6 Interviews From The Paris Review That We Loved
Why not spend it reading our favourite interviews from The Paris Review with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac and Woody Allen.
The Paris Revue has finally made available its interviews (for free!) via their website, and we here at Concrete Playground HQ are having a hard time tearing ourselves away from them.
The 57-year-old publication is famous for its plethora of celebrity interviews dating back to 1953. Its editorial mission was nicely articulated by William Styron in the inaugural issue: "The Paris Review hopes to emphasize creative work — fiction and poetry — not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines and putting it pretty much where it belongs i.e. somewhere near the back of the book." What resulted was a platform for some authors to speak about their works and others to have theirs published.
We have gathered a collection of favourites for you:
1. Jack Keroac
"Okay? [Whistles.] Okay?"
2. Jean Cocteau
"We [Cocteau and Proust] both came out of the dandyism of the end of the nineteenth century. I turned my vest, eventually, toward 1912, but in the proper sense—in the right direction."
"When you leave, I'll read the paper or perhaps go shopping. Most often it's a pleasure to work.
"Who the fuck do you think wrote the Book of Revelation? A bunch of stone-sober clerics?"
"Instead of leaving for Chile with a band of gangsters, one stays in Paris and writes a novel. That seems to me the great adventure."
6. Woody Allen
"You just do what you want to do for your own sense of your creative life. If no one else wants to see it, that's fine."
Read them all here.
