I’m continuing to sample issues of The Paris Review from different eras (while having lunch). This is from 1982, and is a really solid issue.
Among the noteworthy things is an interview with Philip Larkin, who comes off as a bit of an asshole. Which turns out to be accurate.
The longest piece in the issue is a number of selected letters by Archibald MacLeish. The first half consists of letters to Ernest Hemingway, and isn’t all that interesting, but the latter half concerns MacLeish’s campaign to get Ezra Pound released from the insane asylum he’d been stuck in for a decade after he was charged with treason. (Pound was an enthusiastic Mussolini supporter.)
What makes these letters so fascinating is that Pound is obviously insane, and MacLeish is debating him in an exasperated fashion. It’s so 2025 — you have one guy spouting what seems like deranged conspiracy theories, and the other guy, who’s trying to be helpful, arguing against.
And I quite liked this amusing poem by Lisel Mueller. I feel seen! Dimly and astigmaticly!