The Paris Review, Issue 201, Summer 2012

Tony Kushner on the art of theater: “As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.” And Wallace Shawn: “When I wrote my first play I read it to myself, and I immediately thought, Well writing plays—this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” New fiction from Sam Lipsyte and Ann Beattie. Essays by Davy Rothbart, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Rich Cohen, and J.D. Daniels. A portfolio of animals and nudes by Walton Ford and Ryan McGinley, curated by Waris Ahluwalia. Poems by Sophie Cabot Black, Roberto Bolaño, Raúl Zurita, John Ashbery, Octavio Paz, Lucie Brock-Broido, David Ferry, and Virgil.