I can’t believe it… Just caught the headline. George Plimpton died today. He was one of my favorite writers. I met him twice: once in college when he signed a copy of his The Best of Plimpton collection and again a few months ago when he came by the book store to promote the new Paris Review collection. Both times he regailed everyone present with a vast array of stories that placed him as an observer or a bystander to some remarkable moments (for example he was in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel when Robert F. Kennedy was killed.) But he didn’t mind being the center of attention either, like when he stepped in the ring with Archie Moore or ran out on the field as quarterback of the Detroit Lions. He put himself in many situations like this because he knew that most folks had, at one time or another, wondered what it might be like to be a modern day gladiator. It wasn’t a stunt really; it felt more like a favor to his friends. And though he wrote a lot about sports, that was only one dimension of his life. He also founded the The Paris Review, perhaps the most significant literary magazine of the last fifty years. It is notable for having published early works by many great writers, and it is also well-known for the “Art of Fiction” (or Poetry, or Drama) interviews included in each issue. There is a wealth of knowledge in each interview; the worlds greatest writers talking about how they write. Most of all he simply seemed like someone who truly loved life. You could see it in his face when he spoke and you could see it in his writing. Whether he was ringside for the Thrilla in Manilla or running with bulls in Pamplona it was really about the joy of it all. Here’s the obit.
Sad News
Sad day in Iowa
Frank Conroy, longtime director of the Iowa Writers workshop died today after a battle with cancer. Here's the NY Times obit. (via ed)
R.I.P., Glenn Goldman
Glenn Goldman, the owner and founder of Book Soup in West Hollywood, California, died yesterday from complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 58 years old.I first worked at Book Soup when I was nineteen, and I returned after graduating from college. I loved the place, and I still do; it's my favorite book store in all the world, with its towering shelves packed with books, and books behind books, and ladders to get to those books. Glenn started it all, in 1975, when my parents still lived in New Jersey, long before their lives in Los Angeles had even been conceived of. Sometimes I like to think that Book Soup was waiting, all along, to give little writer me some shelter, and an education. I am grateful to Glenn for this.Here's some of what I learned about at Book Soup:Le Corbusier, Andreas Gursky, Jane Jacobs, Maseratis, Georges Batailles, David Sedaris, Patricia Highsmith, equestrian porn, Boris Vian, Gammahydroxybutyrate (GBH), Paul Bowles, Donna Tartt, Ina Garten, Joan Didion, blogs, Guy Debord, Julius Shulman, James Ellroy, wedding stylists, personal assistants, Breathless, Schlitz beer, Robert Caro, Robert Evans, Robert Greene, Helmut Newton, Paulo Coelho, the reading habits of certain celebrities, how big books can be, and how expensive, how sought after, and cool.I met a guy named Patrick at Book Soup, and I married him.Outside of Book Soup there are trashy girls from the Inland Empire, heading with arms crossed to a nearby club, and raving homeless men, and at the newsstand an actress is reading about herself in the tabloids. A man walks by selling puppies, maybe a waterproof radio. Inside of Book Soup there are highly opinionated, supremely well-read booksellers who want to know what five books you'd take with you to a desert island, go, and what your favorite Morrissey song is, and how many people you've slept with, and don't you think I need another tattoo? Inside there are books, so many books.And through it all, there was Glenn - shy and notoriously stubborn, but devoted to the store, his store. He couldn't stop ordering books, even though we couldn't fit them anywhere. But God bless him for that, because we always had what you were looking for, what I was looking for.Glenn will certainly be missed, and his legacy, as a bookseller to the great and infamous, will continue.More: Max remembers
Remembering Anthony Shadid in Beirut
The wind was blowing as morning broke over Beirut. In the kitchen, I poured a glass of milk for our daughter. Firing up the iPhone, there it was: New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid had died on assignment in Syria. He was 43 years old.
●
●
Remembering Tillie Olsen
The recent death of Tillie Olsen (1912-2007) reminds us that the value of a piece of literature is not quantifiable - not by word count, not by books sold - but, rather, resides in a black box between writer and reader, in a transaction that defies easy explanation. Olsen's writing was not prodigal - she only published one complete book of fiction - but was, in its artistry and its impact, prodigious.Tell Me a Riddle (1961), a collection of four stories, drew on activist sensibilities forged in the 1920s and 30s and on Olsen's innate poetic gifts. It consciously reclaimed the lives of minorities, of immigrants, of working-class people, and, especially, of women, as worthy of fictional examination. In so doing, it anticipated much of the finest literature published since.It seems that Olsen was as inspiring in person as she was on the page. Her great-nephew Matt Osypowski, himself a fiction writer, recently told The Millions:I started a novel (unfinished) in her apartment when I was eight or nine years old. Something about her presence made me want to do what she did, to master the language in the way that she had. She would send me the most beautiful birthday cards - short notes of pure music. Her partner, Jack, was deeply involved in labor politics in San Francisco, as was my grandfather. Their work was steeped in conflict, ideology, and mass movements... There was a beautiful contrast between their work and Tillie's, the big picture on their end and on hers all the small pictures that make the big picture matter. Her work can make me so sad, but it's never an impotent sadness - beneath it lie all her hopes for a better world, hopes that she wrote for, fought for, and helped all of us in the family share and understand.Another fond remembrance, by John Leonard, is posted at The Nation (via The Mumpsimus).
We’ll Miss Hitch
Vanity Fair remembers Christopher Hitchens, a favorite of ours who was always fun to root for, and who, as you've no doubt heard by now, died last night. Andrew Sullivan remembers an email exchange from happier times. Hitchens' ebook from this year, The Enemy, is in our Hall of Fame, and we reviewed his memoir, Hitch-22, last year.