In these long interviews, conducted during the last five years of his life, a noted writer talks about his professional life as a poet, playwright, lawyer, editor of Fortune, Librarian of Congress and Harvard professor. Relatively reticent about his family, MacLeish (18921982) is outspoken about FDR, Truman ("totally himself all the time"), Joe McCarthy, George Marshall (a remarkable man of great intellectual powers) and Alger Hiss ("the most complete reactionary I ever saw in my life"), andalthough he claims that he avoided writers "like the plague"about Joyce, Hemingway and Ezra Pound ("He had the worst taste in people"). Arranged chronologically, these free-ranging memoirs reveal many hitherto undisclosed aspects of an eloquent, high-minded American. -- Publishers Weekly.
During the last five years of his life MacLeish participated in this series of interviews tracing his career as poet, Librarian of Congress, statesman, and man of letters. He speaks candidly of his student years, his "expatriate period" in Paris, and his subsequent writing and teaching. The editors/interviewers have wisely asked only brief, perceptive questions, leaving the spotlight on the poet. His language is colloquial, and the range of his writing, experience, and acquaintances should prove fascinating to readers of 20th-century poetry, literature, and social history. Stephen H. Cape, Indiana Univ. Lib. -- Library Journal.
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