How a Great and Enduring Magazine was Conceived

The Paris Review, to the amazement of the moribund magazine industry, is 50 years old. Here's what the late and great George Plimpton has to say about its inception:

[In 1953]The cost of a loaf of bread was fourteen cents, unemployment was three percent. RCA introduced color TV, the microwave oven was patented, Jonas Salk introduced the Polio vaccine, frozen sperm was used for the first time to impregnate a woman (in Iowa), Saran wrap was invented, the Soviet Union tested its first hydrogen bomb, and that same year, 1953, Stalin died.

While all this was going on, two young writers in Paris, Peter Matthiessen (working on his first novel, Race Rock) and H.L. (Doc) Humes (who would later write two impressive novels, Underground City and Men Die), and later joined by the undersigned, then studying at Cambridge University, sat in the cafs along the Boul' Mich and discussed the principles by which their magazine's course would be determined. These were disarmingly simple: the main idea was to devote the magazine largely to creative work (short stories, novel excerpts, and poetry) and put the critical material (which tended to be the main fare in the literary magazines of the time) in the back of the book, if there at all. If any concessions to critical evaluation were to be made, the editors, rather than giving the task to critics, would find knowledgeable persons to go to the novelists or poets and in an interview get them to talk about their work, in particular about the craft of writing. The first author interviewed was E.M. Forster (A Passage to India, Howards End) who at the time was an honorary fellow at King's College, Cambridge. He confessed how much trouble he had controlling his characters, and because of this had not written a novel since 1924. His interview caused quite a stir (the interview form was rather novel back then) and was the first of over 250 done since with distinguished writers -- a pantheon indeed!