Friday, June 15, 2012

The Paris Review, at the beginning, and now

For years I've been reluctant to wade in and address some tendentious and shoddy commentary about the beginnings of The Paris Review, a magazine where I worked for many years.  All of it fairly silly stuff.

For now I'll just say I wish the magazine, or someone at Wikipedia, would address the TPR wiki entry.  It rather absurdly repeats the unsupported allegation from the "Underground Literary Alliance," made in 2004, that the magazine was "exercising influence" over the London Review of Books.  Where to begin?  Well, the ULA when they made that claim seemed to mean me.  It is true I live in London, and that my brain waves are very strong, but I hadn't been in touch with the London Review of Books since I arranged, from New York, an exchange of ads in the late 1990s, and that's extent of my engagement with the LRB... though come to think of it I wouldn't mind writing for it. 

I'd asked people at TPR to address this, but so far no soap.  Are they enjoying the prank aspect of all this, or is making such a change too difficult to do?

In any case they're doing a great job putting out the mag... or the paper as they've taken to calling it.

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