George, Being George

by Nelson W. Aldrich

  BLAIR FULLER and George Plimpton became lifelong friends as undergraduates at Harvard. A short story of his appeared in the second issue of the Review, and he has been an editor at the magazine for more than fifty years. His most recent nonfiction book is Art in the Blood, a history of the Fuller family’s seven generations of American artists.

  ELIZABETH GAFFNEY worked with George for over sixteen years, beginning as a Paris Review intern in 1988, ending as a director of The Paris Review Foundation when he died. Her novel Metropolis was published in 2005.

  STEPHEN GAGHAN’s screenplay for the film Traffic received an Academy Award in 2001. Most recently, he wrote and directed the Oscar-nominated Syriana (2006). He worked as an intern at The Paris Review in the early 1990s.

  ROWAN GAITHER was an associate editor of The Paris Review and assistant to George Plimpton from March 1991 until August 1992. After leaving the Review, he attended Harvard Law School and now practices law in New York City, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

  LEON GAST is a nonfiction filmmaker best known for the Oscar-winning When We Were Kings, a documentary about the 1974 Muhammad Ali–George Foreman heavyweight championship fight in Kinshasa, Zaire.

  GEOFFREY GATES was born in Manhattan, where, since graduating from Princeton, he has worked in the investment business. He now lives in New Jersey with his wife, Wende Devlin.

  MYRA GELBAND was a senior editor at Sports Illustrated magazine from 1982 through 2001. She is now a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children.

  JAMES C. GOODALE, a New York City lawyer, has represented The Paris Review since 1980, and also represented George Plimpton from that time until he died in 2003. Before then, he was vice chairman and general counsel of The New York Times, which he represented in the Pentagon Papers case.

  TONI GOODALE has been part of the New York City literary and journalist scene for many years. She is a past board member of the PEN American Center and is the founder and president of Goodale Associates, a capital campaign-fundraising firm in New York City.

  DANA GOODYEAR is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Honey and Junk, a collection of poems published by W. W. Norton in 2005. She lives in Los Angeles.

  ROBERT GOTTLIEB has been editor in chief of both Simon and Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf, as well as editor of The New Yorker from 1987 to 1992. He is now a critic for The New York Observer.

  PHILIP GOUREVITCH is the editor of The Paris Review and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of Standard Operating Procedure (2008), A Cold Case (2001), and We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998). He lives in Brooklyn.

  BILLY GRAHAM was a classmate of George’s at St. Bernard’s School in New York. After graduating from Yale, he began a career in television and film directing. He lives in Malibu, California, with his wife, Janet.

  FRANCINE DU PLESSIX GRAY was born at the French Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, and raised in Paris. The most recent of her twelve books are Simone Weil and Them: A Memoir of Parents, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Gray’s biography of Madame de Staël is scheduled to be published in October 2008.

  WALON GREEN, a writer/producer in television, worked as an executive producer and writer on Hill Street Blues, Law & Order, ER, and NYPD Blue. As a screenwriter, he is best known for the Western classic The Wild Bunch. Green also produced and directed the feature documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle, which won an Academy Award in 1972.

  SOL GREENBAUM was George Plimpton’s personal accountant for more than thirty years. He works at Jacques M. Levy & Co., Certified Public Accountants, in New York.

  ELIZA GRISWOLD was George’s assistant and associate editor at The Paris Review in the early 1990s. She is a New America Foundation fellow and award-winning poet and journalist living in New York City.

  MAXINE GROFFSKY started her career in publishing in the editorial department at Random House. Paris editor of The Paris Review from 1966 to 1973, she has been director of the Maxine Groffsky Literary Agency since 1975 and lives in New York City with her husband, Winthrop Knowlton.

  FELIX (“BUTCH”) GRUCCI, JR., is the CFO of Fireworks by Grucci and of Pyrotechniques by Grucci, and a former U.S. congressman.

  JOHN GRUEN is a critic, writer, and photographer whose latest book, Callas Kissed Me...Lenny Too! A Critic’s Memoir, was published last April by powerHouse Books.

  JOHN GUARE, whose plays include House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body, received the 2004 Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  TOM GUINZBURG, a cofounder of The Paris Review, joined the Viking Press in 1953 and became president in 1960. Chairman of the American Book Awards in 1982, he also served as senior consultant to Doubleday & Co. and Turner Publishing. He was a governor of Yale University Press from 1968 to 2004.

  DONALD HALL was at Exeter and Harvard with George, and became the first poetry editor of the Review. He was the fourteenth U.S. Poet Laureate and is the author of eleven books of poems, most recently of Without (1998) and White Apples and the Taste of Stone (2006). He lives in his grandparents’ old farmhouse in Wilmot, New Hampshire.

  WILL HEARST is a partner is in the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a member of the board of directors of the Hearst Corporation.

  HUGH HEFNER was born in Chicago. He is the founder, editor in chief, and chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises.

  DRUE HEINZ, for fifteen years the publisher of The Paris Review, is a prominent patron of the arts in her husband’s native Pittsburgh and around the world. In 1981, she established the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, which is a nationally known prize for short fiction and includes publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

  RUSSELL HEMENWAY is the director of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, founded in 1948 by Eleanor Roosevelt. He serves on many civic boards and writes and speaks often on politics and public affairs.

