The Death of Sir George Plimpton

George Plimpton is dead. 

At age 75, the author, editor and one-time third-string quarterback passed away.  Plimpton was a literary god, with a taste for the absurd and articulate.  He interviewed Hemingway and boxed with Archie Moore.  When discussing participatory journalism, Plimpton was the mad cap extraordinaire. 

            Plimpton was also an actor who had roles in the "Simpsons," and “Good Will Hunting.

            On a personal note, I first read a story Plimpton wrote in a baseball anthology I had. The story, one of his better and more personal, dealt with a ball game at Fenway Park with his daughter.  He wrote with such grace and humor that it felt like he was everyone’s grandfather.

The New York Times wrote a sweet obituary on Plimpton

The New Yorker also wrote a postscript on one of its frequent contributors

Plimpton was a prolific writer of books as well.

Some of Plimpton’s work can be found here, including a funny short he did on the 1997 Academy Awards

Keats is truth

Up till now, the posts that I have made have featured young and upcoming writers.  I wanted to something different and focus on someone from the past...the immaculate poet John Keats.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and truth of imagination-What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth-whether it existed before or not-for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential beauty.

-John Keats

Dead at 25.  That was the sad and tragic and bittersweet life of the greatest poet of all time. Yes. I repeat all time. Shakespeare and his 25 collaborators can’t write a sonnet worth one of the Odes, Wordsworth can take his pompous high jinks and rub it on his bald head, TS Eliot well, let us go then, you and I, to a place where CATS roam around.  Neruda, Rilke, Auden, Blake, Milton, Pope, Shelley, Dickinson...they are all remarkable talents. But John Keats remains an entity hovering above the rest. The Odes, La Bella Sans Dame Merci, even the flawed epics of Endymion and Hyperion, help the cannon of Keat’s work grow.

There is a plethora of Keatsian related information out there, but I wanted to highlight the key sites.

• http://www.john-keats.com/- An overall informative site, with its key components being the updated news wire of Keats related news and a shop to purchase his work.

• John Keats: A Comprehensive Study - The most impressive of the sites because it offers total information overload dealing with Keat's life and provides a bunch of interesting pictures of his original manuscripts and snap shots of his old haunts.

• The Poetical Works - Featuring the gist of Keats work for all the world to see why he truly was a master, whose life was cut way too short.

I have crowned John Keats of the king of poetry's palace because since I was in high school his belief in truth and beauty, his undying allegiance to the power of the imagination, his magical ability to conjure up emotions and feelings of our true nature still infect anyone who reads him.

Here is a sample of my favorite Keats poem

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d	35
On the cold hill’s side.
X. I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”	40
XI. I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
XII. And this is why I sojourn here,	45
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

The Brooklyn Bard bestows us with another gem of a novel

Very rarely does a writer come along who juxtaposes a mulititude of genres and succeeds in creating wonderful story material. Jonathan Lethem, who made headlines in 1999 for his crazy, far-fetched, enchanting novel "Motherless Brooklyn" about a detective with Tourette's Syndrome, is back with "The Fortress of Solitude" an amazing tale of racial friendships in 1970's Brooklyn, New York.

Book Magazine called Lethem the "King of Literary Hybrid." 

Because of the new publication of his new book, there has been a deluge of coverage of Lethem and of his work. 

• First let's begin with the a website dedicated to Lethem, Lethem in Landscape. The student site features a bunch of terrific features including tour dates, interviews and stories. 
• The next is Lethem's official site created by his publisher Random House. Slightly wonkish, it does offer samples of his work.

Here are a few roaring reviews for Lethem's new book.

• New York Times Book Review
• Salon.com
• Here is the first chapter of "The Fortress of Solitude."

Nell Freudenberger is currently my traveling companion wherever I go. I first heard about the author of "Lucky Girls" during the spring of 2001, when her first short story of the same name appeared in the New Yorker's summer fiction issue featuring a cast of upcoming new writers.  What drew me to her was the world she was writing about (mostly South Asia) and the perspective she was writing from. Also, the fact she resembled actress Anna Paquin didn't hurt either. 

Entertainment Weekly article

After her story was published, she was bombarded with an advance for $500,000, but she turned it down in order to be published by Ecco, an imprint of Harper Collins.  

She has indeed lived up to the hype and her collection of five stories sparkles. Her characters, mostly young American women in South Asia, display a restlessness that can not be quenched.  Freudenberger is only 28, but her talent is not precocious, she has an uncanny voice of someone who has lived and loved beyond her young years.

Here are some articles about Freudenberger

Salon -This is a hilarious article dealing with a fellow writer's jealousy over Freudenberger's success. Well written and sincerely portrayed.

New York Times Book Review - Last week's review of her book.  Most of the reviews have been favorable, and even those that aren't still gush about her undeniable talent.

Stay tuned for the next episode when I wax poetic about Brooklyn's favorite bard, Jonathan Lethem, author of the new novel "The Fortress of Solitude."