cover image Archibald MacLeish: Reflections

Archibald MacLeish: Reflections

Archibald MacLeish. University of Massachusetts Press, $40 (312pp) ISBN 978-0-87023-511-5

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. Photos. (July)