The Paris Review, Issue 248, Summer 2024 (Paris Review, #248) by Emily Stokes

The Paris Review, Issue 248, Summer 2024 (Paris Review, #248) Reviews

• 
  Margaret Perkins

  Not my favorite. I disliked all the short stories but did appreciate the brevity and power of "That Summer" by Anna Serre (only three pages!). As always, the interviews were the best part, hands down. I also enjoyed the poem "My Library" by Mosab Abu Toha.
• 
  nicolette

  first paris review i've ever physically purchased - though honestly nothing major to write home about
  
  here are some things i underlined:
  
  "and few events on earth can bring you here,
  the very rim, where who you are goes on
  into the sheer new time and voyages
  without you since you watch her go, become
  the parting of the two. The air between."
  - Jana Prikryl, The Channel
  
  "'earth brimming with fresh snow melt'"
  - Masaoka Shiki
  
  "Jack is a conondrum. I am the perfect wife for him since I have no needs and am easily suffocated and am not suffocating. Maybe I'm not needy enough. Men like needy women. Damsels in distress."
  
  "you embroidered him into a vast ideal"
  
  "'And then we came forth again to see the stars.' Not as ecstatic as Paradise. But you came to the other side."
  
  "Former glamour girl and now Deposed matriarch."
  - Nancy Leeman, The Oyster Diaries
  
  "Certainly when I'm taking notes on something I write by hand, and that seems very important - I've read about how all kinds of abilities, like one's math ability, are helped by the practice of handwriting. For certain passages of Dreaming by the Brook, I'd wake up at five in the morning and sit by the windowsill, watching the birds, recording the sequence in which they came. I took immense pleasure in that."
  - Elaine Scarry
• 
  Aurora

  Fiction
  
  -That Summer, ANNE SERRE: O.K. Does well enough with just three pages.
  
  -Passengers on the Night Train, RODOLF ENRIQUE FOGWILL: O.K. I felt like it was going somewhere good, good in a quiet way, but it ended up just being quiet.
  
  -Blue, K PATRICK: remember almost nothing. Themes of identity, mental inclination to self-exploration and definition fighting with influential social propaganda of being a string in a web, the comfortability of performance, the sometimes-useless nature of the truth.
  
  -⭐My Lesbian Novel, RENEE GLADMAN: My favourite story from the issue, love a writer that can abuse words, wish the author would have stayed with it for a bit though, added more specificity- felt like it needed the kind of editing that only comes with time. Also as is often the case with most stories within stories, the lesbian novel of discussion seemed like it would've made a better story; those excerpts were just gorgeous. Long ass side note (This reminds me of back in 2022 when I used to have these, as a new reader of pure fiction and peruser of literary magazines muehehh, Panglossian ideas about being a popularly misunderstood but understandably gifted short story writer, and I'd just come across one of those Paris review anthologies, the ones with the "Paris review book of yadayadayada and yadayadayada" titles along with the 50s-70s interview analects, and just being so entrapped with ideas of writing a fictional version of those interviews something of an affectionate satire or serious atmosphere parody on the common characteristic fixations of some of the writers; how so invested in truthful non-truths they were, in linguistic precision, how sturdy they were in their perceptions-which could be expected considering they actively marinated in universes of those, however differing or contradicting- or how clearly they seemed 'deemed' as writers from their life stories... the equanimity of the interviewers in the face of all that reserved and romantic glamour. I always believed that it would be just too gauche for the Paris review to publish something of the sort considering its influences, which of course is the sort of thing they would turn on its head, although this story is muchly different from my whole vision of it.
  
  -⭐The Oyster Diaries, NANCY LEMANN: Second fave. Pretty decent writing. Yes, yes, middle-aged divorce story you typically find in every other issue of every other magazine, but it had its standout moments, particularly loved the bits involving the narrator’s father.
  
  -Red Lungi: BANU MUSHTAQ: socio-politics and socioeconomics of south Asian domestic life. Didn’t much like this one. Reminded me of those lukewarm cultural stories/tales I used to read from my own country, made for kids of other cultures within the same country, with very clear conflicts, basic moral issues and insinuations, and stark one-trait characters to highlight them - Maybe 20 years ago...
  
  The poetry section, as usual for the pr (sorry) was middling. The better of the bunch, I think, ⭐Patty Nash's Metropolitan and Kearney's It's the bullet's that's Silver.
  
  The art was not my kinda stuff, but I do tend to detest contemporary art. I like to say it’s just purely without imagination but it’s probably more the midnight in Paris Syndrome (Hehe see what I did there, even though I didn't really do anything, and it was just there)
  
  The Interviews.
  
  Meh on the Mary Robison one- maybe that's why I never finished tell me 30 stories, not because I'm lazy and have the attention span of myself. ⭐⭐The interview with scarry was the best part of the entire issue. ⭐⭐
  
• 
  Ryan

  (2.5 stars?)
  
  Greatly enjoyed "The Oyster Diaries" by Nancy Lemann and to a lesser extent G. Peter Jemison's exhibit of "Paper Bags" and the poem "My Library."
  
  Found the Two Poems of Douglas Kearney and the interview with Elaine Scarry worth the time to read them.
  
  Neutral reaction to Daniel Mendelsohn's taste of The Odyssey, and mixed reactions to "A Drop of Ink," "Red Lungi" and "My Lesbian Novel."
  
  Didn't much care for the remainder.
• 
  Dieuwke

  Four stars because the art moved me too