Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2024 (248) från 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…

Nobody really knows how it began. Word first started getting around on a Thursday, but that doesn’t prove anything: it might have all begun days or weeks before that morning in early summer when the cigarette and the newspaper vendors at the train station reported that the soldiers were coming home and that they had seen Diego Uriarte getting off the train that brings the milk cans, the previous day’s newspapers, and the packages of orders from wholesalers. Jiménez, from the magazine kiosk, and Kentros, the cigarette vendor, started spreading the news that same morning, and that’s why everyone in town believes that that was the day the soldiers started coming home, but it might have begun earlier: the previous day, or the previous Thursday, on another train, or on…

GLOUCESTER: There is part of a Power already footed … —King Lear, 3.3.13 Through mildewed windshield of the bridge my Franceand I can see the cliffs begin to showthe more as night approaches. Particulatesthat dim the glass release what glows to warmerglowing. In-betweens like this we hadat every stage, and neither had to tellthe other the light falling is rising. We double-checked the list of things to do.Together made a plan to steer some beacheswest of Dover, land in darkness, darknessin that century a toothèd beast that wewill yoke, march our men back east and therewhen he remembered, in the middleof our planning as if planning freed him to remember something left imperfectlike the stove on or the bathroom lightwhich imports so much fear and dangerhis personal return was most…

I: I think we should begin today by informing the reader that there’s been a considerable break in time since we last met. R: Why should we do that? I: Well, I was thinking about how when we read a novel there’s no real record of the time in which it was written. The pages run so smoothly, are so ordered, we probably don’t put much thought to it. But since I’m talking to you as you build this novel, there’s an opportunity for the reader to know how long a novel takes and whether it’s written with or without interruption. R: Some novels are written fast. I’ve heard people talk about writing as a fever dream. Once I was at a reading and this writer was saying he checks…

Hermes strapped the beautiful sandals onto his feet,Immortal, made of gold, which bore him across the wet seasAnd endless expanses of land as swift as the breath of the wind.He took along the wand with which he lulls to sleep the eyesOf any man he pleases—or awakens those who are sleeping.Holding it in his hands, mighty Argos-Slayer flew off. Swooping down, he set foot on Pieria; then he plunged into the seaAnd skimmed along the breakers like nothing so much as a tern,Which drenches its thick plumage in the brine as it hunts for fishDown through the troughs of the breakers on the restless wastes of the sea.That is how Hermes looked as he darted through wave after wave.When he reached the island at last—it lies off at a great…

There’s no end to the woes that mothers face come summer vacation. All the children are at home. When they’re not in front of the TV, they’re either climbing the guava tree in the front yard or perched on the compound wall. What if one of them falls and breaks an arm or a leg? Then there’s the crying, the laughter, the punishments they inflict on one another based on some arcane system of justice … This was why Razia’s headaches worsened when the summer holidays started. The nerves in her temples throbbed, her hot head felt like it would burst, and it seemed as if the veins at the back of her neck might snap at any moment. One after the other the children rushed in with their complaints,…

My books remain on the shelves as I left them last yearbut all the words have died.I search for my favorite book,Out of Place.I find it lying lonely in a drawer,next to the photo album and my old Nokia phone. The pen inside the book is still intact,but some ink drops have leaked.Some words breathe its ink,the pen like a ventilatorfor a dozen patients: Home, Jerusalem, the sea, Haifa,the rock, the oranges, the sand,the pigeon, Cairo, my mother,Beirut, books, the rock, the sea, the sea.…

Cover: © Jeremy Frey, courtesy of the artist, Karma, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Page 12, © Jeremy Frey, courtesy of the artist, Karma, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; pages 34, 43, 48, 50, courtesy of Mary Robison; page 53, photograph by Jean Moss-Weintraub, courtesy of Murray Moss, Franklin Getchell, and Esquire magazine; page 56, courtesy of Mary Robison; page 60, photograph by Saradel Rawls Berry, courtesy of Angela Ball; page 63, courtesy of Mary Robison; pages 82–95, photographs by Joerg Lohse, courtesy of G. Peter Jemison and 47 Canal, New York; pages 146–159, courtesy of Lauren Halsey and David Kordansky Gallery; pages 178, 183, 186, 189, 190, 193, 196, 201, 202, 207, 208, 211, 212, courtesy of Elaine Scarry; page 218, drawing by Alice Roscher, in Wilhelm…

