Silly Little Show-Biz Book Club #17: George Plimpton's Fully
Charmed Life   One early evening about a half decade ago a
seventy-something George Plimpton put on an argyle sweater and a
pair of khakis and pitched a game of softball against my
colleagues on the Team Onion New York softball team alongside
his compatriots in the Paris Review squad. Oh sweet blessed Lord
do I wish I could have been there. I treasure the mental image
of a grey-haired, distinguished-looking, impossibly lanky and
still youthful Plimpton staring down the Team Onion softball
team, then taking them out afterwards, apologizing profusely for
not being able to procure better scotch and trying to arrange an
ad trade between the Paris Review and The Onion.  I'm pretty
damned happy here in Chicago but I wish my graceless existence
had overlapped with Plimpton's charmed life for even a single
preposterous evening. Before reading George, Being George,
Nelson W. Aldrich Jr.'s delightful oral history of the late
writer, raconteur and professional