Skip to main content

Redux: The Seasons Roll Over

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.

J. G. Ballard. Photo: Fay Godwin.

This week at The Paris Review, we’re in a holiday kind of mood. Read on for J. G. Ballard’s Art of Fiction interview, Ottessa Moshfegh’s short story “Dancing in the Moonlight,” and Diane di Prima’s poem “Rondeau for the Yule.”

If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to The Paris Review and read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door—and if you subscribe via our special bundle, you’ll get a tote bag, too! And don’t forget to listen to Season 2 of The Paris Review Podcast!

 

J. G. Ballard, The Art of Fiction No. 85
Issue no. 94 (Winter 1984)

I have a sense of certain gathering obsessions and roles, certain corners of the field where the next stage of the hunt will be carried on. I know that if I don’t write, say on holiday, I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy, as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.

 

 

Dancing in the Moonlight
By Ottessa Moshfegh
Issue no. 214 (Fall 2015)

Until Christmas money from my father arrived, I would have a hundred dollars cash in my wallet, plus a fifteen-dollar gift card to Burger King that Mark had given me for Hanukkah as a joke. He had gone off to Vermont with his wife to be with her family. Everyone else was home with their parents, or on glamping trips in Joshua Tree or sunning themselves in Maui or Cabo or Puerto Rico with their girlfriends.

 

 

Rondeau for the Yule
By Diane di Prima
Issue no. 39 (Fall 1966)

Another escaping & you are not so dumb
That you didn’t see that in it.
There are Xmas decorations in the windows.
Four Christmases ago or the summer before
and mostly ephemeral.
The seasons roll over it
flattening it out.
Still, a flicker of interest: what a funny hat
You’re wearing …

 

If you like what you read, get a year of The Paris Review—four new issues, plus instant access to everything we’ve ever published.



from The Paris Review https://ift.tt/2PW7SE6
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dressing for Others: Lawrence of Arabia’s Sartorial Statements

Left: T. E. Lawrence; Right: Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) In the southwest Jordanian desert, among the sandstone mountains of Wadi Rum, there is a face carved into a rock. The broad cheeks and wide chin are framed by a Bedouin kuffiyeh headdress and ‘iqal, and beneath the carving, in Arabic, are the words: “Lawrence The Arab 1917.” If you are visiting Wadi Rum with a tour guide, you can expect to be brought to this carving. You may also be shown a spring where Lawrence allegedly bathed, as well as a mountain named after his autobiography, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, whose rock face has been weathered into a shape that does, from some angles, look a little like a series of pillars. I am familiar with the legend of T.E. Lawrence—fluent Arabist, British hero of the Arab Revolt of 1916, troubled lover of the Arab peoples—as well as with the ways the Jordanian tourism industry has capitalized on this legend. Nevertheless, I am still surprised when I hear someone mentio...
Post a Comment
Read more

23 Notable Kiswahili Novels

Kiswahili is spoken widely in Eastern Africa and parts of Central Africa. The language has morphed into different dialects spoken in these countries and is well documented in a rich literary tradition. Even though this collection centers on 20th century fiction, the Kiswahili literary tradition spans various genres and time periods. Swahili novels known as […] from Brittle Paper https://ift.tt/2TFnCfP
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beautiful Faraway: Why I’m Grateful for My Soviet Childhood

At 10 I wanted to be an artist, practiced a hysterical form of Christianity, talked to trees, and turned a sunset at a local park into a visionary experience. My great-aunt lured me to Evangelical Christianity with the strangeness of Gospel stories where Jesus always ended up angry at his disciples’ failure to understand. I sympathized with being misunderstood, and latched on. Besides, Christianity was a forbidden fruit in Soviet Russia so I had to worship in secret. This was unnerving but also alluring. I was a breathless romantic who wanted to be surprised by a knight on a white horse. From the early ‘80s to the early ‘90s, my childhood was formed by the images, atmosphere, and allusiveness of Soviet songs. I grew up in an artistic family where emotions flew high. I was the kind of imaginative child who could spin an entire tale from an oblong stain on the kitchen table. But there’s more to it than that. My family was not always idealistic or romantic, especially not in New York in...
Post a Comment
Read more