We worked at the Paris Review on the Rue Garanere for several years together. They were born to Plimpton and his second wife, Sarah Dudley, 26 years younger than he, who is chairwoman of the East Harlem Tutorial Program, for which he was a trustee. Plimpton also appeared in a number of feature films as an extra and in cameo appearances. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". A heuristic approximation! Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. Tom Nowatzke, fullback, Detroit Lions (In the 1960s, Plimpton briefly played with the Detroit Lions asresearch for the best-selling book Paper Lion, which was later made into a film):I was the No. If you listen to Grossman (who is originally from Boston) starting about 15 seconds into the clip below, youll see that he uses a split-the-difference UK/US hybrid that is literally mid-Atlantic, in the sense of combining accents from both countries, but is different from the newsreel announcer voice: You should talk to William Labov [JF: I will try] , pioneering sociolinguist, whose landmark study into New York City speech led him to ask the same question you have. You can. It is the kind of study . LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. . Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. If you found him at a fancy restaurant, he was there as a guest: For his own meals he preferred cheap Chinese or bangers and mash at a local Irish pub. He was 76.. [citation needed]. And here for the full interview). But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. Daniel Kunitz, managing editor of the Paris Review from1995-2000: I once heard George joking with William F. Buckley on the phone about how they had the last affected accents in New York. He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. This book is the party that was George's life-and it's a big one-attended by scores of famous people, as well as. So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. It took the form of a statement: I dont know writers who write about sex better than you. I rose to the bait and answered saying, Thank you. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . Felix Grucci Jr., of Fireworks by Grucci (Plimpton wrote about the Grucci family, widely held to be the first family of fireworks, in Fireworks: A History and Celebration):George had a very big passion for fireworks. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. He called his computer the machine. At dinner, when offered seconds, he would often decline by saying, Thank you, no, Ive had a gracious plenty. He called my mom Puss (this was also the name of our fat, raccoon-striped cat, though he was Mr. If you are in the big league, God help us all. The Scout Is a Lonely Hunter. Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. I'm not an expert, but Bill Labov from UPenn is, and he is quoted thusly: According to William Labov, teaching of this pronunciation declined sharply after the end of World War II. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . Charles McGrath, editor of the New York Times Book Review:I dont think George had played golf in years, but he used to save up oddball tips for me and others. Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. He plays the 'fancy pants' to our outhouse Americana," Flaherty asserted. Shed wandered out to the balcony of a lonely Manhattan cocktail party, and was standing out there, smoking a cigarette and looking down mournfully at the street far below, when from behind her she heard a voice: I know a better way down.. Robert Silvers, editor, the New York Review of Books:I met George on the Ile Saint-Louis in 1953 as I was leaving NATO headquarters. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! By George Plimpton. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. We were going to go looking for strange birds. **Get a life. Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. He did not appear last year, or the year before, and we feared he was done with us. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. She was the daughter of writers Willard R. Espy[39] and Hilda S. Cole, who had, earlier in her career, been a publicity agent for Kate Smith and Fred Waring. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! With such a useful explanation, why do I gripe about the name? The most recent was about how to extend the swing though impact, and the trick, George said, was to station an imaginary dwarf several feet in front of your ball and then (you have to re-create those broad Plimptonian vowels here) smack the dwarf in the ass. I dont know whether it works, because I cant think of it without laughing. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. George Plimpton, the New York aristocrat and literary journalist whose career was a happy lifelong competition between scholarly pursuits and madcap attempts -- chronicled in self-deprecating. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. Even in the UK we sometimes subtitle various Scots dialects on the news and TV and whatnot, so it makes sense that he wouldn't go full Dundee for the show. George Plimpton, who died last week at his town house, on East Seventy-second Street near the river, was a serious man of serious accomplishments who just happened to have more fun than a van. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. We were both excitedId just come back from a weekend in Las Vegas, and hed just come back from celebrating the fortieth anniversary reunion of his Detroit Lions team at Ford Field, where the fans had given him a standing ovation, and he had raised his hatand for a moment we were no longer father and son, but just two big excited boys, each comparing adventures, and I could hear the pride in his voice, the happiness. She was also the great-granddaughter on her father's side of Oakes Ames (18041873), an industrialist and congressman who was implicated in the Crdit Mobilier railroad scandal of 1872; and Governor-General of New Orleans Benjamin Franklin Butler, an American lawyer and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and later served as the 33rd Governor of Massachusetts. I mean, if George Plimpton wasnt my father and Id never met him, and I heard that voice emerge from his lips and matched it with his severe Roman features and his usual blue blazer, oxford shirt, and tie, I might have assumed that he was a little pompous or snooty or affected. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. Sometimes, we used to have quarrels, because he thought I took too many poems: Are you turning this magazine into a poetry magazine? he would say. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. Update: This post is #2 in the announcer-speak series. He saw athletes as heroes he. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. Was it him? What was our problem? George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". Louis Begley, novelist:Jim Atlas interviewed me for an Art of Fiction piece in the Paris Review, a feature of the magazine that George invented and brought to perfection. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. **Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. [citation needed], Plimpton's studies at Harvard were interrupted by military service from 1945 to 1948, during which time he served in Italy as an Army tank driver. It was scary, because he was never mad, and to see this normally benevolent, white-haired figure of civility fill with pink steam, to hear this gentle man, who loved nothing more than to tell lighthearted stories and laugh, suddenly shout-whisper Dammit at some injustice on the other end of the telephone was unsettling.
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