For a half-century, The Paris Review has published writing and interviews from the world's most brilliant authors. To commemorate the anniversary, a breathtakingly diverse and illuminating anthology has been assembled. The greatest writers here write and speak upon the greatest subjects of our time: *Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver on "Heartbreak"*Vladimir Nabokov on SEX*Kurt Vonnegut and Susan Sontag on "War"*Jonathan Franzen on "Betrayal"*Jeffrey Eugenides and Norman Mailer on "Death"*Philip Roth on "God"Inspiring a dizzying range of thought and emotion, the collection holds a mirror to the world we live in and to the reader's own hopes, dreams, fears, and joy.

George Plimpton, IntroductionWilliam Styron, Letter to an EditorHeartbreakLorrie Moore, Terrific MotherJonathan Galassi, ElmsBernard Cooper, The Fine Art of SighingHeather McHugh, Intensive CareRaymond Carver, Careful Joseph Brodsky, To UraniaMadnessZelda Fitzgerald, Zelda: A Worksheet Malcolm Lowry, Lunar CausticBarbara Hamby, DeliriumSusan Mitchell, AutobiographyBobbie Ann Mason, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?Robert Stone, The Ascent of Mount CarmelSexDonald Barthelme, AliceS.X. Rosenstock, Rimininny!John Updike, Two Cunts in ParisWilliam T. Vollmann, The Art of Fiction CLXIIILouis Begley, The Art of Fiction CLXXIIVladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction XL Richard Howard, With a Potpourri Down UnderAnthony Hecht, Le Jet d'EauRick Moody, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around HeavenToni Morrison, The Art of Fiction CXXXIVMargaret Atwood, The Art of Fiction CXXI Mordecai Richler, A Liberal EducationLoveDavid Foster Wallace, Little Expressionless AnimalsRosanna Warren, CyprianTed Hughes, The Art of Poetry LXXIJeanette Winterson, The Art of Fiction CLs20Edmund White, The Art of Fiction CVKenneth Koch, To the French LanguageCharlie Smith, Los Dos RancherosMichael Cunningham, PearlsA.R. Ammons, EverythingBetrayalLucille Clifton, LorenaMarilyn Hacker, Migraine SonnetsJonathan Franzen, Chez LambertJoanna Scott, You Must Relax!Beth Gylys, Marriage SongLouise Erdrich, The Beet QueenOutsidersJonathan Lethem, Tugboat SyndromeTruman Capote, The Art of Fiction XVIICharles Simic, Against WinterAdrienne Rich, Thirty-threeJorge Luis Borges, Funes the MemoriousAlice Munro, Spaceships Have LandedIntoxicationJay McInerney, It's Six a.m., Do You Know and Where You Are? Mary McCarthy, Edmund WilsonStanley Elkin, The GuestWilliam Faulkner, The Art of Fiction XIIJohn Irving, The Art of Fiction XCIIIHunter S. Thompson, The Art of Journalism IWilliam Burroughs, The Art of Fiction XXXVIJim Carroll, The Basketball Diaries Denis Johnson, Car-Crash While HitchhikingWarItalo Calvino, Last Comes the RavenPaul West, Blind White Fish in BelgiumPrimo Levi, The Art of Fiction CXL Ezra Pound, The Art of Poetry VKurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction LXIVPeter Ho Davies, The EndsFrank O'Hara, Pearl HarborW.S. Merwin, ConquererHarold Pinter, The Art of Theater IIIHa Jin, The Dead Soldier's TalkJohn Le Carrhiché, The Art of Fiction CXLIXSusan Sontag, The Art of Fiction CXLIIINicholas Christopher, TerminusGeoffrey Hill, A Prayer to the SunWhimsyUmberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon Edward Gorey, The Admonitory Hippopotamus: or, Angelica and SneezbyEugene Walter Milking the MoonVarious, Pomework: An Exercise in Occasional PoetryJames Merrill and David Jackson, The Plato ClubHorrorsGrace Paley, The Little GirlGalway Kinnell, LackawannaIan McEwan, The Art of Fiction CLXXIIIJoyce Carol Oates, HeatRachel Wetzsteon, Home and AwayCharles Tomlinson, The Broom: The New Wife's TaleVijay Seshadri, AilanthusPaul Auster, In the Country of Last ThingsGodPhilip Roth, The Conversion of the JewsPattiann Rogers, The Fallacy of Thinking Flesh Is FleshLarry Brown, A Roadside ResurrectionRobert Bly, The BreathGabriel García Márquez, The SaintYusef Komunyakaa, Memory CaveSusan Power, SnakesDeathAllen Ginsberg, City Midnight Junk StrainsJeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin SuicidesBilly Collins, Picnic, LightningSeamus Heaney, The Art of Poetry LXXVA.S. Byatt, The Art of Fiction CLXVIIPriscilla Becker, Letter After an EstrangementMaile Meloy, Aqua BoulevardRobert Pinsky, The SavingThom Gunn, Sacred HeartJohn Montague, ReturnNorman Mailer, A Work in Progressi0DinnerDaniel S. Libman, In the Belly of the CatGary Snyder, OystersAnthony Burgess, The Art of Fiction XLVIIIMarie Ponsot, Non-VegetarianJim Crace, The Devil's LarderBaseballJim Shepard, Batting Against CastroAnne Waldman, Curt FloodDonald Hall, The Third InningT. Coraghessan Boyle, The Hector Quesadilla StoryTravelsJack Kerouac, The Mexican GirlRobyn Selman, ExodusJoel Brouwer, Rostropovich at Checkpoint Charlie, November 11, 1989Anne Carson, TV Men: Antigone (Scripts 1 and 2)Agha Shahid Ali, A History of PaisleyBarry Lopez, The Interior of North DakotaJames Baldwin, The Art of Fiction LXXVIIIPhilip Larkin, The Art of Poetry XXXV.S. Naipaul, The Art of Fiction CLIVCharles D'Ambrosio, Her Real NameThe Art of WritingJohn Ashbery, Musica ReservataJ.D. McClatchy, At a ReadingJohn Hollander, Making ItElizabeth Bishop and May Swenson, CorrespondenceJohn Cheever, On the Literary LifeIan McEwan, The Art of Fiction CLXXIIIGabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction LXIXMario Vargas Llosa, The Art of Fiction CXXTennessee Williams, The Art of Theater VGertrude Stein, A Radio InterviewOctavio Paz, The Art of Poetry XLIIE.L. Doctorow, The Art of Fiction XCIVJoseph Heller, The Art of Fiction LI Italo Calvino, The Art of Fiction CXXXChinua Achebe, The Art of Fiction CXXXIXPaul Bowles, The Art of Fiction LXVIIs20John Updike, The Art of Fiction XLIIIJohn Mortimer, The Art of Fiction CVIRobert Creeley, The Art of Poetry XThornton Wilder, The Art of Fiction XVIWendy Wasserstein, The Art of Theater XIIErnest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction XXIJames Salter, The Art of Fiction CXXXIIIDon Delillo, The Art of Fiction CXXXVHenry Miller, The Art of Fiction XXVIIIWilliam Faulkner, The Art of Fiction XIIElizabeth Hardwick, The Art of Fiction LXXXVIIThe ContributorsAcknowledgments