Paris Review Note

Given that Paris Review's new editor Philip Gourevitch comes from the New Yorker, and his selection was made by ancient Robert Silvers from New York Review of Books, it's difficult to see anything exciting forthcoming from the renowned lit periodical.

The New Yorker and NYRB are both outdated holdovers of a faraway literary past, their offices-- at least their thoughts-- covered in layers of dust, the caretakers occasionally shaking it off and blinking awake amid the cobwebs long enoough to show the world they're still breathing. Their audiences are well-guarded rich people in suburban mansions, Manhattan penthouse luxury condos, and one or two folks on Fisher's Island. Rick Moody's "Three Thousand." These folks are incapable of re-imagining literature-- which would be like asking extinct dinosaurs to reinvent themselves. (Saving the moldy literary aristocracy is a feat beyond even Michael Crichton's imagination.)

One can predict the new Paris Review to be stale, predictable, and thoroughly status quo in aesthetics and outlook.