George Plimpton
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimptonwas an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. He was also famous for "participatory journalism" which included competing in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth18 March 1927
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Writing is a very lonely business and when you come to a book fair and you sit at a table and people come up to you with books that they've had in their library for many years and they think it's been somewhat enhanced by a signature, it's always a pleasure.
My favorite monologue in the book is Kate Harrington's story of her relationship with Truman.
Give me good books, good conversations, and my Trek Y-Foil, and I shall want for nothing else.
The smaller the ball used in the sport, the better the book.
I never understood people who don't have bookshelves.
I was told just today that 60,000 or 70,000 people listen to this (Audible.com site), which on personal computers strikes me as an extraordinary number, ... Maybe with this 'Pet Peeves' book, it'll be 150,000.
I think people are aware of how varied and interesting his life was-always at the center of things-as well as aspects of his decline.
He was interviewed in the early '60s by a young novelist, Pati Hill.
He still has the same way of calling to me, as if I'm still new to him, as if he has yet to get over me.
I remember being awed by it - the uniqueness and nicety of style - and I suspect I was a bit jealous because we were more or less of the same generation.
It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.
Rick Bass is one of the best writers of his generation.
The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself--the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent--all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action.
As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them. Oscar Wilde said, 'You destroy the thing that you love.' It's the other way around. What you love destroys you.