George Plimpton

The United States has never had a formal aristocracy, but George Plimpton was about as patrician - in ancestry, manners, even lockjaw accent - as an American can be. Yet his reputation, especially as a writer, is based almost entirely on an Everyman appeal, itself derived from his highly original development of a literary strand he labelled "participatory journalism", in which he temporarily assumed a role - professional baseball or football player, golfer, boxer, lion tamer, trapeze artist, ice hockey goalie - which most people only ever dream of playing. Plimpton did many other things as well, most notably serving as the editor of a literary quarterly, The Paris Review, from its inception in 1953, but it is for his enactment of a series of Walter Mitty-like fantasies that he will be remembered.

George Ames Plimpton, writer and editor: born New York 18 March 1927; Editor, Paris Review 1953-2003; married 1968 Freddy Espy (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1988), 1991 Sarah Dudley (two daughters); died New York 26 September 2003.

The United States has never had a formal aristocracy, but George Plimpton was about as patrician - in ancestry, manners, even lockjaw accent - as an American can be. Yet his reputation, especially as a writer, is based almost entirely on an Everyman appeal, itself derived from his highly original development of a literary strand he labelled "participatory journalism", in which he temporarily assumed a role - professional baseball or football player, golfer, boxer, lion tamer, trapeze artist, ice hockey goalie - which most people only ever dream of playing. Plimpton did many other things as well, most notably serving as the editor of a literary quarterly, The Paris Review, from its inception in 1953, but it is for his enactment of a series of Walter Mitty-like fantasies that he will be remembered.

Plimpton's father was a founding partner of the renowned law firm Debevoise and Plimpton and later member of the US delegation to the United Nations; his mother was an Ames, a New England family which came over on the Mayflower. But growing up in New York meant that George Plimpton was able to bypass the dourer, puritanical aspects of a Yankee inheritance, and he was further blessed with a natural interest in people, complete lack of snobbery, and boyish but engaging sense of humour.

Born in New York in 1927 and educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, he attended Harvard, though his time there was interrupted by the draft and he served in the post-war US Army driving tanks in Europe before taking his degree in 1950. He then went to King's College, Cambridge, where he took another BA, and it was here that two Harvard friends - Harold L. Humes and the writer Peter Matthiessen - approached him about a new magazine they wished to found. Plimpton joined in at once, aided by a contribution of $500 from his father, and became the magazine's first (and until his death only) editor - Plimpton put the 50th anniversary edition of The Paris Review to bed on the night before he died.

The magazine was run on a shoestring budget from the start, though its earliest backers included the son of the Aga Khan, persuaded by Plimpton to become the journal's publisher as they both ran from the bulls at Pamplona - "It was a good time to push him," Plimpton recalled, "because the bulls were right behind him and he said, 'Yes! Yes, I will.' " In its low circulation The Paris Review was no different from scores of other quarterlies which proliferated in the US in the second half of the 20th century, but it differed in its deliberate lack of affiliation with a college or university and a not-unrelated refusal to publish literary criticism. Instead, it published original fiction and poetry by established writers - V.S. Naipaul, Italo Calvino, Philip Roth - and new talent: Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace and Jay McInerney all appeared in its pages as unknowns.

Most notably, every issue featured at least one in-depth interview with a well-known writer. In the early years subjects included Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, E.M. Forster and, more tersely though still illuminatingly, Evelyn Waugh. Such interviews were virtually unprecedented; as Plimpton later noted, "Writers are rather interested in talking about their craft. No one had ever asked them about it before." The focus was never on the writer's life but rather on the process of composition, the methods at work, and the writer's views of his or her own work.

The result was consistently fascinating, and of great value and interest to students and writers alike, particularly when published in the series of book-length compilations Writers at Work. Plimpton himself conducted many of the interviews, including a famous one with a grouchy Hemingway and, more recently, a particularly revealing one with John le Carré.

The magazine was never profitable, and was a financial drain for all involved with it, including Plimpton. In the 1950s he held a series of jobs, teaching at Barnard College (the all-women's counterpart to Columbia) and working on the staff of the travel magazine Horizon and then the political monthly Harper's. But with the publication in 1961 of his first "participatory" book, Out of My League (in which Plimpton describes his ordeal as a pitcher in the annual "All Star" game between America's two professional baseball leagues), he began to prosper as a writer. He became truly famous with the publication of Paper Lion in 1966, which recounted his brief and disastrous attempt to play quarterback for a professional football team, the Detroit Lions.

Reluctantly allowed to play in a Lions' pre-season exhibition game (the equivalent of a football "friendly") Plimpton was an unlikely football player, since, as he admitted himself, he had never liked contact sports, preferring the more gentlemanly game of tennis. And, although a very tall man (he was 6ft 4in), the lanky Plimpton cut a spindly, unsubstantial figure on the field, a kind of elongated David facing 11 opposing Goliaths. With him at the helm, his team lost far more ground than it gained, and his rapid replacement by a legitimate player was greeted with manifest relief by his bemused team-mates.

Adapted in 1968 as a feature film starring Alan Alda, Paper Lion made Plimpton rich and a celebrity. And, once established, this formula of inserting the gawky, uncoordinated Plimpton into a specialised arena of skill proved capable of almost infinite replication - Plimpton played golf in a pro tournament, swung on a trapeze under a circus's big tent, played bridge with professionals and tennis with Pancho Gonzales.

