The Paris Review Eagle, or “the bird” as it was referred to, was designed by William Pène du Bois, the magazine’s art editor, in the spring of 1952. The symbolism is not difficult: an American eagle is carrying a pen: the French association is denoted by the helmet the bird is wearing—actually a Phrygian hat originally given a slave on his freedom in ancient times and which subsequently became the liberty cap or bonnet rouge worn by the French Revolutionists of the 19th Century. 

I met Margouleff just after I got out of the hospital where I was seriously ill with hepatitis and told every day that I wasn’t going to make it, and was all prepared to die. I came out all traumatized. Very strange. Margouleff came along.