The Spring 2010 issue of the Paris Review, the literary periodical founded by George Plimpton ’48 and others, includes a lengthy interview with Princeton-educated author John McPhee, long a staff writer for the New Yorker. In the interview, McPhee says that he reads his drafts aloud to his wife, Yolanda, and to his friend Gordon Gund ’61 who, like McPhee, lives in Princeton. (Gund was profiled in 1997 in Harvard Magazine.) An investor and former owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers professional basketball team, Gund signed star LeBron James for that franchise. Gund played ice hockey in college but lost his sight at age 30; he has donated generously to support research on the disorder that claimed his vision, retinitis pigmentosa. In the interview, McPhee describes Gund as a "spectacular listener. He has an amazing memory. It's the usual thing: if you lose one sense, the others become sharper."
An excerpt from the interview (though not the part that mentions Gund) is available online.
