Maxwell Suzuki
  • Home
  • Writing / Visual Art
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Writing / Visual Art
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • Contact

Reviews

Review of The Paris Review Issue 238

3/30/2022

0 Comments

 
​The Paris Review Issue 238 is a collection of poetry, prose, and art that widely looks at the world through a fractured lens—at least it tries to. To start off, I found the shining star of this issue to be in ‘This Then Is a Song, We Are Singing’ by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain. It is a piece that is written as if it were posted on a social media website and documents the tumultuous relationship between Wayne and Lulu. The language feels raw, which gives its final ending in which Wayne, the writer, kills Lulu and another guy genuine and powerful. However, the piece continues with the voices of others commenting and wondering if everything is okay. I found Wayne’s justifications and desires to be deep and, at times, dark. The other piece I was fascinated with was ‘Infinite Life’ by Annie Baker. However, I thought these pieces were outliers when it came to the freshness of pieces.
 
The biggest contention I had with this issue was that it was deeply apparent what types of voices weren’t heard. The piece ‘Walks’ by Caleb Crain falls into this hole as it documents the walks of a guy and his dog as the Covid pandemic begins. Often, when people write about the pandemic, usually it feels all the same, and this exists within that pocket. First, it focuses on an upper middle-class man who finds Covid to be a nuisance rather than something serious (often there are comments about other people wearing masks when he doesn’t find it necessary). Covid seems to have affected the speaker very little, and this is the case in the piece. It comes off as insensitive to the workers and people who actually were working so closely with Covid. I don’t want to hear about a well-off white man complain about Covid, I want to hear about the struggles of the workers/nurses/dying. Second, its use of birds as a metaphor feels, not only drawn out, but a little reductive. It seems, to me, too easy of a comparison of birds to cages to people stuck in their rooms. And because of that, its intended impact misses.
 
The other story I had problems with was ‘Exhaling’ by Emmanuel Carrère which documents the meditation trip he took and what it means to him when he has to get pulled out because of a terrorist attack in Paris. Frankly, the piece is boring. It drags on about breathing and describing the minutia of meditating to an irksome degree. It is annoying (and this is more of a personal preference) that all the foreign words were italicized and then were described. It became apparent to me that the speaker’s audience was not me, but in fact older white men. The sex scene goes on for way too long and feels like it was written by someone who just discovered erotica. And its final scene where the speaker is taken from the retreat early because of the terrorist attack on Carlie Hebdo makes no sense to me. Why would he need to go back to France when, at that point, he was probably safer at the retreat? If it was due to travel restrictions, it was not written clearly enough. The only redeeming quality of the piece is the scene where the wolf watches as the speaker and another person perform tai chi.
 
Overall, I was disappointed with the issue. It focuses on older white privileged male voices, which implicitly removes and marginalizes the voices of others.
 
Final Rating: 2/5
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Maxwell Suzuki is a writer, poet, and photographer based in Los Angeles.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021

    Categories

    All
    1/5
    1.5/5
    2/5
    2.5/5
    3/5
    3.5/5
    4/5
    4.5/5
    5/5
    Ada Limón
    Aldous Huxley
    Alexander Chee
    Ali Araghi
    Anne Lamott
    Austin Kleon
    Brandon Taylor
    Brett Biebel
    Brit Bennett
    Cathy Park Hong
    Chen Chen
    Colson Whitehead
    Dang Thuy Tram
    Delia Owens
    Devon Capizzi
    Dianne Suess
    Elie Wiesel
    Esteban Rodriguez
    Faith Shearin
    Fiction
    George Watsky
    Hanya Yanagihara
    Jean Kwok
    John Green
    Joy Kogawa
    Juhea Kim
    Julie Otsuka
    June Jordan
    Katsu Kokichi
    Kaveh Akbar
    Kenzaburō Ōe
    Kiese Laymon
    K-Ming Chang
    L.A. Johnson
    Madeline Miller
    Magazine
    Marc Lamont Hill
    Masaki Fujihata
    Matthew Salesses
    Michelle Zauner
    Natalie Diaz
    Natsuo Kirino
    Non Fiction
    Ocean Vuong
    Photography
    Poetry
    Rafael Zepeda
    Sally Rooney
    Sarah Fawn Montgomery
    Sequoia Nagamatsu
    Stephen King
    Steven Pressfield
    Tracy K. Smith
    Truman Capote
    Victoria Chang
    Viet Thanh Nguyen
    Yoko Ogawa
    Yoshiko Uchida
    Yukio Mishima

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.