The Paris Review

Staff Picks: Society Wives, Siege Poems, Strippers

From the first edition of Two Serious Ladies.

The other day in conversation, a friend compared Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories to the work of Jane Bowles, so out of curiosity I picked up Sadie’s old copy of and, for the first time, from the first page, felt utterly at home with Jane Bowles. Why had her fiction seemed so strange before? A phobic society wife gets dragged by her husband to Panama and ditches him for life in the red-light district; meanwhile, another rich eccentric drags her hangers-on to a crummy house on Staten Island, and starts haunting

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Paris Review

The Paris Review1 min read
The People’s History of 1998
France won the World Cup.Our dark-goggled dictator died from eating a poisoned red applethough everyone knew it was the CIA. We lived miles from the Atlantic.We watched Dr. Dolittle, Titanic, The Mask of Zorro. Our grandfather, purblind and waitingfo
The Paris Review2 min read
Acknowledges
The Plimpton Circle is a remarkable group of individuals and organizations whose annual contributions of $2,500 or more help advance the work of The Paris Review Foundation. The Foundation gratefully acknowledges: 1919 Investment Counsel • Gale Arnol
The Paris Review22 min read
Social Promotion
I didn’t understand. If that boy couldn’t read, why was he up there? The girl they originally had hosting the ceremony didn’t show, but why they put that boy there? Just because he volunteer for everything? You can’t read off enthusiasm. It made the

Related