They’ll Always Have the Paris Review
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Paris Review Foundation hosted a party to honor writer William Styron on Wednesday. A crowd gathered at Cipriani to watch can-can dancers and hear literary readings on topics such as “Sedentary Sea Organisms, Mostly Algae.” Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ed Harris read selections from “Lie Down in Darkness” by Mr. Styron.
The walls were decorated with intriguing quotations from back issues of the Paris Review. For example: “There is nothing more embarrassing than being a poet,” written by Elizabeth Bishop in Issue 80.Another, by Ernest Hemingway in Issue 18, read,” The best writing is certainly when you are in love.” Then there were Paris Review table cloths. Such fine literary decor has not been seen since Glenn Horowitz Booksellers displayed a rug resembling a Nabokov novel. The event coincided with the relaunch of the magazine’s Web site, which will bring the Paris Review to a wider audience.
John Guare introduced philanthropist Drue Heinz, whom he called the “Medici of modern literature.” Ms. Heinz in turn presented the Paris Review Hadada award to Mr. Styron. The prize is named for a species of African bird that was a favorite of George Plimpton.
CBS newsman Mike Wallace read remarks on Mr. Styron that had been delivered by Plimpton in Peterborough, N.H., when Mr. Styron won the MacDowell Medal in 1988. On that occasion, Plimpton began by saying, “We are gathered here to judge if William Styron is deserving” of such a prize. On Wednesday night, Mr. Wallace asked if Mr. Styron was worthy of the Paris Review Hadada.
Quoting Plimpton, Mr. Wallace continued: “Perhaps at the conclusion of my remarks we should have a vote. My own opinion is that Styron has been honored half to death. The Prix de Rome in 1952. The Pulitzer in 1970, along with the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters that same year. He won the American Book Award for ‘Sophie’s Choice.’ The Legion d’honneur, commandant no less! A chair at the American Academy. His desk drawers are full of medals, scrolls, academic hoods, ceremonial pins, commemorative cups, keys to cities, especially in the South. Dolled up, I suspect Bill could very well be taken for an Ethiopian general.”
“After all,” Mr. Wallace went on, summoning the wry ghost of Plimpton once more, “we’re not here to honor Bill with our presence. We’re here to seethe with envy. I, for example, have only one trophy at home – a small tray with the inscription on it: ‘To a Good Sport, George Pemberton.’ George Pemberton is a friend of mine. I stole it from him.”
Mr. Guare closed by reading “Wish List” by Plimpton, from his collection “The Man in the Flying Lawn Chairs” (Random House), edited by Sarah Dudley Plimpton.
“I’d like to be able to do tricks with a golf ball – to flip the ball off the green with my putter and catch it. I’ve seen a number of professional golfers do this in match play; the nonchalance with which they do it is truly enviable…I’d like to have Britney Spears stop mid-gyration on the stage, notice me in the front row, and cry out ‘It’s you!’ On the gym floor, just goofing around, I’d like to throw the ball over my shoulder into the basket and hear someone say, ‘Wow, he has a real sense of where the basket is.’ I’d like to crouch in the curve of a great tsunami and run my hand through the sea wall off my shoulder. I’d like to have a snappy moniker: Wolf or Moose, or something as memorable as Joltin’ Joe, or the Splinter…or the Elephant, as in ‘Hey! Hey! It’s the Elephant!’ I’d like throw a perfect spiral, just once, so the front of the ball is a dot, the leather revolving around it. I’d like to bowl a perfect game…And I’d like to slide the tips of my skis over the sill of a precipice, looking down at the village far below, and, just before pushing off, hear a woman in form-fitting ski clothes cry out, “Don’t go! It’s too steep!’ Nothing wrong with crossing the blue line, the puck nicely on the stick, with only the goalie to beat. And I wish I could throw a knuckleball. I’d like to have it come to me one afternoon, perhaps while I’m throwing the ball to my son, a ball without motion so that it ducks and dances…and take that thing to spring training. ‘Ahem. I have something I think you might like to take a look at.'”
“There are many more, and the splendid thing is that they are all available – as soon as the hour is late and the fire has gone down and it is time to drift off into sleep. It’s only a mater of picking one before the sweet darkness arrives.”
Seen were Louis Begley, who recently spoke on Proust at the New York Public Library; poet Billy Collins; James Atlas, who is hosting a party for the Harvard Advocate magazine in February; John Edgar Wideman; Barney Rosset; Alexandra and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; the co-editor of the New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers; the editor of Harper’s, Lewis Lapham; Ivanka Trump; and others.