At some stage this spring The Paris Review hopes to have its seventh spring revel to raise funds for the magazine. It has been many years since the Review held its last fund-raiser {on a decrepit side-wheeler steamer moored at the South Street Seaport in New York)— mostly because the occasions, although as many as a thousand revelers have attended, have not made enough money to substantiate the considerable effort that has gone into staging them. At the fifth revel, for example, which was held in 1969 on the grounds of an abandoned church on Welfare Island (now Roosevelt Island), two pianos placed out in a grove of trees were destroyed in a late night rainstorm; almost all the profits from the revel were paid to a piano rental company. The final tally showed that the proceeds turned over to the magazine amounted to fourteen dollars.
It has always been a tradition to use a considerable amount of ingenuity and imagination to dress up the occasion to make it memorable for those who come. This spring the intent is to have the function in a New York nightclub discotheque called Area, The place is distinguished from its many rivals in the city by a number of features. First of all, throughout the club are a number of vitrines or diorama windows set into the walls of a maze of corridors, so that in the gloom one often has the impression of wandering through an aquarium. Some of the vitrines are large enough to put on a scene involving two or three people, or. for that matter, with giant tuna if Area wished to fill the vitrines with seawater. Second, every month or so Area picks a “theme” (“Science Fiction,” “The Automobile,” “Suburbia” are among those they have done do far) which is reflected by various stagings set up in these aforementioned vitrines.
During the month in which The Paris Review hopes to have its revel, the people who run Area are considering (actually on the recommendation of the Review) the theme “Great Moments in Literature.” In truth, the Area entrepreneurs are somewhat leery of the concept — “We’re not quite sure there’s enough there, are we?”
In the hope of persuading Area that the theme “Great Moments in Literature” is viable and appropriate (certainly for the night of the Review’s revel), the staff of this magazine offered help with various proposals which might be designed for the club’s vitrines. These follow— a series of story boards {to use an advertising term) that have been illustrated charmingly on our behalf by Roz Chast. The individual ideas have been listed under the heading “Proposal” together with their disposition, a final decision made either by the Review staff or the Area people.