<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1141" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV>When they start to drop, they really drop . . .</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><<A href="http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0926ObitPlimpton26-ON.html">http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0926ObitPlimpton26-ON.html</A>></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I met Plimpton a few times, and was in his beautiful Manhattan apt (overlooking the East River on 72 St) twice -- once for some lit party that was tied to Allen Ginsberg's b-day (where Ginsberg, who was on a macro diet, blew out candles on a watermelon half insted of a cake), and once for Terry Southern's wake. My wife worked for one of his closest friends, so there was some access to the old Paris Review crowd. Plimpton seemed a jovial if distant type, but he appeared to me more as a conduit for other writers than a true lit force himself. He wrote and edited several sports books, including the famous "Paper Lion," but it was his book "Shadowbox" that caught my attention when I was writing my little polemic, "American Fan":</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>"Plimpton also tried his hand at boxing, going three rounds against Archie Moore, the former light heavyweight champion. He wrote of this encounter in 'Shadowbox,' and it too has humorous qualities. (As part of his training, Plimpton reads an Olde English book on the gentlemen's art of prizefighting.) For unlike Joyce Carol Oates, whose attraction to the ring is so intense that were she to lace on gloves her inner brute would emerge and no one would be safe, Plimpton's approach to boxing was more in the line of 'I say, here's a lark: me, in trunks, trading blows with a black man!' His account of the fight, and the training that led up to it, lacks any serious edge. Plimpton is smart enough to be self-deprecating about his physique and ability to fight, and there is all along a winking certainty that our George is never in danger. (The worst he suffers is a bloody nose.) Plimpton writes of Moore in pleasant terms, as would a benevolent master of a strong but loyal manservant: 'His face was peaceful, with a kind of comforting mien to it . . . and to be put away by him in the ring would not be unlike being tucked in by a Haitian mammy.' Well put, old boy!"</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>DP</DIV></BODY></HTML>