George Plimpton

The Paris Review

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of The Paris Review, this extraordinary anthology features an array of literary works--fiction, poetry, interviews, essays, and criticism--by some of the premier authors of the twentieth century, including Jack Kerouac, Louise Erdrich, Gabriel García Márquez, Raymond Carver, Norman Mailer, and Italo Calvino, among others. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, The Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953

The Paris Review Book

from “Terrific Mother” by Lorrie Moore

sage lynn

That’s not it, thought Adrienne, in this temporary dissolve, seeing death and birth, seeing the beginning and the end, how they were the same quiet black, same nothing ever after: everyone’s life appeared in the world like a movie in a room. First dark, then light, then dark again. But it was all staggered so that somewhere there was always light.

It seemed to her that everything she had ever needed to know in her life she had known at one time or another, but she just hadn’t known all those things at once, at the same time, at a single moment. They were scattered through, and she had to leave and forget one in order to get to another. A shadow fell across her, inside her, and she could feel herself retreat to that place in her bones where death was and you greeted it like an acquaintance in a room; you said hello and were then ready for whatever was next—which might be a guide, the guide that might be sent to you, the guide to lead you back out into your life again.

The Paris Review Book quotes

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