Posted by MaggieH (admin)
Jan 20, 2009 12:56 pm

Replies (17)

Posted by

• I would have dinner with J.D. Salinger. He has shunned the publicity surrounding him as well as not publishing anything for over forty years. His reluctance to fame as well as his brilliant writing would be more than enough conversation to last over dinner (and dessert!).

  Jan 20, 2009 7:39 pm
  by tristiseye

• It'd be intriguing to meet with any shy writer - Salinger's a great example, and also Emily Dickinson. On the flip side though, a couple playwrights sprang to my mind for their social bravado - witty Oscar Wilde and brusque William Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan). I'm a quiet type, so I'm happy to sit and listen to a quick thinker or showman expound on his views. Of course, to meet either would be to risk lampooning in the next popular stage satire if I made a bad impression. :)

  Jan 21, 2009 12:17 pm
  by karen.giangreco

• DINNER WITH JANE...Would love to have met and shared a diet Pepsi and pizza with Jane Austen. I would like to know what an accomplished bright women as herself felt about the fact, that females were thought to be intellectually inferior.

  Jan 21, 2009 2:37 pm
  by cherrychnagan

• Hard question, because there are lots of authors I want to meet. But I'd like to get these five together and have an awesome party:
  
  Walt Whitman - He was one of the first writers who I really identified with.
  
  Flannery O'Connor - She died young and spent a lot of her adult life in relative seclusion, but her characters and the ways she writes about people are amazing. She must have been a really intense and interesting person, and I'd like to talk to her.
  
  Edward Gorey - Had a really wild imagination - his work is bizarre and funny and morbid. I like it a lot.
  
  Thomas Pynchon - His work is so complex and expansive and fascinating that I think talking with him would be great. Also, I can always find echoes of what I've been thinking about recently in his work. He once said something like, "Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength." Haha.
  
  Vladimir Nabokov - I want to talk to him about synesthesia, wordplay, and writing stylistic things.

  Jan 21, 2009 6:25 pm
  by emilyyoung

• I have a habit of wanting to correspond letters to the author I'm at that time reading his (or her) book. I have questions for them, like for instance why did you make the character do or say this? Or mostly to just congratulate them on a job well done with the writing. I temporarily fall in love with the author and when I finish the book I never send my imaginary letters.
  
  btw - maggie.h, how did the surgery go?

  Jan 21, 2009 10:42 pm
  by littlelupin

• I'd love to have the Bronze sisters for a good curry and to introduce them to Cosmopolitan (the magazine AND the drink) and get their take on adaptations of their work.

  Jan 22, 2009 6:56 am
  by jcadiram

• I already answered the "pick 5 authors" in Charles1013's post, but I've changed my mind since then. I think.
  If I had to pick ONE author, I would take E.B. White out for some enchiladas and ask him what eventually happened to Stuart Little anyway? Of course, he's not around anymore, so that wouldn't really work out very well, would it?

  Jan 23, 2009 11:20 am
  by AndreaNo1

• Would you love to get *all* of these writers into a room for one big literary par-tay?
  
  @cherrychnagan: Just curious--why pizza and Diet Pepsi?
  
  Lots of you responded that you'd like to speak with a relatively "quiet" author. I wonder why?
  
  And @littlelupin, the surgery went just fine, and the recovery did too (lots of popsicles helped). Thanks for asking!

  Jan 23, 2009 2:52 pm
  by MaggieH (admin)

• well I would like to have dinner with P.G.Wodehouse just to learn from him how to see humour in everyday small, even dissappointing, events of your life. We need this talent in the age of competitions when we are jealous of everybody and tense 24*7*365- every second of 365 days.

  Jan 24, 2009 11:42 am
  by salil

• Shakespeare because I relearned how to read in collage by reading along with the library LPs, have since bought the Norton reprint of the original First Folio and read every play and, as a result, could understand his Elizabethan English easily and speak it quite proficiently. Obviously, I doubt he’d be in the underworld, more likely the heavens. I'd certainly ask if my favourite, 'The Tempest', was his finale and if its epilogue is a personal plea, but definitely wouldn't ask if he’s gay or never wrote the play.

  Jan 24, 2009 10:24 pm
  by John_Rempel

• HMMMM...I guess it would be my Dailylit namesake! I would not tell her that her birthplace is now a Starbucks or that The Mount is in foreclosure. Some things are better left unsaid!

  Jan 24, 2009 10:53 pm
  by EDITHJWHARTON

• Truman Capote. Every account I've read or seen of him seems to have characterized him as a captivating dinner guest.

  Jan 25, 2009 7:59 pm
  by femmebot

• @femmebot: Great idea--would you go with a black and white theme to match the famous Black and White Balls that Capote hosted?
  
  @John_Rempel: Very impressive! Maybe you should write your posts in iambic pentameter?
  
  I think all together you folks and these authors would make for a great literary party. Thanks for sharing!
  
  Be sure to check out the "Etc." forum for the new question this week!

  Jan 26, 2009 10:20 am
  by MaggieH (admin)

• has to be Edgar Allen Poe. While his wild, lucid, verbose short stories may remind naysayers of the alchoholic Poe many think of, his romantic poetry really makes my feel for the many losses he has had. For that i sempathize with him. Perhaps i can dine w/ him at his grave next December.

  Apr 27, 2009 9:46 pm
  by auistinblan

• Oscar Wilde would be interesting. plus Alexander Pushkin

  May 4, 2009 11:33 pm
  by poet

• H.G. Wells, Shakespeare, Helen Keller. But I would have to say Edgar Rice Burroughs is most intriguing. Or Moses.

  Jun 16, 2009 10:02 pm
  by saturntv

• The Apostle Paul - I think he was probably a pussycat.

  Jun 18, 2009 7:17 pm
  by Dellastr