Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s “Perte Loss”
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha proposed the two‑channel video work Perte Loss in 1979, a piece that juxtaposed present‑time moving images with past‑time stills to explore loss, memory, and language. She withdrew the work two months before its scheduled debut, citing insufficient financial and philosophical support, and never realized it in its original form. The unfinished project foreshadows themes she later pursued in White Dust from Mongolia and Dictée, linking fragmented multilingual scripts with political trauma. Cha’s archive invites viewers to view incompletion as an active, alchemical process rather than a deficit.
Elegant Dirty Diary Entry
The Paris Review’s online editors released a curated roundup of striking excerpts from six upcoming books, ranging from a Kafka diary entry to a Chinese factory memoir and a harrowing account of 1970s‑80s New York real‑estate speculation. The selections highlight...
Wolfgang Koeppen’s Structural Musicality
Wolfgang Koeppen, a once‑obscure German novelist, survived the Third Reich by working in low‑profile film and publishing jobs that shielded him from conscription. After World War II he burst onto the literary scene with three tightly linked novels—*Pigeons in the Grass*,...
When the Confederacy Came to LA
The exhibition *MONUMENTS* opened in October 2025 at the Geffen Contemporary of MOCA and runs through May 2026, showcasing decommissioned Confederate statues reimagined through contemporary art. Curated by Hamza Walker and Bennett Simpson, the show features Kara Walker’s transformed Stonewall Jackson...
The Ignorant Art Historian: View of Notre Dame
Hal Foster’s new column, “The Ignorant Art Historian,” seeks to make art‑viewing accessible by encouraging readers to interpret works without specialist jargon. The inaugural essay dissects Henri Matisse’s 1914 oil View of Notre Dame, a blue‑dominated canvas punctuated by black vectors...
Edward P. Jones’s Hadada Acceptance Speech
Edward P. Jones accepted the Paris Review’s 2026 Hadada Award, honoring his unique contribution to literature. In his brief speech, he reflected on the humble origins of his love for fiction, from comic‑book reading to discovering a mystery novel in...
The Ignorant Art Historian: An Introduction
Renowned art critic Hal Foster introduces “The Ignorant Art Historian,” a four‑part series that will appear in The Paris Review over the next month. The series stems from a ritual he and a longtime friend perform in museum galleries, focusing...
The Art of the Libretto: A Conversation with Nilo Cruz
Metropolitan Opera will debut *El último sueño de Frida y Diego* on May 14, a new opera that imagines Frida Kahlo returning from the underworld to meet Diego Rivera on the Day of the Dead. The libretto, written by Pulitzer‑winning...
Making of a Poem: Jeffrey Angles on “Memory of a Three-Year-Old”
Jeffrey Angles discusses his English translation of Nakahara Chuya’s 1936 Modernist poem “Memory of a Three‑Year‑Old,” featured in the Paris Review’s Spring issue. The poem, originally published in Bungei hanron and later in Chuya’s 1938 collection, recalls a childhood episode involving parasitic...
A Bubbly Ambivalence. . .
The Paris Review released its monthly "Bubbly Ambivalence" roundup, featuring curated excerpts from a range of upcoming books, from Chelsey Minnis’s experimental poetry to Patrick Radden Keefe’s biography of the Aga Khan. Editors pulled passages directly from galley proofs, giving...
Kafka’s Misdiagnosis
In a 1922 diary entry Kafka describes a self‑imposed failing that shields him from madness while also stalling any progress, framing his creative paralysis as a bargain with insanity. The essay argues that Kafka’s oeuvre reflects a neurotic rather than...
Bolaño’s Heresy: On Distant Star
Roberto Bolaño’s introduction to *Distant Star* deliberately withholds any actual poems, replacing them with paraphrased descriptions and sky‑writing fragments. The narrator recounts three brief verses by the mysterious Ruiz‑Tagle, then shifts to the surreal aerial messages of Carlos Wieder, a...
Announcing the 2026 George Plimpton and Susannah Hunnewell Prizewinners
The Paris Review announced its 2026 literary honors, naming Renny Gong the George Plimpton Prize winner and Bud Smith the Susannah Hunnewell Prize recipient. Both awards will be presented at the Spring Revel gala on April 14, alongside a lifetime‑achievement Hadada award for Edward P. Jones....