Maybe the best ever opening line in an introduction to a Paris Review feature comes via issue #136, the “Humor Issue” from 1985:
It seemed obvious in planning a number devoted to humor that The Paris Review should approach Harold Bloom.
Obviously.
Etgar Keret’s big party in Brooklyn is this Sunday. We’re teaming up with the nice people who bring you the very platform we are posting this on (that being Tumblr), BOMB magazine and FSG Originals, to bring you this whole shebang complete with a Q & A with Paris Review editor Lorin Stein.
See you in Dumbo? RSVP to let us know you’re coming.
The folks behind the forthcoming documentary on George Plimpton just tweeted this photo of the posters for the film. We’d really like one if at all possible.
”I try and see what Wharton saw; what she loved and what she despised. I try to see the way things were when she was young; the way things were changing as she grew, the way she wanted things to look, and I try to reconcile that with what remains. When I do that, I have an easier time understanding Edith Wharton, her writing, and that little slice of New York I once tried so hard to avoid.” - Our own Jason Diamond on Edith Wharton’s interest in design at The Paris Review.
INTERVIEWER
You’re often linked with Barth, Pynchon, Vonnegut, and others of that ilk. Does this seem to you inhuman bondage or is there reason in it?
BARTHELME
They’re all people I admire. I wouldn’t say we were alike as parking tickets. Some years ago the Times was fond of dividing writers into teams; there was an implication that the Times wanted to see gladiatorial combat, or at least a soccer game. I was always pleased with the team I was assigned to.
Donald Barthelme, who was born on this day in 1931, talked with The Paris Review in issue #66 about his work and comparisons of him to other writers we really love.
