Oh man, I might consider getting this just for the never-collected Norman Rush story; the only other

Lorin Stein , the editor of The Paris Review , was talking a while back with Scott Moyers hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach , who was then a literary agent with The Wylie Agency, which represents the prestigious journal. For years The Paris Review hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach has been publishing its inimitable interviews with writers in book form. So, Stein and Moyers were thinking, why not do something with the wealth of short stories that have been appearing in the journal since its birth in 1953?
We were reflecting on the fact that the short story archive is remarkable, but it has never been harvested, says Moyers, who left The Wylie Agency to become publisher of The Penguin Press last year. Lorin thought it would be neat to have masters of the form choose stories that affected them. The idea was to have a book that would have meaning for students, MFAs, and the rest of us.
So the editors of The Paris Review approached a handful of accomplished short story writers and asked them to pick a favorite story from the journal s archive, then write a brief introduction explaining how the story spoke to them. The result is called Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents The Art of the Short Story . It is, to borrow a term from the art world, a curated collection. It s much more idiosyncratic, intriguing, and enlightening than a generic Greatest Hits list, or another how-to book on the craft of short story writing. hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach It also glitters with gem-like aphorisms and insights.
Here s David Bezmozgis on Leonard Michaels s City Boy : How does Michaels create a story that manages to be both comic and sinister like a smile with sharp teeth?  He does so by moving the story from realism to absurdity and back again.
Here s Jeffrey Eugenides on Denis Johnson hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach s Car Crash While Hitchhiking : Compared to writing novels, writing short fiction is mainly a question of knowing what to leave out. What you leave in must imply everything that s missing. And: The story hasn t told you about an experience so much as made that experience your own. Which is as good a definition of fiction writing that I can think of.
Here s Ben Marcus on Donald Barthelme s Several Garlic Tales : Barthelme proves that, in reading a story, it s not the facts what we know that matters, but what we feel, and sometimes the business of making feeling from language necessitates a disloyalty to quotidian sense and stability.
Here s David Means on Raymond Carver s Why Don t You Dance, (a great story that was made into an even better, more capacious hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach movie called Everything Must Go , starring Will Ferrell ): A great story is like an itch that has to be scratched eternally. And: Carver s style teaches us that the bare bones of a story no matter how ornate or twisty a style might get are always simple, rudimentary, and arriving from a deeply humane source. Heart and style and story must be united, somehow. In other words, you have to care, and care a lot.
And finally, here s Joy Williams on Dallas Wiebe s Night Flight to Stockholm, about a desperate obscure writer who willingly sacrifices body parts in pursuit of literary fame, only to wind up a limbless, eyeless lump in a basket, bound for Sweden to pick up his Nobel: What a frolic! It really hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach is one of the funniest, most grotesque pieces ever written and this in the day (1978) when all manner of crazy things were going on.
Well, you get the idea. The stories range over eras (from 1955 to 2010), styles (comic, grotesque, fantastic, realistic, and all combinations of the above), and subject matter. On a balmy late-summer afternoon, I sat at a sidewalk cafe in downtown Manhattan to talk with Sadie Stein , the 31-year-old deputy editor of The Paris Review , who worked with Lorin Stein (no kin) to bring this magnificent book together.
Sadie Stein: One thing that interests (Lorin) and all of us at the Review is this conversation between being relevant while drawing on the richness of our archive. In that sense I guess the book was a fairly logical idea.
SS: We made up a wish list and contacted them. These are almost all people who are friends, who write for the Review . It was actually a very friendly, collegial process. We wrote them, we asked them if they d like to be involved, we explained the project and everyone was so excited and enthusiastic. In that way it was very organic.
TM: There are 20 writers choosers, we ll call them in the book, and they chose 20 stories. And only three of the choosers, by my count, were also chosen Lydia Davis , Joy Williams and Norman Rush . Was that just dumb luck?
