Word: plimpton
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Well don't feel too bad about it, I do it too. So do a lot of people, including, most of the time, George Plimpton, the participatory sports journalist par excellence who quarterbacked the Detroit Lions in an exhibition game and pitched against baseball's American and National League All-Stars...
...late '50s, however, Plimpton's friends talked him into boxing three rounds with the light-heavyweight champion of the world, Archie Moore. The incident forms the first part of Plimpton's newest book, a meander through various and sundry settings which Plimpton manages to connect to boxing, sometimes by the thinnest of threads. In Shadow Box Plimpton displays the hallmark of the true raconteur: he rambles constantly but never bores...
While Moore and most of the other fighters in Shadow Box are black, no one will mistake Plimpton for a Great White Hope. Rather he calls to mind the role Beau Bridges played in the early '70s film The Landlord: a rich, soft, and well-intentioned white boy mixing it up with blacks from the ghetto--emerging unscathed by some miracle, but not unchanged...
...only does Plimpton avoid the pitfalls of ignorance and condescension which have swallowed many another author in his situation, but he preserves his image as the little guy throughout. Plimpton's patrician background and best-seller success might belie his little-guy stance, were it not for the unmistakable honesty of the self-doubts, fears, vacillations, and failures which he reveals in a detached and slightly bemused tone. Plimpton's little guy lives at a more enduring level than rich or poor. Plimpton trying to gain entrance to Ali's restricted quarters, chatting with Hemingway, or catching flak from Malcolm...
...course, catering to the needs of over 11,000 Crimson faithful who each expect a seat at the 50 yardline has its headaches, but then again the next customer at the ticket window could be Jack Lemmon, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Tricia Nixon Cox, or, for that matter, Arthur Drinkwater...