In those days, The Paris Review occupied a one-room ground floor office on the East River with a lion-tamer’s chair hanging from the ceiling. George lived upstairs in a duplex. His first wife, Freddy, and oldest daughter, Medora, lived up there, too, but the first floor of the Plimpton apartment, with its pool table and Read More
Since the economy slid into recession a couple of years ago, New Yorkers have read about high-flying traders and dot-com visionaries brought low by the market forces they thought they’d made obsolete. In the late 1990′s, these people claimed (and some actually believed) that the business cycle had been repealed, that the future promised only Read More
New York Characters , by Gillian Zoe Segal. W.W. Norton, 147 pages, $22.95.
It’s all about what Dr. Zizmor and Bobby Short and the Real Kramer have in common-but before that, it’s about Mister Clean. Mister Clean was a guy on our street in Boerum Hill when I was growing up; he lived in a Read More
David Letterman’s somber return to television on Sept. 17-the
night that Dan Rather broke down and the host came close a few times
himself-has been praised as one of the great public healing moments in the
aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Normally a
smart-assed master of the irreverent and glib,
Mr. Read More
If Manhattan can be said to have a man of letters, few would argue with bestowing that title on George Plimpton, editor since 1953 of The Paris Review , inventor of participatory journalism, host of an endless stream of literary parties in his East 72nd Street town house. In his new book, Truman Capote: In Read More
