to speculation in some corners that they would change the content more toward journalism, based in part on comments made and the makeup of the board. It remains to be seen.

    – Bud Parr (09/27  at  11:14 PM)

While I don’t fear change in the abstract, the changes being made at TPR are disappointing.  I believe Gourevitch’s most recent issue of the magazine was “fine”, but it wasn’t the Paris Review that I have been happily receiving from the postman for the last 20+ years.  I fear that the board and Gourevitch will slowly continue to steer the magazine away from its roots in poetry and fiction.  I am grateful that Brigid Hughes (ex-editor) is developing a new magazine, entitled A Public Space, to fill the void left behind.  At least the legacy of George Plimpton will continue somewhere in the literary world, since more than likely it will not under the surviving Paris Review name.  The apparently more commercial approach is appalling and the new TPR will inevitably be a completely different magazine riding the coat tails of George Plimpton and the Paris Review notoriety.  George is probably rolling over in his grave at the thought of a Sports, or even worse, a Fashion issue of the Paris Review, all proposals considered by the new regime at the magazine - much like the disappointing Chanel exhibit at the Met earlier this year, it clearly compromises the integrity of the magazine in exchange for commercial appeal.  While there is certainly space for the new format of TPR in the literary market, I wish it wouldn’t hide under the Paris Review name - the new Paris Review is not Plimpton’s (or Hughes’) Paris Review and it should not masquerade as such.  Thus, I sadly bid adieu to The Paris Review but happily welcome A Public Space into my library. Thank you to Ms. Hughes for standing strong and staying true to Plimpton - I am looking forward to your first issue and hope to see that hint of George and the true Paris Review I so greatly miss.

    – Robert (10/30  at  11:09 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: September 23, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

Tags: The Paris Review

• Comments:5
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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