The Paris Review, Issue 186, Fall 2008

Marilynne Robinson on the art of fiction: “I write novels quickly, which is not my reputation.”Colum McCann describes a high-wire act at the World Trade Center: “they wanted the man to save himself, step backwards into the arms of the cops instead of the sky.”Jean Hatzfeld interviews the killers and survivors of the genocide in Rwanda after a presidential amnesty brings them back together.New fiction from Jesse Ball and Benjamin Markovits.Fall poetry by Mary Jo Bang, Robert Bly, and more; photographs from Iran by Mohsen Rastani and Abbas Kowsari.Plus, in honor of our fifty-fifth anniversary, an oral history of the earliest days of The Paris Review by George Plimpton, William Styron, and more.