Sharp-eyed subscribers will note that the last issue (winter 1994-1995), and indeed this one, enjoy a new look—a clearer, more distinct typeface on the cover which itself has been redesigned. For the first time the featured contents are listed on the spine. Also on the spine is the Paris Review bird, designed by the magazine’s first art editor, William Pene du Bois, and which reappears after an absence of thirty-three years. An American eagle astride a pen and wearing a Phrygian cap to denote the French connection, it perched in the top-left quadrant of the cover until the spring of 1962 when the artist Larry Rivers displaced it with a design of a winged helmet which took up the entire cover.

Readers of this issue may also note that a theme seems to run throughout much of the content —namely one of self-destruction. This is, in fact, a coincidence, though it is indeed becoming increasingly common in literary magazine circles to focus on a single topic. Granta is an obvious example wit…