Fall 2022 (241)

The Paris Review

The world's preeminent literary magazine.

The Paris Review1 min read
The Paris Review
EDITOR EMILY STOKES DEPUTY EDITOR LIDIJA HAAS MANAGING EDITOR AMANDA GERSTEN WEB EDITOR SOPHIE HAIGNEY ASSISTANT EDITOR OLIVIA KAN-SPERLING POETRY EDITOR VIJAY SESHADRI ART DIRECTOR NA KIM DESIGNER MATT WILLEY CONTRIBUTING EDITORS MAYA BINYAM, MATTHE
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Aēsop and 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
The Paris Review21 min read
Diary of Remorse
I was plagued by remorse, but my remorse seemed inspired by insignificant dumb things—things not really worthy of bona fide remorse. That didn’t make it any less painful or plague-worthy, as I was still riddled with disgrace on a minute-by-minute bas
The Paris Review2 min read
How to Wash Your Hands
When I was a girl in Beverly Hills,and things were just beginning to get bad, they brought handwashing experts to prep schoolone day. There were two, and the two of them lectured on proper procedure: how to turn the water offwhile you lather, how to
The Paris Review26 min read
The Art of Poetry No. 111
My second conversation with Terrance Hayes failed to record properly. The logical response would be to chalk this technical malfunction up to the device itself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hayes’s hyperexpressive, all-encompassing energy had inter
The Paris Review1 min read
The New You
He’s not what you expectedAs you might have expected. Unkempt. Eyes bright but restrained.Clothes damp from the steady rain Of your most shameful and exciting thoughtsOn the thatched roof of his tiny hut In your underworld, the underworld of you,The
The Paris Review19 min read
Winter Term
She walked to school along streets named for English poets, but the one thing everyone in Melbourne knew about her suburb was its nameless canal. It was held to be behind headaches, sore throats, and babies who wouldn’t settle, and was considered lit
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Legacy
I think of the old pipes,how everything whitein my house is rust-stained,and the gray-snoutedraccoon who insists on usingmy attic as his pee pad, I’vetried, oh I’ve triedto noavail, and certainsadnesses losing their edges,their sheen, their furchalk-
The Paris Review6 min read
The Ceremony
It was something. Out of nowhere, I didn’t give a shit about anything for like a month. Like nothing. I mean yeah, there’d been plenty of times where I didn’t give a shit about something. Oh that thing? Yeah, fuck that thing. I did it all the time. M
The Paris Review1 min read
Dark Suit and Bow Tie
It’s Thursday and you are alive,you are at a sidewalk caféanywhere in the world: the sun setting, the tiled roofs,everything vibrant in the heat. And the wine! Enough for everyonethis time. You are happy— as usual you don’t eat,you hand out loaf afte
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If It’s Night
Blindfolded by its eyethe crowbarsays hello soft lardhello hard breastsweethearthandcartwater lily of suspendersIt’s sunny in the drawersand the protruding chins sleep deeplyat the edge of the wheat fieldswhere the well-seasoned pipes frolicand white
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In Defense of Passive Voice
Someone’s raising money, a sweet sickfriend from a former life in present need.You follow the link from Facebookto PayPal, happy to help, and back. Children in cages,friends of friends are posting at the hive.Lead in the water, a new celebrity scream
The Paris Review2 min read
Kolumbo, 1650
It wasn’t wind. It differently burned.My child’s child, a reptile in pumice. A whitethat wasn’t a cloud. Santorini, a blowngasket, disappearing into a future without us.I had no skin. So many nights, I held my wristover coal to cauterize the open vei
The Paris Review28 min read
Do You Belong to Anybody?
In the morning, I received a phone call and was told to board a flight. The arrangements had been made on my behalf. I packed no clothes because my clothes had been packed for me. A car arrived to pick me up. The radio announced traffic due to an acc
The Paris Review1 min read
There Is a Word or Several, Must Be
Breathe these words in all languages before they’re lost, thank you and mean it. The things we take for granted and now have abandoned us. Or will. Water, air, rich earth beneath the rubble, thank you for our daily breath. Give us this day. Exhale th
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Mating Tango
all day I’ve watched two white mothstrail and braid each other in flightover the pond and grassy run-upto the tree line bright whiteagainst the green-leaved paper birches and beechesthen vanish within a cumuluswaiting to appear again against the unyi
The Paris Review30 min read
The Art of Fiction No. 255
Helen Garner lives in the Melbourne suburb of Flemington, in an Edwardian-style house with a picket fence. A corridor from the guest bedroom connects to the house next door, where Garner’s daughter, Alice, lives with her family. Most evenings, the tw
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The Readers
Love brought these readers into the worldThe cuplike structuresof their eyes were formedinherited color, and loveand argument must be conducted differently nowthat the sounds through the wallare interpreted, and a gentle relentless pressure has been
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The Education of Mrs. R.
An adolescent shriek woke her. Cockerels, she thought, cockerels, with a wry twist to the word. She lay in the dark listening. There was no use in covering her head; the screaming still came through. The soloist was suddenly submerged in the chorus.
The Paris Review1 min read
Art Tourism
Just as Jupiter spirited the girl to Crete,this canvas was conveyed over the seaand must surf its contradictions or drown.(It looks like Europa, her pose indiscreet,should tumble onto us pretty heavily;nothing ruffles the bull’s flower crown.) My mem
The Paris Review35 min read
The Gold Coast
So I had to go to Zurich again for a few days. My mother wished to see me. And because of my nerves about it, I’d felt so unwell over the whole long weekend that I suffered from severe constipation. On top of this, I should say that I’d written a nov
The Paris Review2 min read
Contributors
HILTON ALS is a staff writer at The New Yorker and an advisory editor of The Paris Review. My Pinup is forthcoming from New Directions in fall 2022. MAYA BINYAM is a contributing editor of The Paris Review. Her debut novel, Hangman, will be published
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Credits
Cover: Courtesy of Danielle Orchard and Perrotin; photograph by Guillaume Ziccarelli. Page 12, courtesy of B. Wurtz and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York; pages 36, 40, 43, 46, 49, 52, 55, 59, 60, courtesy of Terrance Hayes; pages 91–102, courtesy of L
The Paris Review1 min readFinance & Money Management
How Do You Hold Your Debt
Christine Sun Kim was born in California in 1980 and lives in Berlin. Her work as an audiovisual artist employs American Sign Language, musical notation, and closed-captioning to address the politics of sound. The drawings in How Do You Hold Your Deb

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