Good news! Readers who missed The Paris Review’s special humor issue this past fall (reviewed here last month by Mark Steyn) now have another chance to savor the wit of this venerable quarterly. There are some who believe that the most poignant moment in the PR’s humor issue came with the question mark affixed to its subtitle: “Whither Mirth?” Wither, indeed. But in case anyone should go away thinking that The Paris Review lacks a sense of humor, the editors cleverly saved their funniest piece for the current, Winter 1995, issue. We refer to the long interview with the polymathic, transcontinental George Steiner, author of (among many other books) After Babel, one work of literary criticism whose contents really do live up to its title.

The spur for this interview was Mr. Steiner’s appointment as the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature at Oxford—a position, Mr. ...

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