  JOHN HEMINWAY fell in love with the wild places of the world in a career writing books and making documentaries. Today he is doing what he can to protect them. Along the way, he has earned many awards, including a Peabody, a duPontColumbia for journalism, and two Emmys.

  TONY HENDRA is a writer by trade, an actor occasionally, and an editor when the need arises. His friendship with George was sustained by vinous lunches, shared interests (they were both charter members of the storytelling group the Moth), and mutual literary respect.

  FAYETTE HICKOX is a creative director and writer, living in Weston, Connecticut, with his wife, Auste, a painter, and their son, Cal.

  PATI HILL is a writer and artist, and an early contributor to The Paris Review. Her latest exhibition was “Vers Versailles,” shown at the palace in 2004. She lives in Sens, France, and is currently working on a memoir of Diane Arbus, a friend since they were in their twenties.

  JED HORNE was a slush pile reader at The Paris Review soon after the magazine moved from Paris in 1973. He is the author of Breach of Faith, about Hurricane Katrina, and Desire Street, about a Louisiana death row case. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and sons.

  GLENN HOROWITZ is the proprietor of Glenn Horowitz Book-seller in New York. He has brokered the sale of the literary archives of Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, Vladimir Nabokov, and many others.

  A. E. HOTCHNER is a writer, best known for Papa Hemingway and (among George’s friends) Everyone Comes to Elaine’s. He partnered with Paul Newman for the Newman’s Own line of food products.

  RICHARD HOWARD is a translator, critic, and poet. He teaches literature at the School of the Arts (Writing Division) of Columbia University. He was the poetry editor of the Review for eleven years.

  BEN RYDER HOWE, a writer, was an editor at The Paris Review from 1995 to 2005.

  BRIGID HUGHES is the founder and editor of the Brooklyn-based literary quarterly A Public Space. She w
as managing editor of The Paris Review from 1995 to 2005, succeeding George Plimpton as editor after his death in 2003.

  ALISON HUMES is a magazine editor at Condé Nast Traveler. She and Rory O’Connor have two sons, Ciaran and Aidan O’Connor.

  IMMY HUMES is a daughter of “Doc” Humes, whom she calls the “Instigator” of The Paris Review. She is an Academy Award– nominated documentary filmmaker, and her recent film Doc, about her father, features George, along with Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Peter Matthiessen.

  SUSANNAH HUNNEWELL is the Paris editor of The Paris Review. She currently lives in Paris with her three sons and her husband, Antonio Weiss, whom she first met as an intern at the Review. Antonio’s pursuit of her was successfully orchestrated by George.

  BOB JOHNSON left his post as solo horn player with Leonard Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic in 1969 in order to found the New York Philomusica in 1971. George joined its board in 1973 and later became president.

  MARJORIE KALMAN-KATZ took care of George’s personal finances for almost twenty-five years but forgot to get tips on playing pool.

  ALEX KARRAS was a six-time All Pro with the Detroit Lions and in 1970 was named to the All-Time Lions team and the All-Time Big Ten team. His movie credits include Paper Lion, Against All Odds, Blazing Saddles, Porky’s, and Victor/Victoria. With his then wife-to-be, Susan Clark, Karras formed a production company, and he starred in 150 episodes of the long-running TV series Webster. He is the author of Even Big Guys Cry, Alex Karras: My Life in Football, Television, and Movies, and Tuesday Night Football.

  WILLA KIM was married to William Pène du Bois, The Paris Review’s first art editor, and was in Paris for the magazine’s launch. She is a theater designer with many awards, including Tonys, Drama Desks, Emmys, and the Theatre Hall of Fame.

  JAMAICA KINCAID writes novels, memoirs, and books and articles on gardening. The Autobiography of My Mother was published in 1996, Among Flowers in 2005. She teaches writing at Harvard.

  DANIEL KUNITZ was managing editor of The Paris Review from 1995 to 2000. He has written about art for Harper’s, Slate, The New York Sun, and many other publications.

  BEN LA FARGE, a professor of literature, is a former chair of the Division of Languages and Literature at Bard College.

  TED LAMONT, a friend of George’s since St. Bernard’s, is an economist who helped administer the Marshall Plan after World War II. He is the father of the Ned Lamont who won Connecticut’s Democratic nomination for Senate from Joe Lieberman.

  STARLING LAWRENCE is the editor in chief of W. W. Norton & Company, which published many of George Plimpton’s books. He also had the pleasure of playing tennis with George, and of witnessing, at a charity event, his astonishing mastery of bowling, a sport which he claimed never to have bothered with. He may have been telling the truth, but no one quite believed him.

  PHOEBE LEGERE has released seven CDs of original music and is currently head writer and host for Roulette TV, a New York City show about experimental art and music. She recently appeared on Nickelodeon’s comic children’s show The Naked Brothers Band.

  SIR ANDREW LEGGATT’s relevant claim to fame is that he roomed with Plimpton during their second year at King’s College, Cambridge. Their activities included night climbing, jousting in punts, and writing letters to Country Life. He is a retired judge of the Court of Appeal in England.

