Is the Pen Mightier Than Trump? Ask the 'Paris Review'
Like most people, I have a large and largely meaningless collection of coffee mugs, their provenance for the most part unknown. Yet one stands out, even if its capacity to deliver hot, caffeine-laced water is no greater than that of its ceramic peers. The mug is emblazoned with the logo of The Paris Review, the literary magazine founded by George Plimpton in 1953, and an approving quote from Newsweek: “The first really promising development in youthful, advance guard, or experimental writing in a long time.”
I’d spotted the mug at a Paris Review party in Manhattan a couple of years ago, in the kitchenette of the West Chelsea loft where the magazine moved after vacating the East 72nd Street townhouse where Plimpton ran the publication until his 2003 death. The day after the party, I sent Lorin Stein, the editor of the Review since 2010, a note; he, in turn, kindly sent me the surprising, not to mention useful, memento of our respective publications’ long-ago bond.
Sometime after that, I went hunting for the 1953 issue that covered the birth of in the intellectual hothouse that was postwar New York City. was harder to navigate back then than it is today, and I ended
