Tribe's Response to E-Lit

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge

     Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge is an interactive piece of electronic literature. The author tells an interesting story using a map. Every piece of the story corresponds to a location along with pictures of the area. This type of literature keeps readers focused and interested. They can almost put themselves in the authors shoes and visualize what is happening.

     The author, Dinty Moore, writes about his encounters with George Plimpton. His first encounter with George Plimpton occurs when he is a college student at the University of Pittsburgh in 1977. George Plimpton was coming to speak at the University, and Dinty Moore was tasked at picking Mr. Plimpton up from the airport and chauffeuring him around the city of Pittsburgh. Their first encounter did not go that well. Dinty Moore, in his own words, was high on various amounts of drugs. They, then, traveled around the city in a beat up old car. They stopped at a Chinese restaurant, and when the bill came, George Plimpton had to pay for the meal for the both of them, since Moore put his last five dollars into the gas tank of his car.

Dinty Moore

     Fasting forward through time Moore ran into Plimpton two more times, one more awkward after another. The first one caused a very cringe-like conversation between Moore and Plimpton that would make any “you too” said after the server says “enjoy your food” blush. The second one did not even have a conversation attached.

     The final unplanned meetup was when Moore was a faculty member of a national nonfiction conference outside of Baltimore, which Plimpton was the keynote speaker. A friend of Moore’s asked Plimpton to mess with Moore by saying that he remembered Moore when the truth was Plimpton forgot all about Moore since their first meet up. The revenge of the title is one Moore put on Plimpton himself by thinking Plimpton hated him when Plimpton has not thought about Moore for a long time.

George Plimpton

     Using Google Maps is an interesting way to tell a story through but in telling it through Google Maps you can see all the different places that Dinty Moore saw Mr. George Plimpton after driving/showing him around while in Pittsburgh. Usually if someone who is well known comes to a small town or city you never see them again but not this time. As you can see on the map Dinty seen Mr. Plimpton not only in Pittsburgh, PA but also Harrisburg, PA, New York City, NY, and outside of Baltimore, MD.

     Overall, the story was very entertaining and easy to follow. We think that if someone travels a lot this would be an awesome way to tell their story and show all the places that they stopped. It makes it a lot easier to follow where the story goes using the Google Maps feature.