In 1987, when I was twenty-four, I lived in a Tribeca loft with my former college roommates, George and Pablo. One evening that February, Pablo brought three sisters whom I’ll call the Viscontis home for dinner, commencing what promised to be the most hopeful chapter of my life. 

Oh where oh where is the underdog gone
Oh where oh where can he be
That I always lavished my sympathies on

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.