In an interview in The Paris Review almost half a century ago, Ernest Hemingway offered a tip to the would-be writer: “Let’s say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down with mercy … At least he will have the story of the hanging to go on with.”
It is safe to assume the advice was meant to be taken loosely, but Philip Gourevitch entered into the spirit more boldly than most when, in May 1995, he skipped the hanging and went straight to a genocide.
“I stepped up into the open doorway of a classroom,” Gourevitch writes in the opening chapter of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, his book about the “100 days” of killings of Tutsi people by the dominant Hutus in Rwanda. “At least 50 mostly decomposed cadavers covered the floor, wadded in clothing … Macheted skulls had rolled here and there.”
Gourevitch is now the editor of The Paris Review, “the biggest little magazine in history”, as Time magazine called it. In its 53 years of existence, the magazine has become synonymous with the in-depth, question-and-answer interview with a famous writer, which might run to 40 pages or more.
In the process of steering the magazine into what he calls “a second life”, Gourevitch has enlarged the format, cut the bulk (about 180 pages, compared with the previous regular 400), and refined the mix of contents.
“I love what The Paris Review was, its traditions, what it stands for, but I didn’t feel that I was being hired to act as the curator of a museum piece. Rather, that I should treat it as a living thing, with its own new form. It’s a sign of my respect for [founding editor George] Plimpton that I’m not trying to be him.”
The magazine still features stories and poems, though fewer, but the noticeable aspect of Gourevitch’s revitalisation is the reflection of his own literary interests, resulting in an increased dose of reportage.
“We’re living in complicated and dramatic times, and I feel that our literature, especially the periodical fiction, is rarely up to the wildness and boldness of the times, that it seldom expresses the outlandishness and range of the actors and actions that are shaping our world.” — Â