October 22, 2003

paris review succession

The Paris Review has started looking for a new editor.


"It's going to be impossible to replace Plimpton," said a friend of the editor who asked not to be identified. "The magazine just so reflected him—it was eclectic, it was odd, but it was not snotty or pretentious or desperately hip. It's not a matter of keeping it going, but of holding on to it. It's a very fragile little roller coaster."
Or is it? A few years before Plimpton died, he sold the Paris Review archives to an anonymous friend for $500,000 and used the money to create an endowment that would allow the magazine to continue publishing after his death. (The anonymous friend, who sources identify as Paris Review publisher Drue Heinz, donated the archives to the Pierpont Morgan Library, where they are being cataloged for exhibition after the library reopens in 2006.) Plimpton proceeded to delegate power to a small circle of colleagues, much as the pope has been doing lately at the Vatican.

Is it just me or are they pushing it with the Il Papa comparisons?

posted by Laila Lalami at 06:16 AM