A statue for George
Mar 19, 2007 Americana, Ars Longa
Plimpton, that is. You don’t remember George Plimpton?
He edited the Harvard Lampoon and the Paris Review. He appeared in Rio Lobo with John Wayne and on The Simpsons with … the Simpsons. He had his nose bloodied by former light-heavyweight champ Archie Moore, pitched to Willie Mays and, most famously, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions. His friend Hunter S. Thompson once called him “the finest advertisement for Harvard University since LSD-25.” He drove a tank in the U.S. Army, interviewed Ernest Hemingway, and served as New York’s “official fireworks commissioner.” He partied with Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, Marianne Moore, and Jaqueline Kennedy. He made [things] up. We’re talking, of course, about George Plimpton—the sui generis pioneer of participatory journalism.
And Radar magazine says that a guy named Toby Barlow is trying to get support for his pet project: Getting a statue to the great man erected in New York City.
That sounds like a stretch, though Plimpton’s unusual career and talent certainly do seem to be entitled to a some kind of memorial. But a target for Manhattan pigeons? He was of that old WASP stock, true — the sorts of people who do have statues in the park. A literary man — he founded Paris Review — he was remarkable for how he stepped outside of the Harvard-man-of-letters stereotype and, still true to his craft, lived and explored life in at least three very enthusiastic dimensions. So perhaps a statue isn’t such a bad idea, after all. The only problem is that unlike Plimpton, it would be standing still.
March 19th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
I’d pony up a Hamilton for that.
God forbid that Hunter Thompsom be the only observer of that era to be immortalized.