{"id":108256,"date":"2017-02-28T18:21:58","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T23:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=108256"},"modified":"2017-03-01T13:32:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T18:32:31","slug":"talking-out-of-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking Out of School"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Stephen Spender.<\/p><\/div>\n

Our\u00a0complete digital archive is available now.\u00a0Subscribers can read every piece\u2014every story and poem, every essay, portfolio, and interview\u2014from <\/em>The Paris Review\u2019s sixty-four-year history. Subscribe now<\/a> and you can start reading 0ur\u00a0back issues\u00a0right away. You can also try a free ten-day trial period<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stephen Spender, born on this day in 1909, was interviewed for our Art of Poetry series in 1980<\/a>. It\u2019s a gossipy, unrestrained interview, with asides about Yeats, Hemingway, Eliot, Pound, and Auden, among others.\u00a0But maybe Spender was running his mouth too much; the interview occasioned a pair of heated\u00a0responses from Martha Gellhorn and Laura Riding Jackson, both of whom disputed the facts\u00a0he\u2019d relayed to his interviewer. Their letters were so long, and so full-throated in their denunciations, that\u00a0we published them\u00a0in their entirety in our Spring 1981 issue<\/a>, allowing Spender to respond to both.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the bit of Spender\u2019s interview that upset Laura Riding Jackson:<\/p>\n

Another thing that amused Yeats very much for some reason was Robert Graves and the whole saga of his life with Laura Riding. He told how Laura Riding threw herself out of a window without breaking her spine, or breaking it but being cured very rapidly. All that pleased Yeats tremendously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s an understandable concern\u2014one doesn\u2019t often wish to have one\u2019s episodes of defenestration discussed casually in print. Jackson took particular umbrage\u00a0at Spender\u2019s use of\u00a0amused<\/em>, which she deemed a \u201cdisgusting word for this disgusting exposure by Yeats of his organ of humor.\u201d Her letter\u00a0goes on to denigrate the jockeying for status that characterizes so many literary discussions:<\/p>\n

The reference to myself exhibits an attitude to me as one who is an item of literary mention outside the bounds of the Important Mentions but useful as something of a flourish of special sophistication. Literary interviews bring out this particular worst\u2014addiction to strategic mentions\u2014of the literary\u2014world worsts \u2026\u00a0Spender is a gentle-mannered but astute Yes-Man of the spheres of the contemporary literary-world\u2019s life in which this status carries an accent as of topmost social standing. His personal equipment of writer capability and sensitivity, initially, likely, of no mean substance, has been thinned into a fluid distribution of literary interestedness in which deference to the discrimination of importance-status is mingled with a benign literary-world universality of interest. The stretching of himself between the two poles of literary personalistic importance and humanitarian literary fellowship has converted him into a namby-pamby enthusiast of all the rest as deserving of something or other, for the honor of literature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spender, for his part, thought that Jackson should be pleased with the mention; since it depicted her as someone who could survive, miraculously, a fall from a window, it gave her a kind of supernatural vibe:<\/p>\n

If she were one to accept apologies, I would like to apologize to Laura Riding for saying that Yeats was amused by the Riding\/Graves or Graves\/Riding saga, and I would like also to apologize to the ghost of Yeats for causing bad blood with the living. However in extenuation I would point out that the saga surely derives from the epilogue Graves wrote to the first edition of\u00a0Goodbye to All That<\/em>. Graves refers, rather cryptically, here, to Laura Riding throwing herself out of a window, breaking her spine and making a recovery which seems more apotheosis than miracle. The reader has the impression that Graves regarded the episode as a magical event in the life of some saint. Presumably, at the time when this was written it met with the approval of Laura Riding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you want the whole argument, read \u201cGuerre de Plume\u201d here<\/a>, and\u00a0subscribe now<\/a>\u00a0for digital access to every short story, poem, portfolio, and essay from\u00a0The Paris Review.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Spender\u2019s Paris Review interview set off one of the stranger disputes in the magazine\u2019s history\u2014it\u2019s about jumping out a window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[9205,27587,6453,1132,13236,12705,27586,182,22160,12703,8928,11116,10113],"class_list":["post-108256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-art-of-poetry","tag-defenestration","tag-gossip","tag-interviews","tag-issue-79","tag-laura-riding","tag-laura-riding-jackson","tag-letters","tag-martha-gellhorn","tag-stephen-spender","tag-w-b-yeats","tag-william-butler-yeats","tag-writers-at-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDefenestration: A Literary Feud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stephen Spender\u2019s Paris Review interview set off one of the stranger disputes in the magazine\u2019s history\u2014it\u2019s about jumping out a window.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Talking Out of School by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 28, 2017 \u2013 Stephen Spender\u2019s Paris Review interview set off one of the stranger disputes in the magazine\u2019s history\u2014it\u2019s about jumping out a window.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-02-28T23:21:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-03-01T18:32:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"794\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\"},\"headline\":\"Talking Out of School\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-02-28T23:21:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-03-01T18:32:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/\"},\"wordCount\":647,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Art of Poetry\",\"defenestration\",\"gossip\",\"interviews\",\"Issue 79\",\"Laura Riding\",\"Laura Riding Jackson\",\"letters\",\"Martha Gellhorn\",\"Stephen Spender\",\"W.B. Yeats\",\"William Butler Yeats\",\"writers at work\"],\"articleSection\":[\"From the Archive\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/\",\"name\":\"Defenestration: A Literary Feud\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-02-28T23:21:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-03-01T18:32:31+00:00\",\"description\":\"Stephen Spender\u2019s Paris Review interview set off one of the stranger disputes in the magazine\u2019s history\u2014it\u2019s about jumping out a window.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Talking Out of School\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\",\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Dan Piepenbring\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Defenestration: A Literary Feud","description":"Stephen Spender\u2019s Paris Review interview set off one of the stranger disputes in the magazine\u2019s history\u2014it\u2019s about jumping out a window.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Talking Out of School by Dan Piepenbring","og_description":"February 28, 2017 \u2013 Stephen Spender\u2019s Paris Review interview set off one of the stranger disputes in the magazine\u2019s history\u2014it\u2019s about jumping out a window.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2017-02-28T23:21:58+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-03-01T18:32:31+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":794,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Dan Piepenbring","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Dan Piepenbring","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/"},"author":{"name":"Dan Piepenbring","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8"},"headline":"Talking Out of School","datePublished":"2017-02-28T23:21:58+00:00","dateModified":"2017-03-01T18:32:31+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/"},"wordCount":647,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg","keywords":["Art of Poetry","defenestration","gossip","interviews","Issue 79","Laura Riding","Laura Riding Jackson","letters","Martha Gellhorn","Stephen Spender","W.B. Yeats","William Butler Yeats","writers at work"],"articleSection":["From the Archive"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/","name":"Defenestration: A Literary Feud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg","datePublished":"2017-02-28T23:21:58+00:00","dateModified":"2017-03-01T18:32:31+00:00","description":"Stephen Spender\u2019s Paris Review interview set off one of the stranger disputes in the magazine\u2019s history\u2014it\u2019s about jumping out a window.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/stephenspender.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/28\/talking-out-of-school\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Talking Out of School"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8","name":"Dan Piepenbring","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6fde7ced443ba5b52db3b06239dca8a2eaeff111fccecd7bf483663c99d2762b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Dan Piepenbring"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/dpiepenbring\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108256"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108270,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108256\/revisions\/108270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}