That summer we had decided we were past caring. It was just too tiring, rushing back and forth between mental institutions. My father was in a well-known sanatorium in Switzerland, but to see him each month mistaking himself for Alfred de Musset, talking to me as if I were George Sand, and reminiscing about wholly imaginary events—and doing so, moreover, with a gaiety and malice that had their charm, no doubt, but seemed singularly out of place under the circumstances—was a burden. What was still more of a burden perhaps was that, deep down, I was very taken with this behavior, and, ensconced in the little train that made its way up to the village of Birgen against a magnificent backdrop of Alpine meadows and snowcapped peaks even in spring,…

1. So do you read literature?2. Yeah.3. Placated and ventilated4. In the room’s relative dimness,5. She waited for the moment6. To pass.7. Then they saw the medieval8. Knights, whose armor9. Did not seem comfortable.10. Would you like something11. To eat?12. Yeah, indefinitely.13. She practiced hinging at the hips14. To correct15. A historical inaccuracy, the16. Hypermobility of the spine.17. A man tipped his forehead on18. A windowpane, next19. Had difficulty finding words.20. I still had these problems21. With my alveoli,22. She informed the doctor …23. What else do you need to know?24. He shrugged.25. She never saw him again.26. Nothing is quite analogous.27. The problem was amorphous.28. Data accretes like islands29. In Scotland!30. Everybody wants to buy.31. Even her32. Stern nurse.33. She had asked for assistance34. The predictable thing occurred.35. On…

Some natural flowers had been allowed to bloom across the field. Sunflowers, the big ones, he couldn’t remember the name, Giganteus blah blah. Buttercups, he at least knew those. A pinkish type. Fine petals drawn upward like bunched fingertips. Bees bounced from one to the next. The field was bright green. Unnaturally so, as if it had been dyed, which he supposed it might have been. The rest of the flowers were fakes. Made from a light plastic able to sway in the breeze, and if there was no breeze, the breeze might also have to be reproduced, an industrial fan clattering in the background of the opening scenes. Michael wore his costume, everything except the head, which waited upside down at his feet. He was hungover. No point in…

March 26, 1901 (Meiji 34) Sachio brought three carp and put them in a basin next to my sickbed. He said, You’re sick and shut inside and don’t know it’s spring out there in the world, so I’m letting these carp out in the water here and you’ll see how they say it is in the old poem, “earth brimming with fresh snow melt.” He said it all excited. But even though I thought about writing a haiku, nothing came. Anyhow, I worked it over in my mind and finally I made it to ten. They may number ten but they aren’t really ten haiku, just trying to put one thought ten ways. spring waterin a large low bowlthe carps’ gills in the bowlnarrow carps’ spines showwater in spring carp…

Stellatundra, Albadune, Whiteout,Zebranivem, Faloop’njoompoola. —Engaland, she said. Or a crystal bead of meager bees, a noctifuge suitcaseon the tip of the tongue. Give me loops.Give me turtles. O remolino de abejas marronesen un veliz “noctífugo.” —Ingalaterra, ella decía.(Como un évolor.) And her lines rambled ona glass rectangle resolving into something with sun, a bicycle shadowsettling obliquely. In the whole whale of what we mean. And spiracles.And knots. As the knight was falling his swordhis word that was fall in my offspring, mummy. While a sarcophagus of algae pulledhuntsells off my shirt in Portuguese man-o’-wars and neon peninsulas. Or will you be the One to Dodgeits poleyn powders? —I (the river) laughed Brave. So, the path continuedthe breadcrumbs, one by one the insatiable lengththe foliagethe assured inquiry —surely— every time in…

