George Plimpton & Isobel Connelly

Summary

The Moth Podcast Episode Summary Episode: George Plimpton & Isabel Connelly
Release Date: March 15, 2016
Host: Dan Kennedy

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Introduction

In this episode of The Moth, host Dan Kennedy welcomes listeners to two compelling true stories shared by esteemed storytellers George Plimpton and Isabel Connelly. The episode delves into themes of resilience, the power of human connections, and personal transformation.

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Story 1: George Plimpton – "A Night at Elaine's"

Timestamp: [03:25] – [12:01]

Overview:
George Plimpton, a renowned journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review, recounts a profound experience that underscores the impact of mentorship and serendipitous encounters in the literary world.

Key Points:

• Passion for Fireworks: Plimpton begins by drawing a parallel between writing and fireworks, highlighting the visible appreciation that fireworks garner, unlike the often unnoticed efforts of writers. ([03:40])

  "The marvelous thing about fireworks, particularly for writers, is that when you write, there's very, very rarely any acknowledgement that you've written anything."

• The Brooklyn Bridge Incident: He narrates an event during the Brooklyn Bridge's 100th anniversary fireworks display where he observes a mysterious message: "you've come a long way, baby. Now let's see you fly." This sparks a reflection on struggling writers seeking recognition. ([04:30])

• Meeting Mr. Spinelli: Plimpton shares an anecdote about being auctioned as a prize for an evening, leading to his encounter with Mr. Spinelli and his wife. Spinelli, a writer whose work hadn't been accepted, hoped this meeting could catalyze his career. ([05:15])

• Elaine's Restaurant: To assist Spinelli, Plimpton takes him and his wife to Elaine's, a famed literary restaurant. There, they meet literary giants like Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tom Wolfe. This network of influential writers transforms Spinelli's confidence and aspirations. ([07:50])

  "Mr. Spinelli was beside himself. Completely different, man. He changed from this nervous pool player into this gigantic figure."

• Outcome: Two months later, Spinelli's novel gets accepted by Houghton Mifflin, a testament to the evening's profound impact. ([11:45])

Notable Quote:

"We embark on a high-wire act of shared experience which is both terrifying and exhilarating." – George Plimpton (Contextual reflection on the Moth experience)

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Story 2: Isabel Connelly – "Facing the Beat"

Timestamp: [12:22] – [18:43]

Overview:
Isabel Connelly shares a deeply personal and harrowing experience from her childhood, battling a severe heart condition. Her story is one of fear, vulnerability, and the enduring strength that emerges from facing life-threatening challenges.

Key Points:

• Early Fears: At six years old, Isabel was already grappling with fears of kites, balloons, mythical figures like Santa Claus, and distrust of strangers. This set the stage for her terrifying ER experience. ([12:30])

• Initial ER Visit: Isabel and her mother visit the emergency room due to Isabel's rapidly beating heart. Miscommunication about her condition leads to confusion and fear. ([13:15])

  "Isabel, when this happens, you need to find an adult immediately and get to the ER."

• Second Episode: Later, while at a friend's house in San Francisco, Isabel's heart rate spikes dangerously to 360 beats per minute. The frantic rush to the ER and the labyrinthine parking situation amplify her distress. ([14:00])

• Medical Intervention: In the ER, Isabel faces the intimidating process of medical procedures. The detachment and urgency of the doctors heighten her anxiety until a team of specialists intervenes successfully. ([15:45])

• Operation and Recovery: She undergoes an ablation, one of only three procedures of its kind for her age group globally. The success of the operation not only normalizes her heart but also instills a newfound assertiveness. ([17:10])

  "I'm no longer that little kid who's afraid to say how they're feeling. I call people out on their shit."

Notable Quote:

"If doctors can save me once, I really believe that they can save me again." – Isabel Connelly ([17:50])

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Conclusion

This episode of The Moth masterfully juxtaposes two life-altering stories that highlight the intertwining of personal struggles and the support systems that facilitate growth and healing. George Plimpton's tale emphasizes the unforeseen ways mentorship can alter a writer's destiny, while Isabel Connelly's narrative showcases the resilience forged through confronting life's most daunting challenges.

