The Paris Review Recommends Anti-Beach Reads
This summer, we’re going long and hard. In anticipation of the solstice, the staff of The Paris Review has pulled together a list of anti-beach reads: doorstopper books, dense books, books that will tear a hole in your flimsy beach tote, flip over your canoe, and ground your propeller plane. You can’t hold them up to block the sun—you can barely hold them up at all. These are books that will empty the pool if they fall in. Books to swat a mosquito with and accidentally break a limb. Books worth the forty-euro heavy-baggage surcharge. Below is the final list, presented in order of page count, from fairly slim to downright menacing. Happy reading!
This week, I’ve been thinking about Anthony Wallace’s “The Old Priest,” which first appeared in , then in the 2013 Pushcart Prize anthology, then in an eponymous , which won the 2013 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. One could argue that the story shouldn’t work: Twelve thousand words (which, while not of Tolstoyan proportions, is mighty long for a story). A cheeky and fairly unreliable second-person narrator. A forgetful clergyman (the old priest of the title) who tells the same stories to anyone who will listen (and several do repeat across the forty-some pages). Five decades of compression (many a story editor has told me that kind of breadth should be saved for novels). Significant use of email. In short, Tony broke all the rules, and to great effect: “The Old Priest” is a strange and beautiful gem of a story. The extended narrative zooms and loops, each pass around the sun (some of those passes spiraling backward) adding nuance and dimension to a double portrait. I’m trying to dodge the spoilers, but I’ll say the story’s “you” is less a POV and more a complicated character’s evasive self-identification; with that realization, that little three-letter word suddenly becomes a very astute character sketch. The old priest’s habit of repetition is cut by amazing moments of dialogue: The old priest sniffs at you’s efficiency apartment, “This is a house of failure.” You replies, “It’s experience.” The priest says, ”So is being bitten by a shark.” If you’re not convinced yet, there are psychedelics anda bit of a beach read). And, as the title suggests, there is the inevitable death. But what I’d forgotten until I reread Tony’s story last night was how you learns the news: “You go to check your email and there is death.” I stopped there, because I got that same email Tuesday morning, informing me Tony had died on May 16. I’d been lucky enough to publish his story “” at and counted him as one of those far-flung friends that a far-flung journal editor makes: I always looked forward to his generous emails, the new stories submitted a few times a year, pithy updates on life from Boston. In April, my move to New York City imminent, we hatched plans for summer lobster rolls in Maine. I’m sorry to never have had that meal, but I’m glad to always have his stories.
