{"id":110441,"date":"2017-05-01T20:12:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T00:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=110441"},"modified":"2017-05-02T12:19:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T16:19:01","slug":"jean-stein-1934-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/01\/jean-stein-1934-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean Stein, 1934\u20132017"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Brigitte LaCombe<\/p><\/div>\n

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We were heartbroken to learn that Jean Stein, the writer and editor who chronicled the venal underside of celebrity, has died at eighty-three. Stein led a storied life. When she was still a teenager, she interviewed William Faulkner, an exchange that appeared in this magazine in 1956<\/a>. By the time she was in her early twenties, she\u2019d earned a spot on The Paris Review<\/em>\u2019s masthead as an editor; not long after, she worked with Clay Felker, of Esquire<\/em>. With George Plimpton, she edited Edie: American Girl<\/a><\/em>, an oral history of Edie Sedgwick; an excerpt appeared in the Review<\/em>\u2019s Summer 1980<\/a> issue. The pair also edited American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Later, with her friend the curator Walter Hopps, Stein edited Grand Street<\/em>, one of our favorite literary magazines, known not only for its discernment in literature but for its engagement with the visual arts. She ran the magazine, which had been founded by Ben Sonnenberg, out of her capacious apartment from 1990 until 2004. \u201cI am very interested in these different worlds coming together, so you\u2019re not only writing, you\u2019re not only art, you\u2019re not only science, you\u2019re bringing them all together,\u201d she told the\u00a0Los Angeles Times <\/em>in an interview to mark her first issue.\u00a0\u201cAnd, in a way, I\u2019ve lived my life in New York that way. I’m probably one of the very few people who brings people from different worlds to have evenings at home. So it\u2019s a natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Stein published West of Eden<\/em><\/a>, an oral history of Los Angeles, full of myth and rancor and especially desolation. Focusing on just five addresses, including the Dohenys\u2019 fabled Greystone Mansion and Jack Warner\u2019s Beverly Hills monstrosity, the book\u2019s chorus of voices excavated a story of LA buried for decades in the city\u2019s foundations, obscured by those who insist on marketing the place as paradise. The New York Times Book Review<\/em> praised it for offering \u201ca glimpse of what seems like deep truth\u201d\u2014words that could describe the whole of Stein\u2019s career. She will be missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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