Being Dalva Northridge
Jim Harrison's portrait of Dalva Northridge. It wasn’t my idea to have sex while the dog watched. It was Jim Harrison’s. I was reading a scene near the end of Harrison’s novel Dalva, when Dalva...
View ArticleThe Coats of Edward Gorey
Over the years, Edward Gorey collected twenty-one fur coats, which he was notorious for wearing with Converse sneakers, often to the New York City Ballet. Sometime in the eighties, however (he died in...
View ArticleThe Animal Mummies Wish to Thank the Following
We’re out this week, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2011 while we’re away. We hope you enjoy—and have a happy New Year! For generous donations in support of their preservation,...
View ArticleWhat We’re Loving: Bejeweled Ostriches, Robot Dancers
I know it’s dumb to bet on which novels—which anything—will endure and which won’t. So why, reading Endless Love, Scott Spencer’s 1979 novel of romantic obsession, do I keep thinking, This will outlast...
View ArticleA Snail’s Pace
Edward Lear, self-portrait as snail. When John Ashbery reviewed Elizabeth Bishop’s Complete Poems in 1969 for The New York Times, his review was accompanied by an illustration: two giant snails...
View ArticleHear that Lonesome Gasket Blow: Part 2
Read part 1 here. On the table, next to an incomplete, five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle meant to show a pair of docile horses, a magazine calls my name. It calls to me with bold yellow proclamations in...
View ArticleThis Cat Is Clearly Illiterate
What makes this so compelling is that the cat is really poring over the text. CORRECTION: The cat’s owner has written in to inform us that not only is Boris literate, he is reading Tennyson!
View ArticleWild Things
Somewhere between Kardashian news and a blog detailing where to buy every outfit worn by Taylor Swift I hit rock bottom. In the space between where I wanted to be—asleep—and where I was stuck—awake—I...
View ArticleHeartless Thief Steals Books on Bikes Bicycle, and Other News
Shocking, shocking: a Seattle thief has stolen the Books on Bikes librarian’s bicycle. Thankfully, the trailer of books was not attached. “Sixty percent of the thirty-six books recommended for...
View ArticleSeamus Heaney, 1939–2013
“I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people’s necks.”...
View ArticleThe High School Literature Zodiac
What does your favorite book from high school tell you about your life? Tim Taranto hails from Upstate New York and attended Cornell. In addition to The Paris Review Daily, his work has appeared on...
View ArticleRaindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head
A still from Noah. Animals, ark not pictured. Early in Darren Aronofsky’s new movie, Noah, the title character, played by Russell Crowe, comes across an antediluvian beastie, a cross between a dog and...
View ArticleThe Cat Came Back
Detail from the poster for Disney’s The Incredible Journey, 1963. Yesterday, a dog raced a Metro-North train from the South Bronx into Manhattan. The train slowed down at several points so the dog, an...
View ArticlePoems as Animals, and Other News
Roeland Savery, Paysage de forêt avec animaux, seventeenth century. “I suppose I’ve read more dirty books than any man in New England, and I could make the biggest collection of erotica in this country...
View ArticleRaindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head
We’re out until January 5, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we’re away. We hope you enjoy—and have a happy New Year! A still from Noah. Animals, ark not pictured. Early...
View ArticleTalk to the Animals, and Other News
Henri Matisse, The Horse, the Rider and the Clown, 1947, color pochoir. Larry Kramer, seventy-nine, came of age at a time when being gay was still illegal; his latest opus, The American People, is kind...
View ArticleNo Judgment, No Message, No Mercy
At ninety-five, Maria Beig remains deeply underread in America.Maria Beig in her garden, sometime in the 1980s. Photo: Rupert LeserNo one captures the brutality and pragmatism of rural life like Maria...
View ArticleFur
Quentin Blake’s illustration for Kitty-in-Boots. Image via PenguinEarlier this week, many of us were electrified by the announcement that an unpublished Beatrix Potter book, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots,...
View ArticleMeditations on Hunting
Emilie Clark’s exhibition of new watercolors, “Meditations on Hunting,” is at Morgan Lehman Gallery through March 26. Emilie Clark, Untitled (TH-11), 2015, watercolor on paper, 36" x 32".Untitled...
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