Some years ago, wife of the novelist and nature writer, Peter Matthiessen, said to me, “Everything is a hoax.”  At the time, I didn’t understand what she was referring to.  Then I began to find out.   Shortly before his death, the novelist, John Sherry told me how Peter Mattheisssen was “haunted by the CIA.”  Matthiessen told Sherry that he had not “founded” The Paris Review from scratch, as legend has it, but that he had established it at the behest of the CIA it while working for the Agency, so it could serve as his cover in Paris. In the … Continue reading Puttin’ On The Ritz