Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2025 (253) i The Paris Review

The story of Aesop’s partnership with The Paris Review is one plotted by a deep reverence for the written word. Since 2015, we have been proud to offer this esteemed quarterly for purchase in select stores across the globe and at aesop.com inviting customers to join us in discussing the thought-provoking ideas explored in its pages. Now more than ever we believe literature has the power to nurture meaningful connections, nourish weary minds and give voice to those whose words have, for too long, been kept in the margins—so, here’s to the next chapter. Aesop Chelsea 74 9th Ave, New York, NY 10011…

I felt my life flick by at 2x speed. I used to be able to take my time eating the cheese out of a big sandwich or wandering the public library, watching kids peel the cardboard spines off Berenstain Bears books and mutilate them with marker. It wasn’t long ago that I spent hours sulking because I missed Joaquin, that I somehow always ended up at a Pret A Manger in Midtown, staring at more sandwiches—cage-free mayo, mature cheddar. Then I’d check and it would only be Tuesday. Now it was always Saturday again and I always had to go to my job at the vintage glasses store. You would think it might be a good thing, it always being the weekend. On Saturdays in the East Village people stepped…

I Wasn’t Always This Ugly You see I have this broken nose I gotwhen el tico Lizano hit me with a brickbecause I said it was obviously a fouland he said it’s not it’s not it’s notI’ll never turn my back on a Costa Rican footballer againthe shock practically killed Father Achaerandiothere was more blood than on an Aztec altarand then it was Quique Soler who got me in the right eyethe best-aimed stone you can imaginewe were about to take Okinawa of coursebut I ended up with a torn retinaa month of absolute bed rest (at eleven!)a visit to Doctor Quevedo in Guatemala and DoctorBidford who wore a red wigand that’s why I’m cross-eyed sometimesand when I come out of the movies I look like a sleep-deprived junkiethen there…

at twilight a morningbird cries out. the natural strokeseems lost the new oneis a little terrifying flying into the airexhilarated andscared shitless but back to my book: its the equivalentof meanwhileback at the ranch or walking homethe word homerolled it around in my moutha bit or we change to the dog-stationthe bird-stationpeople who speak in foreign languages yes I believe there is an “other,”though its certainlynot me. mull that one lighting a cigarettedry-mouthedwhile a bird outsideclucking at the changing sun: I, Eileen Mylesam a 28 yr. old poet livingin New York City in 1978.It is a comparatively boringperiod in historythough perhapsI’m not looking. A church bell clangsoutside my windowit is rainingand approximatelyits five o’clock. I’m in love withabout 3 peopleright nowall womenand I’m unlucky in thatsort of thing which must…

Why does the sun shine? Why does part of the moon go missing and then come back again? How come every flower has its own fragrance, but the grit and pebbles on the street smell of nothing? How can a bird soar through the sky, clearly heading toward town, then without seeming to turn around end up sitting right there in the courtyard? No one told it to chirp and warble, but look at it chirping and warbling its head off. Aren’t you afraid you’ll run out of strength, little birdie? Maybe just perch on a branch and pace yourself. And how about this brick wall, thirty years old and still going strong, keeping the courtyard and the outside world separate at all times, forcing people to use the gate—after…

The Moon that fell from heaven When the Moon fell, he fell from heavenfrom heaven on the porch.When the Moon fell, he fell from heaven,and no one saw him fall. The Stormgod let rain fall, he let rain fall on him,the Moon who fell from heaven.He let the rains fall on him. Fear seized him, the Moon who fell from heaven,afraid upon the porch.Anguish seized him, the Stormgod who let rain falllet rain fall from heavento the Moon upon the porch. From the 1350–1190 B.C.E. Hattian-Hittite text The Moon That Fell from Heaven Telipinu went Telipinu went, and he brought away the good.He brought away the plenty, the grain, and the wood. He brought away the hopes, the little bit of extra,He brought away the message that was written in…

If someone put a gun to my head and said, When was the beginning of the end, I would have to say: my mother-in-law’s funeral in 1983. That moment when, standing over the coffin, looking down at Blanchie (two hundred pounds in the flush of life, now a prune reposing on satin), I realized suddenly and without a shadow of a doubt that I could not allow my daughter to win our weeklong argument regarding the movie Flashdance. Not technically a lesbian film, but who are we kidding. And boy did I try to kid myself. Why on earth would an eleven-year-old girl beg with such abject passion to see Flashdance, I had been asking no one, or God. The question had been keeping me up at night. As if…

With all the layovers, it took us almost thirty hours to get from Los Angeles to Qingdao. In the Tokyo airport, while we were waiting for our next flight, Mother and I got into a fight. It was my fault—I made fun of her for playing too much Candy Crush on her big Samsung phone. “This is beneath you,” I said. “This is the kind of thing for people with low intelligence.” We were sitting in one of those airport food courts, so there were a lot of people getting up and down and chairs scraping and orders being called out and such. She didn’t look up. “You’re polluting your mind,” I continued. “What if we go to the bookstore?” I tugged on her arm. “We can see if they…

