“[E]ach video is a portrait of the artist as a beginner—and a look at the creative process, in all its joy, abjection, delusion, and euphoria.” The Paris Review has a new video series called “My First Time,” in which big-name authors talk about getting their start. Helen DeWitt, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sheila Heti, a chain-smoking Karl Ove Knausgaard – what more could anyone want? More origin stories, that’s what! Six writers – Colum McCann, Alexander Chee, Jami Attenberg, Emily St. John Mandel, Justin Taylor, and Anthony Marra – look back on their first books for us.
Smoking Knausgaard
All Hanging Out
“Even with such apparently juicy material, blithe self-exposure quickly grows dull. Their mutual trust comfortably established, Marsha, Emily, and Vincent unleash endless confession, allowing one another to stand in for the analysts they aren’t seeing over the summer. Nobody has to coax anything out of anyone.” On the age of social media and the novel Talk by Linda Rosenkrantz.
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Doing the Academic Stuff
“You’re never going to write well for a wider audience if you think it’s less worthwhile, less difficult than doing the academic stuff.” Jo Livingstone interviews David Wolf, commissioning editor of The Guardian Long Read.
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Poolside Reading
Leanne Shapton spoke with the New York Observer about drawing, writing, friendship, competitive athletes, and her new book Swimming Studies, which has been excerpted by The Paris Review Daily, and, of course, reviewed here on the The Millions.
The Best Magazine Articles
Before it gets too long and unwieldy, browse this list of the best magazine articles ever written (plus links), including pieces by Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Susan Orlean and Hunter S. Thompson.
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