The Paris Review Winter 2022 (242)

The story of Aesop’s partnership with The Paris Reviewis one plotted by a deep reverence for the writtenword. Since 2015, we have been proud to offer thisesteemed quarterly for purchase in select stores acrossthe globe and at aesop.com, inviting customers to joinus in discussing the thought-provoking ideas exploredin its pages. Now more than ever we believe literature has thepower to nurture meaningful connections, nourishweary minds and give voice to those whose wordshave, for too long, been kept in the margins—so, here’sto the next chapter. Aesop Chelsea 74 9th Ave, New York, NY 10011…

My sister called me the other day. She wanted to let me know that I had once more been merciless and cruel in my relations with our parents. “They say there’s a lot of anger in you,” she said. “It makes them mad. It hurts their feelings. They think you blame them for everything. They think you say rude things about them to your therapist. They think that’s the whole reason you see a therapist. They think an irrevocable rift has opened between you. It’s gaping, they say. It’s a valley. It’s a mountain gorge. They think it’s unfair. They think they did the best they could. You should tell them that you don’t really blame them. That would be a nice thing for you to do.” “Wow,” I said. “That’s a…

I had an accident but lived in eleganceon methamphetamines and small stacksof Black Beauty paperbacksand plastic plates of breadand black cherry marmalade.Later, a career of killingtime. And wasting money.But I have always been extraordinarily giftedat being alone. At the age of fiveI thought I would never speak.It wasn’t until I was thirteenthat I knew it was true.In blond wig, old worn denim, and goldchain with plastic pink Saint Genet pendantI enter the terminal infirmary of music.And move the body as thoughengaged in infinite reenactmentsof the sacred. Murmuring, among my peoplein the ruins of the institutions of this cityawaiting dispersal of food stamps and low-cost medicines.But I always knew if I worked hard enoughI would never make it.…

Driving from Santa Fe’s center to its outskirts, you pass through a wide expanse made vibrant by that particular slant of light Georgia O’Keeffe coveted. Somehow, the sky is more immense here. Hawks circle over dusty fields strewn with yellow-flowering rabbitbrush. Beyond this plain is the quiet suburb where N. Scott Momaday lives, in a square adobe house. The walls of the living room are lined with prints of Native Americans by Leonard Baskin, which Momaday, a painter and printmaker himself, has collected for decades. On the coffee table sits a bronze sculpture of the Wyoming rock formation known as Devils Tower, with a bear at its base; as an infant, Momaday was taken to this sacred site and given his Kiowa name, Tsoai-talee, or “Rock-Tree Boy,” after the story…

I am William, who by nature needs to chant triste now, I’ll makethis song from it I’ll no more be a lover not in Poitiers,nor in Limoges. In the second verse, triste I depart in dangerous exile in greatperil I leave my son for the neighbors to cheat. It’s hard to depart the dear tenure of Poitiers I leave my hearttotally in the sage watch of Folque— Folque of Anjou, cousin, guard my boy and his lands! If my cousindoesn’t take care nor the king, to whom I owe my tenuremy pain is their pleasure. Those thieves. I, William, have world fatigue. They’ll take him down in hisgreenness. Triste I entreat you, companions pardon my blunders I prayalso to throned Jesus in Romance and in the Pope’s language: From mortal arts and joy’s source I flee…

It was hot that day, hot for the morning and hot for April and with a stickiness in the air that suggested something had to break. I was headed up the street to ask my neighbor Meech to give me a jump when I heard a scream come from the fourplex next door. Between there and Meech’s was this big-ass bright-blue bouncy house leaning like it was about to fall over. Not a soul was out on the block but me and the bouncy house and that scream, and so for a moment I was tripping, thinking the bouncy house had screamed. But then a girl rumbled out of the end unit; she was around twenty with cornrows that had been in too long, and she was both juicy and…