What to Read When You Are Surrounded by Spies
Here, in one handy list, are a few of our favorite spy novels. Watch your back!
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Posts Tagged: george plimpton
The Rumpus Interview with Terry McDonell
Terry McDonell talks about his new memoir The Accidental Life and his career in the magazine business, which spans the beginning of New Journalism through the digital revolution.
...moreGeorge Plimpton: Paris Review Founder, Fireworks Connoisseur
At The Daily Beast, Anthony Haden-Guest reminisces about the annual Fourth of July party thrown by George Plimpton, founder and editor of the Paris Review. Not only did Plimpton throw the biggest and best fireworks parties in the Hamptons, he requested that his ashes be packed into a firework upon his death. Plimpton died in 2003; […]
...moreThe Thomas Pynchon Myth
Thomas Pynchon is a reclusive author—or so we are told. Vice unearths the origins of Pynchon’s famous isolation, attributing the legend to the Paris Review‘s George Plimpton: It all started 51 years ago, in 1963, when George Plimpton in the New York Times published the line: “Pynchon is in his early twenties; he writes in […]
...moreIn Command of Her Craft
On Wednesday, the writing world (and the world at large) lost literary luminary Maya Angelou. In this 1990 interview with the Paris Review, the beloved American author and poet discussed her deep appreciation for the English language and shed light on her writing process. But what I try to keep in mind mostly is my craft. That’s what I […]
...moreLit-Mags in Pop Culture
“Does anybody outside of our circle care?” asks The Millions’ Nick Ripatrazone in a post about literary magazines. “What is the wider cultural influence of literary magazines?” To try to figure it out, he looks at pop-culture depictions of lit-mags, from a George Plimpton cameo on The Simpsons to a whole episode of Cheers about submitting—and then […]
...moreThe Paris Review Goes Southern
It’s “Terry Southern Month” at The Paris Review Daily—the quarterly’s online “culture gazette,” the goal of which is to stay in touch with The Paris Review’s audience between print issues. Today, read an interview with Terry Southern from Issue 138. Terry Southern is a good thematic choice being that he was one of the forces […]
...moreLiterary Fashionables: The Cultural Theorist and The Sportsman
Two hallowed New York intellectuals are The Rumpus’s next set of Literary Fashionables. Susan Sontag and George Plimpton both circled the upper tiers of Manhattan’s literary society. And while exhibiting seemingly opposing aesthetics, both Sontag and Plimpton promulgated revolutionary ideas and modes of approach to writing that would impact literary stylists for years to come.
...more“Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge”
Author Dinty W. Moore has an interesting tale about chance run-ins with George Plimpton that starts when Moore was an undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh and ends, decades later, in Baltimore, Maryland. What makes the story more than just barroom conversation fodder is the way in which Moore delivers it; setting it out, piece […]
...moreA Book About My Father: George, Being George
I should perhaps start off by saying that I had almost nothing to do with the oral biography about my father, George Plimpton.
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