Ein Stück Leben mit einem Knick

Dear Emi­ly,

Volu­me 238 drop­ped the fic­tion and non­fic­tion labels pre­vious­ly atta­ched to pro­se pie­ces. I found no ratio­na­le for the decis­i­on in your editor’s note to that edi­ti­on, alt­hough your refe­rence to “fic­tion or non­fic­tion or some­thing in bet­ween” may be an allu­si­on to an ans­wer I am not sophisti­ca­ted enough to under­stand. Why has The Paris Review drop­ped the fic­tion and non­fic­tion labels? Were the labels always included in past edi­ti­ons (I’ve only been sub­scrib­ing sin­ce 2019)? I ask becau­se per­haps my need to cate­go­ri­ze a pie­ce of wri­ting befo­re I begin rea­ding is tel­ling of some­thing about me that I’ve never con­side­red befo­re. And gran­ted some fic­tion is obvious­ly so and could not be unders­tood to be other­wi­se, but when I read on page 187 of your latest that “It’s 4:38 P.M., eight minu­tes after I usual­ly go home, but now I’m roo­ting around under my chair cushion …” I want to know, was this ever true?

Thank you for your time,

Wal­ter
Yel­low­kni­fe, NT
Cana­da

p.s. I love what you’ve done with The Paris Review in terms of its phy­si­cal­i­ty. The wri­ting con­ti­nues to awe (for exam­p­le, the Ster­ling Holy­white­moun­tain pie­ce was brilliant). 

Abge­se­hen davon, dass ich Wal­ters Freu­de über die Wei­ter­ent­wick­lung des Maga­zins tei­le, will ich die Ant­wort, die Emi­ly ihm geschickt hat, nie­man­dem vor­ent­hal­ten: hier ist sie. Min­des­tens eben­so freut mich in die­ser Sache der Umstand, dass ich in eben jener Aus­ga­be Nr. 241 auch ein Inter­view mit Helen Gar­ner („The Art of Fic­tion No. 255“) gefun­den habe. In Kür­ze: die Kis­te, die Wal­ter in sei­nem Brief auf­ge­macht hat, wer­den wir sobald wohl nicht wie­der zu machen. Und das ist gut.