“Saying a writer, or poet, has an ego is like saying a boxer is confrontational,” quipped author Martin Amis at the Paris Review’s annual Spring Revel. “It comes with the job.”
Amis — along with Zadie Smith, Uma Thurman and John Jeremiah Sullivan — honored poet Frederick Seidel at Cipriani 42nd Street with the night’s Hadada Award.
But Farrar, Straus and Giroux publisher Jonathan Galassi then arrived onstage to accept it while Seidel stayed in the crowd.
“I think this is the closest Fred’s ever come to a podium,” Galassi joked.
Former Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell asked the crowd — including authors Lydia Davis, James Salter, Gary Shteyngart, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sam Lipsyte and Isabel Fonseca — to stand in a moment of silence in remembrance of Paris Review co-founder Peter Matthiessen, who died Saturday and whose latest novel, “In Paradise,” was published Tuesday.
Current editor Lorin Stein said he could finally publicly thank Michael Bloomberg as a longtime donor now that he’s left office.