Listeners are left with a profound appreciation for the human spirit's capacity to overcome adversity and the pivotal moments that define our journeys.

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Final Notes

• Host's Background: Dan Kennedy, author of Loser Goes First and Rock On: An American Spirit, brings warmth and insight to the storytelling sessions.
• Production Credits: Produced by Mooj Zaidie with recordings supervised by Paul Ruest at Argo Studios in New York City.
• Support: The episode acknowledges contributions from sponsors like Groons, Stamps.com, and others, though these sections were omitted from the summary per instructions.

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Recommendations for Non-Listeners

For those who haven't listened to this episode, tuning into The Moth offers a unique opportunity to experience authentic, heartfelt stories that resonate on a universal level. Whether you're a veteran writer or someone who has faced personal trials, these narratives provide both inspiration and solace.

Transcript

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[Dan Kennedy]

Welcome to the Moth podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy, and before we get started, a quick announcement. The Moth mainstage is returning to Seattle. That's going to be May 18th. It's presented by Seattle Arts and Lectures. For tickets and more information on the show and all our upcoming tour stops, just Visit the site themoth.org George Plimpton is our first storyteller this week. This is a great story. We dug deep into the archives. He told this live here in New York City in 1999. Here's George Clinton.

[George Plimpton]

I am still the fireworks commissioner of the city of New York and wrote a book about fireworks. Indeed, it's a great passion of fireworks. I was a demolition specialist in the army, and I suppose that's what got me going on. It. The marvelous thing about fireworks, particularly for writers, is that when you write, there's very, very rarely any acknowledgement that you've written anything. Sometimes you get a review, but you don't really see people. You don't get the sense that someone's reading your work. But in fireworks, you can put a match, a flare to a fuse, and this thing goes up into the air. And there's an enormous recognition. A great crowd goes, ah. And of course, the fireworks were made by somebody in Korea, but still there's an enormous satisfaction having sent this thing up, getting this applause. And that's something that writers don't really ever get. What Mr. Drucker does not know, and none of you know, is that during the course of putting the fireworks onto the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge had an anniversary, 100th anniversary some years ago. And the Grouchees, this great fireworks family, was asked to put on this fireworks show. And part of the fireworks show was shot off the square tops of the Brooklyn Bridge and be of fireworks. Practically a member of their family. They asked me to come up to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge to watch them putting these mortars up there on the very top. It's a very arduous climb. You have to climb up this long cable and at the very end you climb up a little ladder and there you are on this sort of parapet, and it's way up above the river. You can look absolutely straight down, not unlike this stage Here, except much bigger and right on the very edge, I noticed that somebody had written, you've come a long way, baby. Now let's see you fly. Somebody had climbed up this extraordinary cable through the ladder, probably at night, and had written this amazing message at the very edge of this parapet. And I kept thinking about this. Who could possibly have done that? And it occurred to me that it was very likely a writer, a failed writer, A writer with a girlfriend who had a poem accepted by the Paris Review. And his poetry wasn't being accepted anywhere. His stories weren't going to be accepted anywhere. And so one night, here in Brooklyn, he climbed up this thing at night and wrote this despairing message on the very edge of this parapet. And it got me thinking over here tonight, after a couple of drinks, about despairing writers. I was told earlier that almost 40% of this audience are writers. And it reminded me of something that happened some years ago. When I got a call from a public television station in Philadelphia. And they asked if I would mind being put up as a prize on an auction. They were going to have an evening with George Plimpton, it was called. And I said, you're not going to get anything for that, but you're welcome to do it if you want to. A few weeks later, the public television station called up and said, we