Following the death of Stanley Kubrick, we were treated to dozens of personal reminiscences by colleagues and acquaintances. At first, most were by close friends of the director, but after a little while, anyone with even the most tenuous connection to him got a dollar-a-word for their memories.

With the recent death of George Plimpton we can expect a repeat of this phenomenon. At first we'll get the Mailers, Taleses, and Remnicks of the lit world, but soon everyone who ever went to a Paris Review party or worked as an unpaid intern for the journal for two weeks before returning to Vassar will be speaking about their intimate journeys with George. That's the thing: every Ivy League graduate who ever wrote a poem or fancied himself a short story writer has gone to at least one Paris Review event or interviewed for a job there. Heck even people who met the guy one time are sharing their memories. Even the kid from the Intellevision commercial will probably have his say sooner or later.