In none of these could he be said to have prospered, though, interestingly, he said his most terrifying experience was not, as one might suppose, facing Archie Moore in a boxing ring, but rather playing percussion for Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein, according to Plimpton, "was a terror" and "in music, you cannot make a mistake [whereas] all sport is predicated on error". Plimpton's overenthusiastic striking of a gong during a Canadian performance of Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony ("Little Russian") is apparently still referred to in orchestral circles as "the Winnipeg sound".

As Plimpton quickly understood, the appeal of these madcap forays derived not from widespread appreciation of his bravery or sheer chutzpah in trying to compete at a professional level; rather, it was his failure in these efforts which gratifyingly confirmed that he did as badly as most spectators, deep down, knew they would do themselves. When the boxer Archie Moore punched him on the nose, Plimpton cried; as a quarterback with the Lions, he literally dropped the ball; as a major-league pitcher he left the field prematurely and in disgrace, utterly exhausted. Wisely, Plimpton initially picked populist blue-collar sports - such as baseball and football - which had millions of fans nursing fantasies that they could now vicariously enjoy watching Plimpton act out.

Though always light-hearted, Plimpton's articles were highly revealing accounts of the specialised worlds he entered. Simply but effectively written, they adroitly showed us an insider's view of high-level performance, even if Plimpton himself was inevitably cast as the failed outsider. His work shared, in its intimacy of portrait, many of the traits of the New Journalism of the 1960s written by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Thomas B. Morgan and, a decade later, Hunter Thompson. For all their manifest "lightness" Plimpton's pieces are equally compelling and just as well written, but the apparent effortlessness and breezy self-deprecation of his work meant it was often undervalued.

In addition to this participatory journalism, and his work as the editor of The Paris Review, Plimpton compiled and edited several landmark works of "oral biography", including Edie (1982), an intriguing biography of a young American heiress who became fatally immersed in the Andy Warhol circle, and Capote: in which various friends, enemies, acquaintances and detractors recall his turbulent career (1997), a fascinating if slightly miscellaneous collage of memories and portraits of the American novelist.

Politically, Plimpton was liberal in sympathies, and a long-time friend of the Kennedy clan. He had known Robert Kennedy since Harvard undergraduate days, and was by his side when he was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 (Plimpton helped to subdue Sirhan Sirhan). A supporter of many charities, Plimpton was of particular help to the Folger Library in Washington, emceeing its annual dinner for many years.

But, even in his good works, fun was never far away; his love of fireworks led to an unofficial (and self-proclaimed) stint as New York's first Fireworks Commissioner. And he developed a considerable if not altogether serious sideline as an actor. Four of the films he appeared in won Academy Awards (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962, Reds, 1981, the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings and Good Will Hunting, 1997) leading Plimpton to suggest jokingly that "a film director should require my presence if he sees an Oscar in the future". Labelling himself "The Prince of Cameos", Plimpton admitted that some of his roles could barely be called walk-on; as he said of his appearance as a Bedouin extra in Lawrence of Arabia, "I never could find myself on the screen when I saw the picture." Most recently, he appeared in the television series ER as a wealthy patriarch.

Popular with movie and television audiences and with an enduring readership, Plimpton was also much loved by the people who knew him. His good-humour was infectious; as Norman Mailer remarked on hearing the news of his death, friends were always happy to see him "because you knew he was bound to improve your mood". A po-faced few who found Plimpton lightweight missed his point, which was that with his constant high spirits and levity went remarkable if somewhat inconsistent accomplishment.

Characteristically, Plimpton made only modest claims for himself: "There are people," he once remarked a little regretfully,

who would perhaps call me a dilettante, because it looks as though I'm having too much fun. I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun.

Andrew Rosenheim

When Martin Scorsese began to shoot his 1993 film The Age of Innocence, based on Edith Wharton's novel, he gathered the cast and told them: "I want you all to learn to speak like George Plimpton." He meant the voice of the old aristocracy of Boston ­ soft, elegant, cultured. George Plimpton told me the anecdote, laughing.

I first heard about George Plimpton from Christopher Logue in Paris. A romantic image was formed in my mind of a young American straight out of Henry James ­ tall, handsome, charming and witty ­ who happened to be a very good writer. When two decades later I met him, in the early 1980s, I found him very much as I had envisaged. As I got to know him better he seemed to me an embodiment of the ideal American: civilised, generous, exuding energy and joie de vivre. His passion for literature, his immense knowledge ­ which he wore lightly ­ and his acute judgement inspired all those who came into his orbit.

Literary journals are like love affairs: they have a natural life-span. They vary in longevity and seriousness; they come and go; they leave an enduring imprint or dissolve without trace. Through countless vicissitudes The Paris Review has survived and flourished for half a century, thanks to Plimpton. It has become one of America's most cherished and respected literary journals, for which ­ in preference to other more remunerative periodicals ­ everyone chooses to work with dedication out of love for literature.

A great celebration was planned to take place on 14 October in New York to mark the 50th anniversary of The Paris Review. Instead it will be a celebration of George Plimpton's remarkable life and work.

Shusha Guppy