have someone that bought you. He's a man called Spinelli. And Mr. Spinelli and his wife are going to come to New York. And all you have to do is give them dinner and give them an evening, and then they can come back to Philadelphia. So I talked this over with my wife. And we decided what to do, which was they would come to the apartment and we would sit there for a while. And then we'd take them down to a restaurant very near Grand Central Station or Penn Station. So they get onto the train and get back to Philadelphia. So Mr. Spinelli and his wife arrived at my apartment. And there's a pool table there. So Mr. Spinelli and I played this rather desultory game of pool. He was a shy man, didn't say very much. And my wife took Mrs. Spinelli on a tour of the apartment, which takes about one minute. But during the course of this tour, Mrs. Spinelli described what had happened, which was that Mr. Spinelli had been watching very late public television. And on had come this auction. Mr. Spinelli was a writer. He had not had anything accepted anywhere. He thought, since I'm the editor of a magazine and knew something about publishing circles in New York, that maybe it was worth Buying this evening with George Plimpton that might get him going on his career. And so when Mrs. Spinelli came back, my wife. And he'd taken out everything they had in their savings account for this trip to New York. So when my wife told me this, I realized that we could not go to Gallagher's next to Penn Station and put the Spinelli's on a sensible train back to Philadelphia. We had to do something else. And I thought the only thing I could do was to take them to Elaine's, which is a restaurant on Second Avenue and 88th street, which is a literary hangout, Publishers hangout, or used to be. And I thought, maybe that's what we can do. And I said this to Mr. And Mrs. Spinelli. I said, we're going to go to Elaine's to have supper. And he'd heard about this literary restaurant, quite brightened. And off we went. And I had to hope that Elaine's that night had its usual quantity of writers. And when we walked in, it was as if Madame Tussaud herself had arranged this long row of tables. We walked in, and there was sitting Norman Mailer and Norris, his wife, and Willie Morris, the editor of Harper's Magazine. And I walked over and I said, Norman, this is Mr. Spinelli from Philadelphia. And Mrs. Spinelli, this is Norman Mailer, Willie Morrison, Norris Mailer. We move down to the next table. There were sitting Bruce J. Friedman and Kurt Vonnegut. I said, Bruce, this is Mrs. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia. And Mr. Spinelli sort of brightened to be referred to as writer. We went down to the next table. There was Gay Talese sitting with his wife, nan of Doubleday. Mr. Talese, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia. We marched down this line. It was incredible. These tables had writers and editors sitting at them. We were approaching way at the end of the restaurant, the Woody Allen table. Woody Allen sits at this table. Always has, always will. And one of the cardinal rules about Elaine says, you do not interrupt Woody Allen at his table. He sits there eating chicken francese. And he never looks up. And his little circle is around him. And people go by on the way to the kitchen and way to the back room and so forth. And they always look to see if Woody Allen is there, but he never looks up. And it's an un. It's a rule. You do not speak to Mr. Allen. We got closer and closer. We talked to. We talked to Tom Wolfe. Sitting there with somebody, rather. Mr. Spinelli says, Tom Wolfe, the writer. The writer from Philadelphia. On and on we went closer and closer to the Woody Allen table. When we got there, I thought, I cannot do this, but I'm going to Woody. I said, Woody, this is Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia. And Woody Allen looked up from his chicken francese and he said, yes, I. I don't know why he said that, but that's exactly what he said. And Mr. Spinelli, we all went over to our table. Mr. Spinelli was beside himself. Completely different, man. He changed from this nervous pool player into this gigantic figure. He talked about Kafka. And finally we stayed almost all night. We finally got him on our late train back to Philadelphia. About two months later, I got a letter from Mr. Spinelli. He said, my boy's novel has been accepted by Houghton Mifflin. He said, give my best to the gang up at all. A.

[Dan Kennedy]

Love that story. George Plimpton was a journalist and the first editor in chief of the Paris Review. Our second story this week is from Isabel Connelly, and it was told live in New York City in 2014. The theme of the night was when worlds Collide.

