Some of Our Favorite Pieces This Year

The Best of The Paris Review Daily.

View this email in your browser This past January, during that time of house cleanings and renewed commitments and resolutions we knew even then we probably wouldn't keep, the Daily started a series called Home Improvements. Writers including Ottessa Moshfegh, Holly Connolly, and Christopher Chang wrote short essays on things they couldn't stop obsessing over in their homes, features of their environments that seemed to take on lives of their own, distracting them from whatever else they were supposed to be doing (maybe writing). In February, we turned our attention to love—or at least to love songs, or at least to songs that remind some people of love (see "Someone Great" by LCD Soundsystem, or Shakira's "Estoy Aquí"). In the summer, intrepid reporters went out into the world and eavesdropped from the Preakness, Parisian bookstores, and Grateful Dead concerts.   Over the course of the year, we also asked some of our favorite writers to weigh in on subjects we wanted to read more about—namely, opera, video games, and children's books. (For a starter sample, read Nancy Lemann on Bach and Mozart, Devon Brody on The Sims, and J. D. Daniels on The Children's Bible.) This fall, inspired by Olivia Sokolowski's poem "Lover of Cars" in our print issue, we asked writers to consider cars they've coveted, struggled with, and loved in the way only cars can be loved, from a dirty brown Subaru Outback to an Alpine White BMW M4 Convertible with a red leather interior.   We published many, many other pieces online—essays, reportage, diaries, letters, interviews, and uncategorizable things. Below, we're highlighting some of our favorite pieces from this year, before we move into the next one and begin all over again.   —Sophie Haigney, web editor ARTS & CULTURE A Room with History Saidiya Hartman  "So then how might one write the disaster, the terrible history carried in our gestures, residing in our bodies, marked on our flesh, etched onto our retinas?" HOME IMPROVEMENTS The Smoker Ottessa Moshfegh  "Have you ever smoked a cigarette in a small room in Providence in the summer, in the still of the night?" CONVERSATIONS Selling to the Strand: A Conversation with Larry Campbell Troy Schipdam "The best books I've found are from people who died. Older people have the best shit." FIRST PERSON Molly Blake Butler "Every sentence that I've tried to put here to frame the moment feels like a doormat laid on blood, an unstoppable force colliding with an intolerable object in slow motion, beyond the need of being named." FIRST PERSON Friendship Devon Brody "I called him. I told him where I was and that I had been attacked by a dog." FIRST PERSON Wax and Gold and Gold Mihret Sibhat " 'Remember the prostitute I was ministering to?' I said." FIRST PERSON In This Essay I Will: On Distraction David Schurman Wallace "Despite all the hand-wringing about distraction, it's asked less often what it is that we want to attend to in the first place." FIRST PERSON Jets and Trash Tao Lin "He was born in Afghanistan in 1976, fled war as a child, and arrived in the U.S., in Virginia, when he was ten, I knew from IMDb." ON BOOKS Looking for Virginia Woolf's Diaries Geoff Dyer "That's the thing about life, something you think lends it a purpose doesn't last forever." ARTS & CULTURE Ask Me About God: On Ye West Harmony Holiday "Ye's vicissitudes trouble me in particular because I had a father once." ON CHILDREN'S BOOKS In the Beginning J. D. Daniels "I read the book. A mistake. I make a lot of them." FIRST PERSON C'est la Vie!: A French Cancer Diary Lisa Carver "My prognosis is excellent … I won't die … I'm just using my cancer like an extra cup of coffee." Copyright © 2023 The Paris Review. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Paris Review 544 West 27th Street 3rd Floor New York, New York 10001 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe if you must.