It turns out Martin Amis wasn’t the only literary gamer. Check out this 1980 Intellivision advertisement in which George Plimpton uses his iconic voice to slam Atari’s lineup of sports games — a full two years before Amis’ book released.
Plimpton Really Would Try Anything
Photographic Thaw
If you’re going to accidentally leave almost two dozen unprocessed photo negatives out for 100 years, there’s no better place to store them than a block of ice in Antarctica. Conservationists restoring an Antarctic exploration hut found the negatives left from Robert Falcon Scott’s fatal 1910-13 Terre Nova Expedition to the South Pole. For a less harrowing tale of Arctic exploration, check out our review of Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
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Tuesday New Release Day: Saunders; Marcus; Beah; Lee; Vapnyar; Kidd; Abani; Shteyngart
Lots of new releases this week, among them a new paperback edition of Tenth of December by George Saunders. Also out: Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus; The Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah; On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee; The Scent of Pine by Lara Vapnyar; The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd; The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani; and Little Failure by Year in Reading alum Gary Shteyngart. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2014 Book Preview.
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Reader’s Tan
Have you ever gotten stuck in a book? Here’s a delightful little comic by Grant Snider that explores the process of losing oneself in reading.
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The New York Times Broadens Book Coverage
The New York Times is broadening its book coverage by adding more staffers and launching three new features: a literary advice column, a weekly Q&A about writing processes, and a column looking at “contemporary issues through the lens of recent and historical books.”
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A Journal for the People
Recommended Reading: Zinzi Clemmons, one of the founders of Apogee Journal, on the importance of editors of color and inclusive literary journals.
How Not to Have an Awful Panel
From the pedant to the eulogist, here are four distinct personality types that are sure to derail your literary event. While we’re at it, here’s to hoping that none of these four individuals show up to your next marathon reading.
And then there’s Plimpton’s video falconry, which you can play (and learn about) here:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/571422
Ah, of course. And don’t forget the George Plimpton Hotplate. It’s perfect for soup!
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgw5whN1Uo1qgllp5o1_500.png
Hilarious, but also bittersweet. This is the era when you had artists and intellectuals on the Tonight Show, right there with Sonny and Cher or Charo. Can’t really think of anyone today with Plimpton’s calibre who has that kind of household name status.
It seems the only late night cable shows in the US to regularly bring on writers and intellectuals are The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. I would love for something like the UK’s QI with Stephen Fry to catch on in the States, but that’s a dream.
I’d probably laugh out of my chair if I ever saw Franzen endorse an XBox, too.