SS: By chance, yeah. We put the entire archive at their disposal hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach and let them choose. It was fun to be able to tell people who had already agreed to choose stories and write introductions that they had been chosen. But it was almost as exciting that more people chose stories that weren t as well known and that they remembered immediately. Joy Williams knew at once she wanted to do the Dallas Wiebe story, Night Flight to Stockholm. It had made such an impression on her when it first ran (in 1978).
SS: There is that element, but we wanted that to come, first, from a story they love and then get them to think about what makes it good. Which, I think, is a more organic way of going about things. So many of us had collections of short stories we read in seventh grade as an introduction to fiction. We were never taught the short story as a unique form. It was an introduction to longer forms. This book was really about looking at what makes a short story such a distinct discipline. The writers we chose to introduce the stories are known for their mastery of that particular hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach medium, which is so deceptively difficult.
TM: I ve been reading The Paris Review interviews since I was a teenager, because they re a great way for an aspiring writer hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach to see what the world of a writer is like. Is this book meant to complement the interviews, which have been published in book form, or is this a completely hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach different kind of animal?
SS: Commercially speaking, I don t think it was intended hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach as a complement. But philosophically, and this is something we talk about quite a bit, we ve always seen real overlap between the interviews which are called The Art of Fiction or The Art of Poetry or The Art of Playwriting and the fiction and the poetry that we run. So in that sense, this book is a very logical extension.
It was just a really fun project to work on. One of the things I loved about it was that the process of securing the rights was often very challenging because a lot of the stories in the archive were done with handshakes, a lot of it wasn t in writing, and the magazine has been around so long. It was so casual when things started. hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach A lot of writers weren t agented. So it took some detective work to sort everything out. And while that can be frustrating, and it certainly gave the lawyers at Picador some sleepless nights, it was also one of the most exciting parts of the project in that I came into contact with writers kids, who are in their 60s and retired now, and in some cases the authors themselves, who were so flattered hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach and excited that their stories were chosen. Dallas Wiebe died in 2010, but I heard from his agent. He was so excited that this would bring new readers.
SS: That was a great feeling. And that s one of the things we wanted to achieve with this book. The impressions these stories have made on people the ones that they knew instantly they wanted to write about that were not canonical that was exciting.
SS: At a base level I think it will be fun to read. We hope it will remind people how pleasurable reading short stories can be. We hope it will introduce hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach them to some writers they weren t familiar with. I think you can learn a lot about writing from it, but I hope it s pleasurable first and foremost.
SS: There s a few I really, really like Dimmer by Joy Williams; Pelican Song by Mary-Beth Hughes , and I thought Mary Gaitskill s introduction brought a lot to it; and Funes the Memorious by Borges , which I d read in high school, but coming to it with adult eyes was fun.
TM: Lydia Davis breaks hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach down Jane Bowles s Emmy Moore s Journal like a mechanic. Rolls up the sleeves, gets the wrenches out, and tells you how the thing was made. Which is brilliant and, to me, one of the great values of the book aside from, as you say, the pleasure of reading the stories.
SS: Some of these people are wonderful teachers. When Lydia Davis does something like that, you can appreciate the story on a technical and craft level but you can also enjoy it as a reader. If we can achieve one thing with this book, I think it would be that that a short story can be both an education and a pleasure.
Oh man, I might consider getting this just for the never-collected Norman Rush story; the only other way to read it would be to track down the 1982 back issue. I m impatient as hell for Subtle Bodies (and so, I know, are some of you), but maybe this could sate the thirst for a while.
So many of us had collections of short stories we read in seventh grade as an introduction to fiction. We were never taught the short story as a unique form. It was an introduction to longer forms. This book was really about looking hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach at what makes a short story such a distinct discipline. The writers we chose to introduce the stories are known for their mastery of that particular medium, which is so deceptively difficult.
Bill Morris is a staff writer for The Millions. He is the author of the novels Motor City and All Souls' Day . His writing has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, L.A. Weekly, the (London) Independent, hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach the Washington Post Magazine and The Daily Beast. He lives in New York City.
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