[Isabel Connelly]

All right, so I'm six years old. I'm afraid of kites, balloons, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and really any adults that aren't my parents. I sit in an ER with my mom. I've gone there because this weird thing happened to my heart. And it started beating really, really fast. And no one really knew what it was. And so we sit there and this kind doctor comes in and he looks at me and he looks at my mom and he says, isabel, there's something wrong with your heart, but we don't really know what it is. They said it could be this thing called supraventricular tachycardia, or svt. Essentially, what this means is that there is an arrhythmia in your heart. And so your heart beats really, really, really fast. And it's very dangerous, in the deaf sense of the word. But they didn't tell me that because I was 6. Instead, they said, isabel, when this happens, you need to find an adult immediately and get to the er. And for six year old Isabel, this is two very terrifying things happening at once. I have to talk to an adult that I don't know, and then I have to go to the er, a place that I don't know. And so they just let us leave because they said there's nothing you can really do until it happens again and you come back. And so we leave and I go to school and it doesn't really affect me. I try not to think about it. And I go to my friend's house with my mom and we live in San Francisco and so you have to drive everywhere and there are a lot of hills. And we get there and I'm upstairs and we're doing whatever little six year old kids do and my heart starts to beat so quickly and I look around and I'm a little bit freaked out. And I go downstairs and I grab my mom's wrist and I'm like, mom, it's happening. We have to go to the ER now. And so she takes me and we jump in the car and we drive to the er. And because this is San Francisco, the only parking space is at the bottom of the hill and the ER is at the top of the hill. And so we run up the hill and my mom's out of breath and I'm even more out of breath and everything's starting to get a little bit hazy. And we get in there and the woman at the front desk is like, welcome to the er. And my mom's like, she's having supraventricular tachycardia. And the woman's like, oh my God. And they. And they whisk me into this other part of the er and I'm in a bed, this white cot, and suddenly there's this wash of blue, the blue scrubs. And I'm starting to realize that I don't really feel very okay anymore. And I can feel my heart beating. And they're attaching all these different things to me. And this man grabs my arm and he says, I have to put the IV in your arm. And this has happened to me like six times now. And I know how much it's going to hurt and I so badly do not want him to do it. And I say, please, please don't. And he says, I have to. And so he does. And I hate it. And then they look at the monitor and for those of you who don't know, a regular heartbeat is about 60 to 100 beats per minute. At the height of this heart thing, my heart was beating 360 beats per minute. So they look at the monitor and they're looking at me and I'm looking back at them, hoping to just find something in their eyes telling me that I'm going to be okay. And the doctors start to look nervous. And when doctors start to look nervous, I get nervous and they look at me and they look at the monitor and they call the head cardiologist from the hospital to come down because they've never seen anything like this. And they all go away into this corner. And my mom wears these clinky bracelets. And when I hear them, I know it's all going to be okay. But I don't hear those clinky bracelets anymore. And it's really quiet, and I really don't think I'm going to be. And the doctors come over to me and they start unpacking this thing and they go, isabel, we're going to have to give you this medicine. This medicine is going to stop your heart from beating and it should pick right back up again, but if it doesn't, we're going to defibrillate you. So they put two stickers on my chest and the guy sits there with the defibrillator and he looks at me and the head cardiologist puts this medicine into the iv and they look at me and they look at the monitor and suddenly it goes flat. And then it goes beep, beep, beep. And I'm okay. So by this time, they're 100% sure I have supraventricular tachycardia. And they tell me, isabel, you're going to have an operation. They call it an ablation. And I will be the third person in the world of my age to have the operation. And I'm fine. I had it. I'm okay. My heart is totally normal now. But I've had lots of different encounters with hospitals and doctors. And what I've really taken away from it is that I'm no longer that little kid who's afraid to say how they're feeling. I call people out on their shit. And I have this feeling inside of me that if doctors can save me once, I really believe that they can save me again. Thank you.

[Dan Kennedy]

Isabelle Conley is a senior at School of the Future. She's an aspiring artist and filmmaker currently working at Prinkshop, a socially conscious graphic company. And she enjoys knitting in her spare time. Thanks to all of you for listening and we hope you have a story worthy week.

[Stamps.com Representative]

Dan Kennedy is the author of the books Loser Goes First, Rock on An American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer.

[Dan Kennedy]

With the Moth Podcast, production by Mooj Zaidie. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public. @prx.org.

[Stamps.com Representative]

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