Attempted Bloggery: A George Plimpton Letter to Danny Shanahan

Saturday, October 9, 2021

A George Plimpton Letter to Danny Shanahan

George Plimpton (1927-2003), editor of The Paris Review, had been in attendance at a book launch for Lee Lorenz's The Art of the New Yorker 1925-1995 where he, Plimpton, polymath that he was, joined the cartoonists who were signing copies of the book. As I recall, one of the copies he signed at the event belonged to cartoonist Danny Shanahan (1956-2021), who at one time posted images from it on his Facebook page, including one which showed that Plimpton had indulged in his own fanciful propeller-like doodles. Plimpton, it seems, had pitched Shanahan briefly on joining other cartoonists in contributing to the The Paris Review's forthcoming issue dedicated to humor which was slated for the fall of 1995.

Plimpton followed up by sending an undated, typed letter asking Shanahan to select a special cartoon of his and describe how it came into being, giving him a deadline in just some three weeks. For whatever reason, this never happened and the issue went to press without a contribution from the cartoonist. In 2013, Shanahan put the letter up for sale on the auction site eBay. He included a handwritten note from Plimpton with three of those very same little propeller doodles, or as Shanahan described it, a "very rare, one-of-a-kind, hand-drawn, signed cartoon." That may have been overselling it.