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The Read: The Paris Review

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The Paris Review – $15 per issue, or $40 for a year’s subscription

In the Spring 2012 issue of The Paris Review, it’s 200th, Editor Lorin Stein reflected on what accounts for the literary quarterly’s longevity (it was founded in 1953).  He concludes that it’s still here because they stick to what they love, “Not one school or style, but the continual search for what is original, unheard of, and good.  Fashions change but quality remains, and so does the pleasure of discovery.” It’s a sentiment that I think most of us here would share.

Like any long-running institution, it’s easy to take The Paris Review for granted.  I didn’t take a look at it until Paul, travel and tech guy here, handed me a few copies a couple years ago.  Reading it then, it was easy to see what has kept it remarkably vital.

What first grabbed me were the interviews included in every issue.  They are just an obscene display of literary anecdotes, insight, and wisdom spanning decades:

The list goes on and on.  Devote a few hours to browsing through them.  You can also buy the collected interviews here.

This entire recommendation could probably just consist of lists of the great writers who have been published through the years.  With fiction, poetry, essays, art, and more, The Paris Review is one of the truly great literary publications.  It’s one of the best ways I know of to discover new writers and a ridiculously good value.

You can find previous editions of The Read in our archive.  For more on literature, art, food, wine, and a real perspective on the news these things seem to make, follow our Arts & Culture Correspondent Ben on Twitter.
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George Plimpton, one of The Paris Review’s founders, talks to  Checkerboard Films about how the magazine started.

Comments

  1. Seconded, one of the few literary magazines worth bothering with And you left Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace out. 

  2. The Oxford American is another great literary magazine with a Southern bent.

  3. “I would give up my own writing before I would give up editing The Paris Review” – George Plimpton, co-founder and first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review

  4. This is my currently coal: To be published in the Paris Review.  A lofty one, but the first of many.  I’ve given myself a few years to achieve it, say four years.  But, it’s there and here’s to working for goals.

  5. Here’s the proper list of required magazine ranked for our demographic.

    1. The Atlantic 
    2. Oxford American
    3. The New Yorker
    4. Harper’s

  8. All great titles, but worth expanding outside the USA – I’d add my top 2:
    1. The Economist
    2. Granta

  10. I love Coffin Factory!! Picked it up a few months ago and read it all.  There are so many magazines today it’s like a zoo on the shelves but Granta, Paris Review, Coffin, all very good

  12. Oops. Sorry, then drop the Economist and replace it with the LRB. 

    But I’d keep Granta.  It’s as ‘literary’ as it gets.