Skip to main content

Redux: Collectors of Clippings

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 your inbox every Sunday by signing up for the Redux newsletter.

Toni Morrison. Photo: Angela Radulescu.

The Paris Review meets The New York Review of Books: our summer subscription deal continues! To celebrate, we’re taking a dive into both of our archives for this week’s Redux. Read on for Toni Morrison’s Art of Fiction interview, paired with her 2001 essay “On ‘The Radiance of the King’ ”; Mary McCarthy’s Art of Fiction interview, paired with her 1972 essay “A Guide to Exiles, Expatriates, and Internal Emigrés”; and Ernest Hemingway’s Art of Fiction interview, paired with George Plimpton’s 1980 speech reminiscing about this interview.

If you enjoy these free interviews and essays, why not subscribe to both magazines? From now through the end of August, you’ll pay just $99—35% off—to receive a yearlong subscription to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books, as well as complete access to their respective archives. And if you’re already a Paris Review subscriber, never fear—this deal will extend your current subscription, and your new subscription to The New York Review will begin immediately.

 

Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134
The Paris Review, issue no. 128 (Fall 1993)

I don’t trust my writing that is not written, although I work very hard in subsequent revisions to remove the writerly-ness from it, to give it a combination of lyrical, standard, and colloquial language. To pull all these things together into something that I think is much more alive and representative. But I don’t trust something that occurs to me and then is spoken and transferred immediately to the page.

On ‘The Radiance of the King’
By Toni Morrison
The New York Review of Books, volume 48, no. 13 (August 9, 2001)

World War II was over before I sampled fiction set in Africa. Often brilliant, always fascinating, these narratives elaborated on the very mythology that accompanied those velvet plates floating between the pews.

 

Mary McCarthy. Drawing by Hans Beck, 1962.

 

Mary McCarthy, The Art of Fiction No. 27
The Paris Review, issue no. 27 (Winter–Spring 1962)

I’ve never liked the conventional conception of “style.” What’s confusing is that style usually means some form of fancy writing—when people say, oh yes, so and so’s such a “wonderful stylist.” But if one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.

A Guide to Exiles, Expatriates, and Internal Emigrés
By Mary McCarthy
The New York Review of Books, volume 18, no. 4 (March 9, 1972)

More than anybody (except lovers), exiles are dependent on mail. A Greek writer friend in Paris was the only person I knew to suffer real pain during the events of May, 1968, when the mail was cut off. In the absence of news from Greece, i.e., political news, he was wasting away, somebody deprived of sustenance. They are also great readers of newspapers and collectors of clippings.

 

Ernest Hemingway. Photo: Lloyd Arnold.

 

Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21
The Paris Review, issue no. 18 (Spring 1958)

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.

A Clean Well-Lighted Place
By George Plimpton
The New York Review of Books, volume 27, no. 20 (December 18, 1980)

Hemingway didn’t enjoy talking about writing. He felt it was a sort of draining operation, like drawing water from a well that wasn’t replenished that easily. So whenever I asked him a question about writing it was always with a faint wince that perhaps the response would be physical rather than verbal. It was like waving a match near the fuse of a bomb.

 

If you like what you read, subscribe to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books for just $99.



from The Paris Review https://ift.tt/2SRdAqn
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sphere

Photograph by Elena Saavedra Buckley. Once when I was about twelve I was walking down the dead-end road in Albuquerque where I grew up, around twilight with a friend. Far beyond the end of the road was a mountain range, and at that time of evening it flattened into a matte indigo wash, like a mural. While kicking down the asphalt we saw a small bright light appear at the top of the peaks, near where we knew radio towers to occasionally emit flashes of red. But this glare, blinding and colorless, grew at an alarming rate. It looked like a single floodlight and then a tight swarm beginning to leak over the edge of the summit. My friend and I became frightened, and as the light poured from the crest, our murmurs turned into screams. We stood there, clutching our heads, screaming. I knew this was the thing that was going to come and get me. It was finally going to show me the horrifying wiring that lay just behind the visible universe and that was inside of me too. And then, a couple se...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Historical Future of Trans Literature

  Whatever happens against custom we say is against Nature, yet there is nothing whatsoever which is not in harmony with her. May Nature’s universal reason chase away that deluded ecstatic amazement which novelty brings to us.  —Michel de Montaigne If you were trying to get anywhere in the late thirteenth century, the Hereford Mappa Mundi would not have been particularly helpful; the map is rife with topographical omissions, compressions, and errors—the most egregious of which is perhaps the mislabeling of Africa as Europe and vice-versa. Of course, as any medievalist will tell you, mappa mundi were not intended for cartographic accuracy anyway. Rather, they were pictorial histories, encyclopedias of the world’s mythological and theological narratives, records of medical fact and fable. Notable places—Carthage, Rome, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Jericho—appeared, but their placement on the map emphasized their symbolic import, rather than their geographical specificity. Thus, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

DEMOCRACY DAY SPEECH BY PMB; MAY 29 2016

www.naijaloaded.com My compatriots, It is one year today since our administration came into office. It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements. By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria. But I believe we can also learn from the obstacles we have overcome and the progress we made thus far, to help strengthen the plans that we have in place to put Nigeria back on the path of progress. We affirm our belief in democracy as the form of government that best assures the active participation and actual benefit of the people. Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous. The past years have witnessed huge flows of oil revenues. From 2010 average oil prices were $100 per barrel. But economic and security co...
Post a Comment
Read more