The writer and editor George Plimpton was esteemed for his vivid approach to reporting, a technique known as participatory journalism. A co-founder of The Paris Review, in 1953, he served as the publication's first editor until his death, in 2003, and authored more than fifteen books, including the baseball novel "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" and "Paper Lion," about his experiences at the Detroit Lions' training camp. (The book's subtitle is "Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback.") Between 1994 and 2002, Plimpton contributed nearly two dozen pieces to The New Yorker. In 1998, he published "The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair," about Larry Walters, a former U.S. Army cook who took a remarkable journey above Southern California on the titular piece of furniture, suspended by helium-filled balloons. "His intent was to drift northeast in the prevailing winds over the San Gabriel Mountains to the Mojave Desert. With him he carried an air pistol, with which to pop the balloons and thus regulate his altitude," Plimpton writes. "It was an ingenious solution, but in a gust of wind, three miles up, the chair tipped, horrifyingly, and the gun fell out of his lap to the ground, far below." It's an extraordinary tale—Plimpton reports that Delta and T.W.A. pilots observed Walters as they took off from LAX—and, as it progresses, the writer reflects on Walters's motivations for attempting such an unimaginable feat. Sometimes ingenuity stems from the most commonplace of ideas. While airborne, Walters doesn't take any pictures; in fact, he refuses to do so, because it's his own singular memory of the flight that he seeks to hold in his mind's eye. Plimpton achieves what a camera did not, showing us the lucid beauty of Walters's idiosyncratic pursuit. He allows his subject to take the lead, slowly building to a poignant twist that upends our notion of what makes a life remarkable, and worthy of celebration. —Erin Overbey, archive editor |
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