Inside the head there lives a lonely dogIt is drooling spitdigging through a mountain pile of garbageopening and closing an empty house’s windowsoverturning footprints in the sandand going into the fog When you’re walking with pounding legs todaywith a clock hung from your heartWhen you’re hanging the hour and second hands from your legs todayand rowing this way and thatWhen the road you have walked todayis quickly followed and erased by someoneInside your head the dogwags its tail andstands with its back to youdigging through the garbage pilewhile indifferently watchinga bird falling to death…

There were a few conditions around my first meetings with Mary Robison. She is an extreme night owl; hates Mondays; preferred a place to talk where she could make endless pots of decaf, someplace where she could easily duck out and smoke. Home wouldn’t work. During our second set of conversations, conducted on the phone, I understood why that was: neighbors, talkative ones, tend to drop in, much as they do in her novels, with some fascinatingly oblique and long-winded monologue, or asking to walk Robison’s cat. When we did meet in person, in the fall of 2022, it was in a beigewalled motel suite. On a Wednesday afternoon, Robison arrived in a long black skirt, a deconstructed rosary made by her daughter Jenny, stacks of silver rings, and motorcycle…

I know a certain amount about sports, mainly baseball. Last night the Rangers won the pennant, for example, and I know what the pennant is. The thing my husband finds truly poetic is sports. He’s always trying to talk to me about it and explain. “Watch this play,” he keeps saying, and then explaining it. Without his explanations I don’t think I would appreciate the poetry in sports, though the concept is simple: it’s an arena for heroes and heroics. It’s also an arena for people who are grown men, and sometimes quite old men, who take a child’s game so seriously it’s as if they’re soldiers bound for battle zones in a war to fight for our ideals. My husband approaches sports with a level of dedication normally reserved…

“It’s the bullets what’s silver, ne’er one tongue, mine’s the fleshyou find in men’s mouths; moonneither, though swore they, fired,shone like one, unbinding nightas it do what it does ever unerring,lighting flesh. my tongue thusunprecious, as song to howl,as captain to warlord, as wolfto man, as the wolf in the manuntil not, the flashing bullets shotto unwolf the man unmannedby the wolf; the man scattersunder a moon we make plated,the man only crawling, a silvertongue’s the wile, needfulto hawk the shots more dearthan what they enter to renderstill, still mine’s flesh you expectin a man’s mouth,” the manhowled, is howling. Apology tour. I can’t but for doing,I guess, put my eyeagainst crossing whatwas covert, coveredover and over, which Imean’s been the lineunseen, though dug inthe fitful shore, even—sure, sure—while in…

Elaine Scarry lives in a pale pink house near the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A tall hedge runs along the front, rising to the second story and nearly engulfing the white picket gate through which one passes into Scarry’s garden. Flowers thrive in dense beds overlooked by crabapple trees and yews. Toward the back of the house, a curved wall of windows divides the garden from the garden room. Scarry’s longtime partner, the writer and scholar Philip Fisher, keeps a house nearby and they split their time between the two. Fisher does the cooking, and they eat dinner at his place. When it’s nice out they like to go for a drive. Both teach a few blocks away in Harvard’s English department, where they’ve been on the faculty for…

MOSAB ABU TOHA is a poet, short-story writer, and essayist. His second poetry book, Forest of Noise, is forthcoming from Knopf in fall 2024. REBECCA BENGAL is the author of Strange Hours. DEEPA BHASTHI is a writer and critic who translates Kannadalanguage literature. PETER CORNELL is a writer, historian, and art critic. The Ways of Paradise, first published in Swedish in 1987, is forthcoming from Fitzcarraldo Editions in winter 2025. RODOLFO ENRIQUE FOGWILL (1941–2010) was the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction and poetry. JEREMY FREY is a craftsperson whose work builds on the methods and histories of Wabanaki basketry. DIANA GARZA ISLAS’s Black Box Named Like to Me will be published by Ugly Duckling Presse in fall 2024. RENEE GLADMAN’s My Lesbian Novel will be published by Dorothy in…

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