Lewis Lapham

This week Alec talks with Lewis Lapham, who's been refining his prose for over 50 years. Lapham says he still has to write “three or four or five, sometimes eight drafts of something,” but takes pleasure in “getting it right.” Today, he’s at the helm of Lapham’s Quarterly. He was at Harper’s for many years – and he started out at The San Francisco Examiner before stints at The Saturday Evening Post and Life.

To talk with Lewis Lapham, you’re struck with the sensation that you’ve stumbled onto the set of a 1940’s film noir movie. He wears pressed suits and pocket squares -- and his stories evoke another era. He tells Alec about being a rookie reporter at The Examiner and what it was like to go on a meditation retreat with the Beatles in India.

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