{"id":4259,"date":"2009-07-29T10:49:16","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T14:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=4259"},"modified":"2009-07-29T10:49:16","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T14:49:16","slug":"0-fer-of-the-week-paris-toilet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week-paris-toilet","title":{"rendered":"0-fer of the Week: Paris, Toilet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0023969\/\" target=\"_blank\">Duck Soup<\/a>, Groucho Marx gets locked in a bathroom by Harpo, leading him to shout, &#8220;Let me out of here! Hey, let me out of here! Or throw me a magazine!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For reasons I won&#8217;t bother to mention, a shelf in our downstairs bathroom contains a number of essay collections (Orwell, Rosenbaum, Amis) and three volumes of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parisreview.com\/literature.php\" target=\"_blank\">Paris Review Interviews<\/a>. The latter is a new series, collecting many of the same interviews as PR&#8217;s old <em>Writers at Work<\/em> editions. I haven&#8217;t gotten around to scanning those oldies into the library, but I think I have 4 or 5 of those old volumes from the &#8217;70s and &#8217;80s.<\/p>\n<p>The new volumes cover broader periods of time, since there&#8217;s a lot more to choose from (and maybe some of the writers they once interviewed have fallen from memory). For this week&#8217;s 0-fer, I 0-fer up the roster of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0312361750?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0312361750\">Paris Review Interviews, Volume 1<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0312361750\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dorothy Parker (1956) &#8211; 0-fer, embarrassingly enough<\/li>\n<li>Truman Capote (1957) &#8211; 0-fer (previously mentioned)<\/li>\n<li>Ernest Hemingway (1958) &#8211; read maybe too much of him<\/li>\n<li>T. S. Eliot (1959) &#8211; read him<\/li>\n<li>Saul Bellow (1966) &#8211; read him, but not enough<\/li>\n<li>Jorge Luis Borges (1967) &#8211; read lots of him<\/li>\n<li>Kurt Vonnegut (1977) &#8211; read a bunch of him. In college.<\/li>\n<li>James M. Cain (1978) &#8211; read him<\/li>\n<li>Rebecca West (1981) &#8211; 0-fer<\/li>\n<li>Elizabeth Bishop (1981) &#8211; 0-fer<\/li>\n<li>Robert Stone (1985) &#8211; 0-fer<\/li>\n<li>Robert Gottlieb (1994) &#8211; wh0-fer?<\/li>\n<li>Richard Price (1996) &#8211; read lots of him<\/li>\n<li>Billy Wilder (1996) &#8211; I&#8217;ve seen a bunch of his movies<\/li>\n<li>Jack Gilbert (2005) &#8211; wh0-fer?<\/li>\n<li>Joan Didion (2006) &#8211; 0-fer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Duck Soup, Groucho Marx gets locked in a bathroom by Harpo, leading him to shout, &#8220;Let me out of here! Hey, let me out of here! Or throw me a magazine!&#8221; For reasons I won&#8217;t bother to mention, a shelf in our downstairs bathroom contains a number of essay collections (Orwell, Rosenbaum, Amis) and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week-paris-toilet\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;0-fer of the Week: Paris, Toilet&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[568,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-0-fer","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-16H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4576,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/publishers-at-play","url_meta":{"origin":4259,"position":0},"title":"Publishers at Play","author":"Gil","date":"October 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a pretentious young man (I'm older now; but that doesn't mean I'm less pretentious), the Paris Review Writers at Work anthologies were my Bible. (Or at least my Apocrypha. My Bible was a mash-up of Tropic of Cancer and Inside the Whale.) I'd seek out the collections\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;0-fer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0802131786","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4323,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/well-0-fer-have-paris","url_meta":{"origin":4259,"position":1},"title":"We&#8217;ll 0-fer Have Paris","author":"Gil","date":"August 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A few weeks ago, I ran the 0-fer test on the first volume of the new Paris Review Interviews series. Since I'm utterly unimaginative, let's go check out Volume 2 and see which literary titans I've managed to avoid completely! Graham Greene (1953) \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I think I tried reading The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;0-fer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0312361750","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":485,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/writers-procrastinating-at-work","url_meta":{"origin":4259,"position":2},"title":"Writers (Procrastinating) at Work","author":"Gil","date":"February 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a wee Virtual Memoirist in my grad school days in Annapolis, I used to read the Paris Review's Writers at Work interviews all the time. Borrowed a bunch of the collected volumes from the public libraries, and abused the photocopier at the MD DOT -- where I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3895,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cinc0-fer-de-mayo","url_meta":{"origin":4259,"position":3},"title":"Cinc0-fer de Mayo","author":"Gil","date":"May 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of \"Drink Corona (or whatever Mexican beer you choose) Day,\" I thought I'd go find some well-regarded Mexican authors whom I've never read a word of. Only having thought up this idea this morning, I decided to dive into the \"canonical appendixes\" of Harold Bloom's Western Canon, since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;0-fer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1573225142","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4387,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/a-man-0-fer-all-seasons","url_meta":{"origin":4259,"position":4},"title":"A Man 0-fer All Seasons","author":"Gil","date":"August 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's literary 0-fer is . . . Robert Bolt! (Technically, he's not an 0-fer, since I have seen two movies for which he wrote the screenplays: Lawrence of Arabia and The Mission. But I've neither read nor seen A Man For All Seasons, and this 0-fer gives me the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;0-fer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0679728228","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4136,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week-grass-unfed-edition","url_meta":{"origin":4259,"position":5},"title":"0-fer of the week: Grass-unfed edition","author":"Gil","date":"July 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In keeping with last week's 0-fer of Ezra Pound (and as inspired tangentially by this Bourgeois Surrender post), I offer up my latest literary 0-fer: Gunter Grass! Now I really have to get back to work.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;0-fer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4261,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259\/revisions\/4261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}