Authors in Conversation "Americans continue to visit Paris not just for Paris, but for 'Paris,'" Rosecrans Baldwin, author of Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down, wrote in an email just before Bastille Day. "As if out of some collective nostalgia for what Paris should be, more than what it is." He was writing to Toby Barlow, author of Sharp Teeth and, most recently, Babayaga -- a novel of love, spies, and witches in 1950s Paris. In their exchange, Barlow and Baldwin discussed "Fake France," pommes frites, and the enchantments of the City of Light. Toby Barlow wrote:
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by Toby Barlow This is a ghost story, I think. So, one morning, I woke up hungover in my Brooklyn apartment. This was years ago now. It was late on a clear summer day, the windows were open and blowing in the sea air from the New York harbor. I was in no great hurry to move. For some reason, I found myself mulling over a recent Hunter S. Thompson quote I had read regarding the death of George Plimpton. “I think the friends of George Plimpton should and must create a permanent monument to him,” Dr. Thompson had said. I didn’t really think much of it when I read it, but as I lay there this idea began to gain some momentum inside my head. Eventually, I crawled out of bed over to the computer and began doing some research on Plimpton. Yes, he was a gentleman, an editor, a supporter of the arts, oh and a boxer and an acrobat and a birdwatcher and a Boston Bruins goalie and, and, and, well, as the list grew I felt a great energy begin to overtake me, an urgency really. “Why yes,” I thought to myself, “yes, we must! We absolutely must build this statue for George.”