George Plimpton - Dinner at Elaine's

 

 

I'm still the fireworks commissioner of the City of New York and wrote a book about fireworks. Indeed, it's a great passion of fireworks. I was a demolition specialist in the Army, and I suppose that's what got me going on it. The marvelous thing about fireworks, particularly for writers, is that when you write, there's very rarely any acknowledgement that you've written anything. Sometimes you get a review, but you don't really see people. You don't get the sense that someone's reading your work. But in fireworks, you can put a match, a flare to a fuse, and this thing goes up into the air, and there's an enormous recognition. A great crowd goes, "Ahh!" And of course, the fireworks were made by somebody in Korea, but still there's an enormous satisfaction having sent this thing up, [audience laughter] getting this applause. And that's something that writers don't really ever get.

 

During the course of putting the fireworks onto the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge had a hundredth anniversary some years ago, and the Gruccis, this great fireworks family, was asked to put on this firework show. And part of the fireworks show was shot off the square tops of the Brooklyn Bridge. And being a fireworks [unintelligible 00:02:42] a member of their family, they asked me to come up to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge to watch them putting these mortars up there on the very top. It's a very arduous climb. You have to climb up this long cable, and at the very end you climb up a little ladder, and there you are on this sort of parapet. And it's way up above the river. You can look absolutely straight down. Not unlike this stage here, except much bigger. [audience chuckles]

 

And right on the very edge, I noticed that somebody had written, "You've come a long way, baby, [audience laughter] now let's see you fly." [laughter] Somebody had climbed up this extraordinary cable through the ladder, probably at night, and had written this amazing message at the very edge of this parapet. And I kept thinking about this, who could possibly have done that? And it occurred to me that it was very likely a writer, [audience laughter] a failed writer, [audience laughter] a writer with a girlfriend who had a poem accepted by the Paris Review. [audience laughter] And his poetry wasn't being accepted anywhere, his stories weren't going to be accepted anywhere. And so, one night, here in Brooklyn, he climbed up this thing at night and wrote this despairing message on the very edge of this parapet. And it got me thinking over here tonight, after a couple of drinks, [audience laughter] about despairing writers.

 

I was told earlier that almost 40 percent of this audience are writers. And it reminded me of something that happened some years ago when I got a call from a public television station in Philadelphia. And they asked if I would mind being put up as a prize on an auction they were going to have. “An Evening with George Plimpton," it was called. I said, "You're not going to get anything for that, but you're welcome to do it if you want to." Few weeks later, the public television station called up and said, "We have someone that bought you. [audience chuckles] He's a man called Spinelli. And Mr. Spinelli and his wife are going to come to New York. And all you have to do is give them dinner and give them an evening. And then they can come back to Philadelphia."

 

So, I talked this over with my wife, and we decided what to do, which was they would come to the apartment, and we would sit there for a while. And then we'd take them down to a restaurant very near Grand Central Station or Penn Station, so they get onto the train and get back to Philadelphia. [audience laughter] So, Mr. Spinelli and his wife arrived at my apartment. And there's a pool table there. So, Mr. Spinelli and I played this rather desultory game of pool. He was a shy man, didn't say very much. And my wife took Mrs. Spinelli on a tour of the apartment, which takes about one minute. [audience chuckles] But during the course of this tour, Mrs. Spinelli described what had happened, which was that Mr. Spinelli had been watching very late public television, and on had come this auction.

 

Mr. Spinelli was a writer. He had not had anything accepted anywhere. He thought since I'm the editor of a magazine and knew something about publishing circles in New York, that maybe it was worth buying this evening with George Plimpton that might get him going on his career. And so, when Mrs. Spinelli came back, my wife-- and he'd taken out everything they had in their savings account for this trip to New York. So, when my wife told me this, I realized that we could not go to Gallagher's next to Penn Station and put the Spinellis on a sensible train back to Philadelphia. We had to do something else. And I thought the only thing I could do was to take them to Elaine's, which is a restaurant on Second Avenue and 88th Street, which is a literary hangout-- publishers’ hangout, or used to be.

 

And I thought, maybe that's what we can do. And I said this to Mr. and Mrs. Spinelli. I said, "We're going to go to Elaine's to have supper." And he'd heard about this literary restaurant, quite brightened. And off we went. And I had to hope that Elaine's that night had its usual quantity of writers. And when we walked in, it was as if Madame Tussauds herself had arranged this long row [audience chuckles] of tables. We walked in, and there was sitting Norman Mailer and Norris, his wife, and Willie Morris, the editor of Harper's Magazine. And I walked over and I said, "Norman, this is Mr. Spinelli from Philadelphia [audience chuckles] and Mrs. Spinelli." “Mr. Spinelli, this is Norman Mailer, Willie Morris, and Norris Mailer.” We moved down to the next table. There were sitting Bruce J. Friedman and Kurt Vonnegut. [audience laughter] I said, "Bruce, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia." [audience laughter] 

 

And Mr. Spinelli sort of brightened to be referred to as writer. We went down to the next table. There was Gay Talese sitting with his wife, Nan of Doubleday. "Mr. Talese, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia." We marched down this line. It was incredible. These tables had writers and editors sitting at them. We were approaching way at the end of the restaurant, the Woody Allen table. Woody Allen sits at this table. Always has, always will. And one of the cardinal rules about Elaine's is you do not interrupt Woody Allen at his table. He sits there eating Chicken Francese, and he never looks up. And he has his little circle is around him. And people go by on the way to the kitchen and way to the back room and so forth. And they always look to see if Woody Allen is there. But he never looks up. And it's an un-- it's a rule, you do not speak to Mr. Allen.

 

We got closer and closer. We talked to Tom Wolfe sitting there with somebody rather. [audience chuckles] “Mr. Spinelli, this is Tom Wolfe. This is Mr. Spinelli, the writer, the writer from Philadelphia." On and on we went, closer and closer to the Woody Allen table. When we got there, I thought, I cannot do this, but I'm going to. [audience laughter] “Woody.” I said, "Woody, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia." And Woody Allen looked up from his Chicken Francese and he said, "Yes, I know." [audience laughter and applause] I don't know why he said that, but that's exactly what he said. And Mr. Spinelli-- we all went over to our table, and Mr. Spinelli was beside himself. [audience laughter] Completely different, man. He changed from this nervous pool player into this gigantic figure. He talked about Kafka. [audience laughter] 

 

And finally we stayed almost all night. We finally got him on our late train back to Philadelphia. About two months later, I got a letter from Mr. Spinelli. He said, "My boy's novel has been accepted by Houghton Mifflin." He said, "Give my best to the gang up at Elaine's." Thank you.