Peter Matthiessen in Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr, ed., George, Being George: George Plimpton’s Life. New York: Random House, 2008, p. 89—
[In 1952 American novelist] Bill Styron showed up on the dingy fourth-floor landing of our apartment [in Paris] at 14, rue Perceval, with no French and a thick Tidewater accent…Patsy and I gave him a drink, and then took him to…a little Breton café…[During dinner] We were all…sloshing up a good deal of rough vin de table, and at a certain point, overcome by dire homesickness, he fell face forward into his platter and lay lachrymose amongst the oysters, uttering the immortal Styronian words: "Ah ain' got no mo ree-sistance to change than a snow-flake." But by this time, we were were already fond of this well-read, humorous, and very intelligent man. We became fast friends on that first evening and from that time on.
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| Roy R. Behrens, rice bowl collage (detail), c1992 |