The refinery has been in continuous operation since 1909, a year after Henry Ford put all the horses out of business. In the beginning it was made mostly of wood. Teams of oxen heaved and strained and yanked steel cable through snatch block and tackle, raising heavy loads skyward. The oxen are gone now, replaced by pickup trucks, forklifts, mobile cranes. The processing units are noxious and loud. Waves of heat rise off drums, pressure vessels, an endless maze of piping. The place sits on twelve hundred acres. Part of it used to be a farm. Some of it was marsh. Sometimes, when I’m doing work out on the fringes, copper-colored grasses sway in sweet wind. Butterflies seem possible. Every once in a while, a confused seagull will make a…

Cover: © Issy Wood, 2025, courtesy of the artist; Carlos/Ishikawa, London; and Michael Werner Gallery, New York; photograph by Damian Griffiths. Page 14, © Jamian Juliano-Villani, courtesy of Gagosian, photograph by Maris Hutchinson; page 60, courtesy of the Eliot Weinberger papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; pages 65, 68, courtesy of Eliot Weinberger; page 75, photograph by Nina Subin, courtesy of Eliot Weinberger; page 79, photograph by Mitch Epstein, courtesy of Eliot Weinberger; page 80, courtesy of Eliot Weinberger; page 85, photograph by Mitch Epstein, courtesy of Eliot Weinberger; page 86, photograph by Nina Subin, courtesy of Eliot Weinberger; pages 88, 91, courtesy of Eliot Weinberger; page 115, Untitled, c. 1980s; pages 116–117, Cityscape, 1989; pages 118–119, Mist, 1980–1981; pages 120–121, Untitled (13), no date; pages 122–123, Central Character…

Perfect Pussy “This Thursday you’ll have a substitute,”The teacher wrote—Pam Ederhuller,Previously a general practitioner.She was my doctor too! Tameka criedAt the front desk—we both had troubleCalling her by her first name. To be clear,This woman had Papped me when my snatchWas in no condition to be looked at.It was literally crazy up there, I told Tameka.I have no idea what she saw. In class, She was a doctor still, a measurer, scientist,Mathematician. Soon she would fly to KansasTo take a weeklong course on hand engraving,And at the end of it she would be ableTo write anything, in cursive that would cureHer of the last thirty years. I’m retiring, She told me at that last appointment,I want to have more time for my metalsmithing.Congratulations! I said, in a paper gown,My snatch…

For almost half a century, Eliot Weinberger has made an art of what might be called the impersonal essay. Scholarly articles, monographs, and ancient texts furnish the source material for these works, whose titles frequently resemble encyclopedia entries—“Agate,” “Angels,” “Empedocles,” “Ice,” “Lizards,” “Muhammad,” “The Sahara,” “Wrens,” “The World.” Some evoke the form of chronicles or oral histories; others read like excerpts from antiquarian commonplace books, accumulating aphorisms and anecdotes from various—often non-Western—civilizations. A reader opening Works on Paper (1986), Karmic Traces (2000), or The Ghosts of Birds (2016) to any page might come across a Tang dynasty governor’s address to the crocodiles of the Wu River; an account of the travels of Jón Ólafsson from Iceland to India in the early seventeenth century; or the final words of a Yorkshireman…

CHARACTERS Asta (sister of the bride) The Mother of the Bride The Angels (mute) The Drainpipe and Other Sound Effects Uncle Hod The Photographer The Brother of the Bride The Evangelical Cousins Merced (cook) Other Uncles SCENE A family wedding. ASTA What you want is for me to play with little cats. Talk to little cats. Make movies about little cats. THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE Well, we have a cat. ASTA I’m much too busy. THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE What’s that book you’re reading? ASTA Library book. THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE Stories? ASTA How to quarter a buffalo. THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE Oh. ASTA How to breathe underwater. How to sharpen almost anything. Useful skills. I can keep it a year, I have five library cards.…

Cradle eyes cradleme make me ladle metake me bonfire methe river uncouplesand couples me the city incineratesme heavens me cradlesme brightness of bloodcoal me quarantine me hammock me in the graveyardalone under the flowering noni treegrandmother me blown-turned leaves that was the night the night-fallenmango bruised me daylight me mosquito and heat me croton mefroth shroud me parting the valleyparting her hair scarf me midnight mepeanie wallie me lace lavender mecradle me croton me scarf-torn me the rain telling methe rain drums brimmingmidnight me bougainvillea meovening me ruled by her quiet waysme mumma me mumma me a truck backfiresthallium sea bridalme lime green meoil me two rivers oil mesoftened me hummingbird medark fury me on headstoneblue me moths blown leavesme mumma methe still love Godlet fall to me don’t waste…

ANNE CARSON is a poet, translator, and essayist whose works include Autobiography of Red, The Beauty of the Husband, and, most recently, Wrong Norma. She received The Paris Review’s 2025 Hadada Award for lifetime achievement. TALIA CHETRIT is a photographer. J. M. COETZEE is a novelist, a translator, a literary critic, and the author of more than twenty works of fiction. In 2003, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. ROQUE DALTON (1935–1975) is the author of eighteen volumes of poetry and prose. A Slightly Odious Book is forthcoming from Seven Stories in summer 2026, in translation by Natasha Wimmer. MARTHA DIAMOND (1944–2023) was a visual artist. RENNY GONG is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is at work on his first novel. NAOMI HARRIS is a…