Plimpton biography

A life—long friend of Robert F. Kennedy, he was present when Kennedy, then a Democratic presidential candidate in , was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. Plimpton was one of two men who grabbed the assassin, held him down, and took the gun from his hand. In the s, Plimpton also began another career, as an actor. His first role was as an extra in Lawrence of Arabia, and he went on to appear in a number of small roles in films including a gunman in 's Rio Lobo and a psychiatrist in 's Good Will Hunting.

Another writing incident that brought Plimpton prominence occurred in , the result of a April Fool's joke. He made up a pitcher who was also Tibetan Monk who could throw a baseball harder than anyone else, mph, and published his work in Sports Illustrated. Some fell for his creation, and the whole experience inspired him to write a novel, 's The Curious Case of Sidd Finch.

Plimpton continued to do participatory journalism, run the Paris Review, and work on other literary—related projects until his death. He died on September 26, , in his sleep at his apartment in Manhattan after suffering from heart problems; he was He was so open to life and all of its new and unexpected situations. Sources: Chicago Tribune, September 27, , sec.

A1, p. George had nothing to do with that story. That is where George is, in Paris. I think he was in awe of his mother. He adored her. It was George Plimpton inviting me to his place, and I assumed he probably would live in a similar kind of rat hole to where I was. Blair Fuller, writer and former editor at The Paris Review : When he started those participatory stories, I was in his corner with the bucket and towels.

There was this entourage, including Miles Davis, who came just to see Archie. He was riding high. After Moore had his hands taped, he threw a punch at the plywood wall and it made a great sound, and a medicine cabinet which was hung on the wall flew across the room. When we got into the ring, Archie was all smiles, clowning around with his friends.

Finally, the bell rang, and the remarkable thing was, George never took a backward step. He just decided to wade into Moore. It was tremendously courageous. And in the second round, George, just coming forward, did something, I really cannot tell you what, which made Moore slip, and Moore went to one knee. Now this was humiliating for the light heavyweight champion of the world.

You know, he is not going to like that. David Amram: There was a memorable party one night in George invited the Beat poet Lord Buckley to come and give a program for all these people George had invited from the world of television and publishing and films. He wanted to give this underground genius a chance to reach a large public. After the party, I went with Lord Buckley to the place where he was staying, and he mentioned that no one had ever really been that nice and gracious to him in his whole life, and the next morning Lord Buckley passed away.

Gay Talese, writer: I remember one time, at the height of Camelot, this party, a mixed bag of people, a couple black people and a couple socialites and a couple beatniks, I remember when Jacqueline Kennedy walked in. You have to draw the line somewhere, and so he did. Certainly, he would not introduce the First Lady to Norman Mailer. That is a foregone conclusion.

I mean, Mailer is out. Do you understand? Put this in context. God knows what he is going to say to her. I am merely saying that George Plimpton had to be an editor, not of The Paris Review , but more than that-within his own house, he had to edit out those people who were going to be risky when being introduced to the First Lady. George Plimpton: We used to give these huge fireworks parties.

Two thousand people would come across the potato fields. And the East Hampton cops were fairly determined to create an embarrassing situation, and they decided to invade the place. When the cop cars started arriving, Teddy and Steve immediately took off. He had a recurring role as the grandfather of Dr. Carter on ER [39] and was a cast member of Nero Wolfe — In The Simpsons episode " I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can ", he hosts the "Spellympics" and attempts to bribe Lisa to lose with the offer of a scholarship at a Seven Sisters College and a hot plate: "it's perfect for soup!

How do I know you're not George Plimpton? Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent" [43] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. She was the daughter of writers Willard R. Espy [46] and Hilda S. Cole, who had, earlier in her career, been a publicity agent for Kate Smith and Fred Waring. Plimpton, along with former decathlete Rafer Johnson and American football star Rosey Grier , was credited with helping wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the floor when Kennedy was assassinated following his victory in the California Democratic primary at the former Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. Bartlett Giamatti stated that "Plimpton's control is masterly," and added that baseball "culture is splendidly rendered with an experienced insider's knowledge, and the whole saga of Finch's brief, astonishing passage through big-league baseball is at once a parody of every player's as-told-to biography, a satire on professional sports, an extended and intriguing meditation on our national pastime and a touching variant on the novel of education as Sidd learns of the world.

His own upper-class roots provided him with a number of unique social connections, including a close relationship with the Kennedy family. He was a Harvard classmate of Robert Kennedy's, and was walking directly in front of the senator when he was assassinated in Kennedy he edits interviews that form a picture of Robert Kennedy's life and the procession of his funeral train from New York to Washington.

Plimpton's own interest centered on the small literary magazine he edited from until his death in As James Warren explained in Chicago Tribune, "It's the Paris Review, not the chronicles of his own sporting foibles … that constitutes the soul—and takes up much of the time—of Plimpton's life.

Plimpton biography

Coraghessan Boyle, and V. Naipaul—published first efforts or complete works within its pages. Plimpton's interviews with writers about the craft of writing were a major attraction of the journal. It was the Paris Review, explained Nona Balakian in New York Times, that first "developed a new kind of extended and articulate interview that combined the Boswellian aim with an exploration of the ideas of major contemporary writers on the art of fiction and poetry.

If they do not arrive at the point I dreamily hoped for—creativity totally clarified with a supplementary manual on How To Write—they supply very good instruction nevertheless. Poets at Work includes conversations with T. Poet Donald Hall described the in-terviews in his introduction to the volume as "literary history as gossip. Summarizing the significance of both volumes, Listener contributor Peter Parker wrote that "these interviews are a permanent and invaluable record of the working practices, opinions and observations of those who have reflected our century in their poetry and prose.

Among the dozen or so other pieces are discussions with August Wilson , Wendy Wasserstein, and two with Arthur Miller. The Writer's Chapbook belongs to the same series, bringing together additional interviews from Paris Review under the editorial supervision of Plimpton. The emphasis here is on subject matter—plot, character, writer's bloc, etc.

Eliot, W. Auden , and Ezra Pound. According to New York Times Book Review contributor David Kirby, "There is little fact and less advice in the 'Chapbook,' its subtitle notwithstanding, but there are plenty of opinions, most of them rather negative: poetry readings are nightmares, politics and writing don't mix, professors and critics the terms are interchangeable don't know what they are talking about.

The volume includes the quintessential Paris Review story "Night Flight to Stockholm" by Dallas Wiebe, which describes how an aspiring writer eventually wins the Noble Prize in literature by sending dismembered parts of his body along with submissions to major literary journals. Kirby concluded that The Paris Review Anthology "is historically important as well, since it reminds readers how a new era in letters began.

After narrowly losing a game of horseshoes to President-elect George Bush, Plimpton set out to uncover the universal secret of success through conversations with various sports legends, coaches, and top executives. Plimpton draws upon his X factor is in his prose style, in his unfailing ability to find the perfectly funny word or phrase," wrote Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in New York Times.

A good friend for awhile, though he felt toward the end of his life that I had made fun of him in a story I wrote ['The Snows of Studio Fifty-four'] which was a parody of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Chicago Tribune Books contributor Robert Olen Butler wrote, "Plimpton has assembled this collection of commentary, fiction, reminiscence, poetry and journalism wonderfully well, filling us with that impression of sports which is always hard to explain, that behind the seeming triviality of these games there resides something profound.

He contributes the first essay himself, on the first recorded statistical occurrence of it in baseball history, when Ross Barnes hit one during a Chicago White Stockings game in The Best of Plimpton brings together examples of the author's writings over a period of thirty-five years. The other half would murder to be in my place.