The Paris Review Finds a Cabinet of Curiosities in This Summer’s Galleys
The Paris Review has published a selection of favorite passages from the many new books that landed on its desks in July and August, ranging from fiction and translation to theory, food writing, and literary reissues. The roundup highlights how unpredictable the prepublication book pile can be — and how much that variety can still reveal about contemporary publishing.
The Paris Review has turned its summer mailroom into a reading map of the season, publishing a new selection of passages drawn from the stacks of forthcoming books that arrived on its desks in July and August. The choices, presented as part of the magazine’s recurring look at what turns up in its galleys, span debut fiction, reissues, translation, theory, and nonfiction, with the editors describing the monthly influx as something between a cabinet of curiosities and a Little Free Library left to the tastes of an indecisive graduate student.
That framing matters because the roundup is less a conventional review section than a snapshot of publishing’s variety and oddness. Among the books that caught the magazine’s attention this time were an Italian chapbook of cat-themed poems from the 1980s and a semiepistolary critique of psychiatry addressed to “Dear Neoliberalism,” alongside more familiar names and mainstream releases. The point, as the selection makes clear, is not just to identify notable titles, but to show how the overflow of seasonal publishing can still produce surprises.