The Paris Review – Staff Pick: Bars, Balzac and Buses

“For many years I walked up and down my cage, my dreams were full of murder and revenge,” writes Vanessa Springora at the beginning of her book approval (translated from French by Natasha Lehrer), which describes the abusive relationship she had at the age of fourteen with the then fifty-year-old writer Gabriel Matzneff. “Until the day the solution finally presented itself to me, like something completely obvious: why not lure the hunter into his own trap, ambush him on the pages of a book?” approval is that elegantly laid trap, a memory that poses sharp questions about desire, literature, and a culture that fetishizes female youth and inexperience about female art. Springora is merciless in her portrayal of how easily Matzneff – referred to only as “GM” in the book – was able to follow her and other young girls and boys in no uncertain terms, how he used their letters and similarities in his work without them Consent and wrote acclaimed songs of praise on child sex tourism in the Philippines and affairs with barely adolescent girls in Paris. It is immensely annoying to read how it seems every adult in Springora’s life has turned a blind eye (at some point a doctor cuts off Springora’s hymen so Maztneff can penetrate her; the philosopher Emil Cioran tells a weeping Springora that it is an “honor” of having been elected by Matzneff), but there are also moments of real catharsis as she grows older and begins to analyze what happened. Finally, approval is as much an indictment as writing and literature – from fairy tales to love letters to classical works like Balzacs Eugénie Grandet– can betray girls and women as it is a cool deconstruction of a certain point in time. – Rhian Sasseen

“I wasn’t a man,” says the narrator of the first story in Lucy Ives’ cosmogony. “I was … but a human girl,” says another, who is twenty-nine. And then a few stories in the collection: “I am one of the animals. I live among the other human animals and I am one of them. Nothing animal is alien to me. “This last piece is a sane rule for honestly writing about what people do with each other – and women in particular. At first sight it has the sound of a catechism that one would like to believe in, and it repeats itself to avoid losing it when people behave in a shocking manner or when the grotesques of late capitalism and the failed “so-called women’s liberation” are particularly visible become (e.g. yellow-eyed, horned demon whose immortality exceeds a certain age). Inside are the narrators cosmogony deal with. Their stories acknowledge that yes, things that seem terrible are only human, but even knowing this intellectually it doesn’t really get any easier emotionally. What makes it bearable – to this reader – is a beautifully honed sense of the absurd that made me smile throughout much of this collection. – Jane Breakell

Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson in Detroiters. Photo: Comedy Central.

Even at the end of the day, I can always count on it Detroiters to make me scream and howl like a resident of the primate house at Saint Louis Zoo. The show, which ran for two seasons on Comedy Central, is both a perfect advertising broadcast and a deeply silly ode to friendship. Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson play Sam and Tim, two best friends who together own Motor City advertising agencies. The commercials they deal in are of the variety one misses in the streaming age: cheap, poorly performing, stupidly ambitious local spots that are tasteless yet full of real humanity that Ogilvy and everyone else could never hope for. You compose jingles for an ethically dubious wig company; They convince unattractive car dealers to act in their own advertisements. Keeping it all together is one of the hottest and most unexpected comedy writings I’ve come across in years. However, the show’s central appeal lies in the chemistry between Richardson and Robinson. Richardson plays a total treasure, almost a fuller rendering of his role than the lovable Richard Veep;; Meanwhile, Robinson applies a kind of Nicolas Cage maximalism to his performance, adding emphasis to each line, blushing his face, bulging his eyes and turning his voice into a comic book scream. Together they form one of the great comedic duos of our time who happily race from one joke to the next and throw their bodies into every little thing. Can you blame me for sounding like such a beast? – Brian Ransomware

Over on Twitter, Alex Dimitrov writes a poem that never ends. “Love” started as a poem in The American Poetry Review and is included in Dimitrov’s newest collection. Love and other poemspublished by Copper Canyon Press earlier this year. But Dimitrov extends the poem further and writes it “in real time, 1 tweet a day”. Each line (tweet?) Mentions one thing the speaker loves: “I love gas stations and how they make you feel like you are just passing through” (Jan. 12); “I like to think about what I would do with freedom” (February 18); “I love frivolity, excess and not going home” (March 23). Friends, bars, astrology (after all, Dimitrov is half of the Astro Poets), parties, New York and the moon abound. The list is ongoing, extensive and, if the reflection of Dimitrov’s personal Twitter biography is correct – “I think a poem could go on forever,” he writes, leading people to his neverending poem – endless. This, the idea of ​​a poem that goes on forever, perhaps appeals to me the most. The shape of the project necessarily indicates abundance. If the poem is endless, so are the various possibilities of love. The old adage might be, “The more you give, the more you receive,” but in Dimitrov’s work, the more one loves, the more there is to love, and the more there is to love, the more love there is to give given. And on and on and on, one tweet at a time, maybe hopefully forever. – Mira Braneck

If you’ve even traveled a distance using public transport, you may already have a feel for the existential surrealism that drives Paul Kirchner’s The bus. If you’ve never ridden the bus before, buckle up. An unsettlingly clever comic The bus runs his route on a Möbius strip with stops along the Allee des Absurd. A man gets off the bus, walks down the block, and enters his house, only to find that he has just got on the bus. A bus appears on a barren area on which more buses converge and tessellate until their roofs connect to form a barren area on which a bus appears. The bus is not afraid to ask the big questions: “Free will or predestination? Spiritual Search or Self-Deception? Individual rights or social needs? Inevitable conflict or possible cooperation? Crosstown on 34th St. or Uptown on 168th? “In return we could ask: What moves us with the bus? From Frida Kahlo The bus To Sartre’s linguistically confusing seat in the tram to Ken Kesey’s on to J. K. Rowling’s Knight’s Bus, there seems to be something magical about this everyday method of local transport that continues to inspire. Originally published in Heavy metal Magazine revived between 1978 and 1985 and 2013, Kirchner’s The bus is now available in two anthologies by Éditions Tanibis. Is it too much to ask for a bus? – Christopher Notarnicola

From Paul Kirchner The bus. Image courtesy of the author.