A Writer’s Day Job

Archival pieces from Frank O'Hara, Joseph Heller, and Stephen King.

The Paris Review Redux: free interviews, stories, poems, and art from the archives of The Paris Review. View this email in your browser Yu Hua with his son in Beijing, 1994. Photograph courtesy of Yu Hua. "I'd finished high school in 1977, just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, when university entrance exams had been reinstated. I failed, twice, and the third year, there was English on the test, so I had no hope of passing," Yu Hua tells Michael Berry in his Art of Fiction interview, which appears in our Winter issue. "I gave up and went straight into pulling teeth … I did it for years, treating mostly farmers." As a young man, Yu worked as a dentist while starting to write short fiction that drew upon his experience growing up in eastern China at the height of the Cultural Revolution. This week, we're unlocking pieces by writers who, like Yu, worked day jobs to support themselves while writing: Frank O'Hara, who worked as a museum clerk; Joseph Heller, who wrote the first chapter of Catch-22 longhand while working at an advertising firm; and Stephen King, who worked for many years as a high school janitor.  POETRY Song Frank O'Hara how I hate disease, it's like worrying that comes true and it simply must not be able to happen in a world where you are possible my love nothing can go wrong for us, tell me   From issue no. 49 (Summer 1970) INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 51 Joseph Heller INTERVIEWER Was it the same process of "receiving" a first line with Catch-22? HELLER Just about. I was lying in bed in my four-room apartment on the West Side when suddenly this line came to me: "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, Someone fell madly in love with him." … As soon as the opening sentence was available, the book began to evolve clearly in my mind—even most of the particulars . . . That morning I went to my job at the advertising agency and wrote out the first chapter in longhand.   From issue no. 60 (Winter 1974) PROSE Ayana Stephen King I didn't think I would ever tell this story. My wife told me not to; she said no one would believe it and I'd only embarrass myself. What she meant, of course, was that it would embarrass her. "What about Ralph and Trudy?" I asked her. "They were there. They saw it, too."   From issue no. 182 (Fall 2007) Copyright © 2024 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.