Letters & Essays of the Day

Perfection

Issue 233, Summer 2020

For years I could barely write a page. I thought I was becoming a virtuoso of smallness while the grief, which is wordless, occupied an ever-greater volume.

My friend lived in the estates on the bad side of town. Let’s go to the forest, she said when I went over to play. There were three trees in the yard, but if you know where to stand, you can get lost in a forest of three trees. She could do it. She had to. Her mother died when we were nine.

The Pantin Cemetery

By Henry De Montherlant

A Parisian looking for a common grave in which to be buried is restricted in his choice to somewhere in the suburbs, to one of the cemeteries reserved for Parisians out in Bagneux, Pantin, or Thiais. There is no common grave any more in Paris itself.

Not Like I Don’t Like You

By Barbara Demick

The night sky in North Korea might be the most brilliant in northeast Asia, the only airspace spared the coal dust, Gobi Desert sand, and carbon monoxide choking the rest of the continent. And no electrical glow competes with the intensity of the stars there.

On Inspiration

By James Dickey

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.

The Paris Review Sketchbook

By Joan Dillon

The Paris Review Eagle, or “the bird” as it was referred to, was designed by William Pène du Bois, the magazine’s art editor, in the spring of 1952. The symbolism is not difficult: an American eagle is carrying a pen: the French association is denoted by the helmet the bird is wearing—actually a Phrygian hat originally given a slave on his freedom in ancient times and which subsequently became the liberty cap or bonnet rouge worn by the French Revolutionists of the 19th Century.

Letter from Williamsburg

By Kristin Dombek

There are many kinds of prayer. There is a kind of prayer that’s like breathing. There is a kind of prayer that’s like talking to your best friend all day long. There is a kind of prayer in the face of beauty that lifts your hands up because it would be harder to keep them down.

An Exchange

By Jeffery Donaldson

To the Editor:

With reference to your interview with John Irving appearing in your Winter 1987 edition in which Mr. Irving alleges I was rude and snubbed Mr. John Cheever during a visit to Iowa:

I was not carrying a cane at the time but remember a request from Mr. Irving to speak with him privately which I did and during which meeting I suggested to him, that if he had the option to leave the cosy world of teaching, it was better to go suffer and pursue a writing career outside of university.

Dome Light

By Mark Dow

S-Z-C-Z-U-C-Z-Y-N. I can’t pronounce the name of the town my mother’s mother’s from. But Natata, who is from Warsaw and was in my Hebrew class in Jerusalem, and who helped me without knowing it to forget about someone back in New York, tried to teach me.