  JAMES SCOTT LINVILLE, a Paris Review editor from 1984 to 2001, is now a screenwriter and journalist. He lives in New York and London.

  CHRISTOPHER LOGUE won the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award for Cold Calls, the latest of his much admired “accounts” of the Iliad—War Music, Kings, and The Husbands. He succeeded in Paris, as George did not, in publishing two novels of porn with the Olympia Press. More recently, in Britain, he wrote for Private Eye.

  PIEDY (GIMBEL) LUMET first met George while he was at Harvard. In 1954 in Madrid, she introduced George to Ernest Hemingway. She lives in East Hampton and New York City.

  FIONA MAAZEL’s first novel, Last Last Chance, was published in March 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She was an editor of The Paris Review from 2003 to 2005.

  LARISSA MACFARQUHAR is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She was an intern at The Paris Review for six months from 1991 to 1992.

  NORMAN MAILER was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In a career spanning almost sixty years, he wrote thirty-seven books of fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, and criticism. In 1969, he won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Armies of the Night. Mailer received another Pulitzer in 1980 for The Executioner’s Song. For many years he lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his wife, Norris Church Mailer. He died on November 10, 2007, in New York City.

  NORRIS CHURCH MAILER played Zelda Fitzgerald to George’s Scott and her husband’s Hemingway on their tour of Europe and the United States in the play Zelda, Scott, and Ernest. Married to Norman Mailer for twenty-seven years, she is the mother of two sons, stepmother of two sons and five daughters, and has one grandson and one step-grandson. Her second novel, Cheap Diamonds, was published by Random House in August 2007. She is also a painter.

  HARRY MATHEWS settled in Europe in 1952 and lived there, chiefly in France, until 1978. Married to the French writer Marie Chaix, he now divides his time between Paris and Key West. His most recent book is My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005).

  PETER MATTHIESSEN is a novelist, naturalist, and journalist. Among his many much-acclaimed books are: At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Snow Leopard, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, and The Shorebirds of North America. A one-volume version of his trilogy of novels beginning with Killing Mr. Watson was published in 2008.

  JEANNE MCCULLOCH is a former editor at The Paris Review and a founding editor of Tin House magazine and Tin House Books. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, O: The Oprah Magazine, The North American Review, and The Paris Review among other publications. A forthcoming memoir will be published by Bloomsbury USA.

  JOANIE MCDONELL is the author of several books and screen-plays. She lives in Amagansett, New York, and New York City.

  TERRY MCDONELL edited George Plimpton at Rolling Stone, Smart, Esquire, Men’s Journal, and Sports Illustrated. They also traveled together on various “literary expeditions.” In the 1990s, Plimpton asked him to help with The Paris Review, for which he now serves as president of the Board of Directors.

  MOLLY MCGRANN was a Review intern in the 1990s.

  JAY MCINERNEY is the author of seven novels, including Bright Lights, Big City, his best-selling 1984 debut. Among his other novels are Ransom (1985), Brightness Falls (1992), Model Behavior (1998), and The Good Life (2006).

  MOLLY MCKAUGHAN worked for George from October 1972 to August 1976 as his assistant, and later as managing editor of the Review. Since then, she has been ME of two short-lived national magazines, Quest and Next, a senior editor at New York magazine, a freelance writer and poet, author of The Biological Clock (1987), and a program officer at two national foundations, the Common-wealth Fund and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

  BUZZ MERRITT knew George for seventy years. They met as “small boys” at St. Bernard’s School and carried their friendship to Exeter. They kept in touch throughout their lives.

  DAVID MICHAELIS is the author of the national bestsellers Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography and N. C. Wyeth: A Biography, which won the 1999 Ambassador Book Award for Biography, given by the English-Speaking Union of the United States. He worked at The Paris Review as a summer intern in 1976 and 1977.

  CHARLES MICHENER was George Plimpton’s editor at The New Yorker. He was senior cultural editor at Newsweek, editor in chief of The Movies, and a frequent contributor to national magazines. He is currently working on two books—a study of Cleveland, Ohio, entitled The Hidden City, and an oral biography of Robert Altman.

  THOMAS MOFFETT was an associate editor at The Paris Review and George Plimpton’s assistant from 2000 unt
il George’s death in 2003. He is a screenwriter living in New York City.

  LORRIE MOORE is the author of the short story collections Self-Help, Like Life, and Birds of America. She has won the O. Henry Award and the Rea Award. Her story “You’re Ugly, Too” was selected by John Updike for The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin– Madison.

  SUSAN MORGAN is a writer who lives in Los Angeles, California, and Edinburgh, Scotland. She is a contributing editor for Metropolitan Home, author of Joan Jonas: I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances), and recipient of a 2006 fellowship from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

  JOAN DE MOUCHY has lived in Europe since 1955. Assistant Paris editor of The Paris Review for eight years, she then married Prince Charles of Luxembourg and lived in that country until his death. Returning to Paris, she married the Duc de Mouchy in 1978. For the past thirty-five years, she has been running the Dillon family vineyard, Château Haut-Brion.