The Paris Review's Blog, page 796

Big Box

An abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, is now the largest single-floor public library in America. The 124,500 square foot space contains sixty-four computer labs—three for teenagers, ten for children, two specifically devoted to genealogy—an art gallery, a used bookstore, and a café. (Oh, and an “acoustically separated” lounge for teens. The planners either love or hate teenagers, perhaps both.) Check out the whole space here.

 

The Eyes Have It: A Visit with Lisa Hanawalt

If the title of her “one-woman anthology” of comics is to be believed, Lisa Hanawalt’s eyes are dirty and dumb. We should all be so lucky: according to My Dirty Dumb Eyes, they allow her to imagine fashionable animals in haute-couture hats, give her insight into the secret lives of chefs (did you know that “Mark Bittman is a vegan before 6 P.M. and a cannibal after 11 P.M.”?), and help her envision some unconventional uses for wedding registry gifts.

With its leitmotif blend of whimsy, wistfulness, and a touch of scatology, the book is funny and life-of-the-party loud. In person, however, Hanawalt is a little shy and a little earnest. It’s not that she takes herself seriously—it’s just that talking about her work seems to feel a little weird. Which is not to say that her comics are improvised or intuitive; in fact, she maintains a running list of ideas with Notational Velocity, working and reworking concepts until they are just right. This demands patience and perseverance: sometimes the idea lies dormant for years until it’s finally time for it to come out and play.

When we met last month in her Greenpoint studio, Hanawalt proudly showed off her Wacom Cintiq, “the most incredible modern invention—besides a dishwasher” she’s ever owned (it’s an interactive pen that allows her to draw and edit directly on her computer screen), talked about some of her recent comics (“It’s all toilet-based humor”), and considered life after art school (she went to UCLA) and the differences between LA and NY.   

I think the way I was looking at this book was like, This is the world through my eyes. That was the easiest way to explain what the hell this book was. I couldn’t point to another book, and be like, That’s the book I’m going to make. So okay, the world through my eyes, what is that world? Well, I see a lot of dirty stuff, and I see a lot of dumb stuff. And it’s sort of just me, trying to be more debased or humorous as a way of entertaining myself. Read More »

Commercial Fan Fiction

And we mean that literally: this is a Tumblr of fan fic based on TV advertisements. And is there more fallow ground than this strange world of smart-aleck kids, idiot husbands, knowing wives, yogurt-eating singles, and maniacally friendly fast-food workers? We think not. (The Barilla pasta-stalker alone could be the basis for a series of thrillers.) Also, we offer the following as a prompt.

 

Defiance, and Other News

“So many other good books … don’t waste your time on this one. J. D. Salinger went into hiding because he was embarrassed.” And other one-star Amazon reviews of classics.
Anthony Weiner spokesperson Barbara Morgan’s recent rant against a campaign intern has led to several discussions of the usage of “bag.”
A Russian novel uses fake Swedish blurbs; publisher is defiant.
Speaking of Sweden! $255,000 worth of rare stolen books have been returned to the National Library.
J. K. Rowling is planning to donate The Cuckoo’s Calling royalties to The Soldier’s Charity. (You will recall that Robert Galbraith was in the service.)

 

Wild Things

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Somewhere between Kardashian news and a blog detailing where to buy every outfit worn by Taylor Swift I hit rock bottom. In the space between where I wanted to be—asleep—and where I was stuck—awake—I had chosen the easiest route, whiling away the ink-black night, slack-jawed and blindly clicking through whatever late-night gossip lit up the computer screen.

The air was thick with heat on that sticky July night. No air trickled through the window screen. I was in a stupor, the particular sort of stupor that meant that nothing registered, that my reflexes were slow. I was vulnerable, mentally asleep, and regretfully awake. And I was hearing noises.

We had just moved to the country. I was used to city life, city noises, city nerves. In the city, you steel yourself for danger, but there’s a comfort to being in a populated area, close to neighbors and cops. The bucolic loneliness of the country offers promises of peace, but to me, it’s sinister. You’re the only person screaming for miles around. Read More »

A Partial List of Things John Berryman Found Delicious

Saul Bellow’s “Leaving the Yellow House”[1]


His own poetry[2]


Autolycus of The Winter’s Tale, deemed an “irrelevance”[3]


“Bunny,” met in London[4]


The Irish, who “all speak English and are blazing with self-respect”[5]


A stone[6]


A breeze[7]


Theodore Roethke’s detail[8]


A tribute, written by T. S. Eliot, about Ralph Hodgson[9]


Dialogue in Don Quixote[10]


An unspecified “new taste sensation”[11]


Your “end”[12]


An unspecified “author,” also “rational & passionate”[13]


The body of a married woman, seen in a restaurant[14]


His friend Ernest Milton Halliday’s marks at Columbia University[15]


Risk[16]

[1] Saul Bellow’s forward to Recovery/Delusions, Etc.
[2] Saul Bellow’s forward to Recovery/Delusions, Etc.
[3] Berryman’s Shakespeare
[4] Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman
[5] Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman
[6] “Dream Song 121”
[7] “Dream Song 339”
[8] Freedom of the Poet
[9] Freedom of the Poet
[10] Freedom of the Poet
[11] “Gislebertus’ Eve”
[12] “Shirley & Auden”
[13] “A Prayer for the Self”
[14] “Dream Song 4”
[15] John Berryman and the Thirties: A Memoir
[16] Stephen Crane

Elon Green is a freelance writer who oftentimes contributes to The Awl.

 

True Romance

We love Holly Pilot.

 

Crystallized Books, and Other News

It takes some work to decipher this infographic charting writers in prison for nonliterary crimes, but we like that it exists.
Larry McMurtry’s epic rare-book auction is now the subject of a documentary.
The band Heaven’s new single, “Dandelion Wine,” is named after the eponymous 1957 Ray Bradbury title.
Bibliotherapy: exactly what it sounds like.
Artist Alexis Arnold’s Crystallized Book series: exactly what it sounds like.

 

Too Hot, Too Greedy

Close watchers of this space may observe that we have, in the past, posted the iconic video for “Wuthering Heights.” But when we realized that today was not just Emily Brontë’s birthday but also Kate Bush’s, well, you can see that we had no alternative. 

 

Kerouac in the Sun

Fred DeWitt for Time magazine, January 1958. Courtesy of Orange County Regional History Center.

“Yesterday, in 4 hours, I typed up the 12,000 word Diamond Sutra on a long 12-foot scroll, beautiful, with my final transliteration, one of the most precious religious documents in the world, even you’ll like it when you read it,” Jack Kerouac writes to Joyce Johnson in November 1957. A little more than two months have passed since the publication of On the Road and Gilbert Millstein’s glowing review in the New York Times. Kerouac and Johnson, a budding literary talent in her early twenties, have been romantically involved since January, their sporadic visits in New York interspersed by a lively correspondence. Kerouac had gone to Mexico City in the summer of ’57, but left after falling ill. He landed in Orlando, Florida, where his mother was renting a 1920s bungalow. From August to April 1958, he would make several trips to New York and celebrate his newfound literary acclaim. No one at the time, including Jack himself, could have realized how this small, sleepy house would figure in his life: becoming not only his refuge as On the Road climbed the bestseller lists, but the site of his last, prolific outpouring, resulting in a novel that many consider to be his greatest work, The Dharma Bums. Read More »