Plimpton’s Paris Review Joins Those Refusing NEA Grants

The Paris Review, a magazine edited by George Plimpton and widely perceived as the nation’s major literary quarterly, has rejected a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant in the latest move in the broadening protest among artists over NEA obscenity restrictions.

The publication announced Friday that it had notified the NEA last week that it would reject endowment funding this year rather than sign what artists contend is the equivalent of an anti-obscenity oath.

The New York City-based journal’s publisher, poet Deborah Pease, wrote NEA officials that by implementing the obscenity declaration, the NEA “has drawn a line as to what content is permissible in projects it funds, a line that, now in place, may be too easily advanced.”

Elsewhere, the Gettysburg Review, a Pennsylvania-based literary journal with a circulation of 1,700, said it had rejected a $4,550 NEA grant intended to promote a special issue on Native American literature and culture. Editor Peter Stitt said the issue will still be published, but the promotion effort will be reduced.

“They (the NEA) told me that the money could not be used to promote, distribute or produce work which may be considered obscene,” Stitt said. “The future tense of that means they are demanding prior approval of what I publish. Another word for that is censorship . “

The Paris Review said it would publish its rejection letter to the NEA in its next issue. In a telephone interview, Plimpton said the $10,000 in NEA money represents “a nifty part of our budget,” but that Pease had concurred in the decision without knowing how the journal will make up for the lost income. The magazine has a circulation of about 12,000.

“There were a number of courses open to us,” Plimpton said, noting that the review could have accepted the grant under protest or waited to see whether courts will overturn the obscenity pledge language on constitutional grounds. In the end, however, Plimpton said, rejection of the money appeared to be the only viable course.

“Ezra Pound would have picked this up between his thumb and forefinger and dropped it into a wastepaper basket,” Plimpton said, referring to the obscenity restriction. “We have tried to stress how formidable an organization we felt (the NEA) was and that this wasn’t a slap in the face at the endowment at all, but simply at the climate that had produced this restrictive paper.”