Article: Literary Dinner Guest List (make up your own)

[Rumple Foreskin]

Rumps, I get your duets but I don't understand why Clancy and Wilde?

Perdita

Maybe it was a late night thing. Somehow the idea of the creators of Jack Ryan and Dorian Grey sitting side-by-side discussing literature and writing seemed funny.

Rumple

 

[BlackShanglan]

Another wonderful scene, Shanglan. I think you're the only person here who's ever mentioned Synge. Stop impressing me or I'll swoon. P.

Swoon, and perhaps I shall stop

Actually, if I have impressed you at all, I have probably used up my lifetime total ability to do so, so fear nothing.

Rumple ... somehow you make that whole Wilde/Clancy confluence sound persuasive. It's catching. But now I have the imagine of Hemingway and Williams engaging in a frantic erotic melee under the table.

(Wait ... was I complaining about that? Never mind. Carry on.)

Shanglan

 

[Guest]

Shanglan, have you ever been to the Aran islands? It's been one of my fantasy holidays since reading Synge in my youth. Of course after a time of solitude and hard scrabble living (say, a week ) I would then meet a 'black' Irishman who would have just the kind of 'blarney' I need.

Perdita

 

[BlackShanglan]

Shanglan, have you ever been to the Aran islands? It's been one of my fantasy holidays since reading Synge in my youth. Of course after a time of solitude and hard scrabble living (say, a week ) I would then meet a 'black' Irishman who would have just the kind of 'blarney' I need.

Sounds like heaven to me. Alas, I did not get further afield than Sligo; the Aran Islands are on the wish list. Should I happen to win the lottery, I will fund your journey as well.

Shanglan

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Come to think of it, I might have to introduce two of my dinner guests for you - I mean, EVERYONE knows JKR, but perhaps not the other two. Maki Murakami is the creator of my number one favourite manga, "Gravitation", and Shizuru Seino has made "Power!!"

So, imagine the author of Harry Potter, the author of a GREAT gay male story, the author of a comic story about a crossdressing girl and the basket player she's in love with (yes, that's what inspired my NaNo-story), and ME, all of us chatting over the dinner table.

Can you imagine the story the 4 of us could come up with???

 

[Guest]

Svenskaya, thanks for the background. I daresay you have a wonderful evening planned. P.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Damned, now I want this to happen fore REAL!

 

[CharleyH]

At very first glance my list seems rather depressing, but this is Canada, and there are no guns, so I think it will be safe as long as Bill didn’t bring his own. I have left out Sylvia Plath for a very good reason. Despite the fact that I am (non-so-humbly), a fabulous hostess who would provide my already pickled guests with a bottomless evening of spirits, I am sure that most of them would have a flask of their own just in case, and perhaps a stash or two of something else. Needless to say I don’t have to worry too much about the food, I need only worry whether anyone is actually making sense to me.

Marguarite Duras
Dorothy Parker
Colette
Aldous Huxley
William S. Burroughs
Samuel Beckett
Dylan Thomas
Dostoyevsky
Lewis Carroll

As for how the evening might progress? On this I will have to think more. One thing is certain; it would be a rather wacky evening. That or right wacked

 

[fille]

Maya Angelou
Kazuo Ishiguro
E.L. Doctorow
David Sedaris (ok, not very literary, but hey - he is an author!)

 

[Guest]

Charlus, I love your guest list (except for Burroughs, he probably talks with food in his mouth). I'd love to be the server. P.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Perdita,

I've already submitted a list. But Charley has, once again, inspired me.

My new list of dinner guests would include all the regulars at the Algonquin (hotel) Round Table in NYC. (Parker, Thurber, Benchley, Kaufman, etc.).

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Guest]

Thanks again, Rumply. No reason why we can't host more than one fantasy dinner party. I'd love to come to your second one, how fun.

Perdita

(I am still thinking of another, my first was all Russkiis.)

 

[CharleyH]

Charlus, I love your guest list (except for Burroughs, he probably talks with food in his mouth). I'd love to be the server. P.

Damn, and I thought he was barely telligable without food in his mouth Oh well, it would still be fun trying to figure out WTF he was saying.


Good god! I have inspired Rumple twice? lol

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Good god! I have inspired Rumple twice? lol

At least. Bless you, my child.

Rumple

 

[Goldie Munro]

I think I have 12 - nice dinner party number -


Queen Elizabeth I
Shakespeare
Thomas Paine
Woody Guthrie
Mary Shelly
Kylie Minogue
Bob Dylan
Tony Benn
Claire Short
Margaret Attwood
Ghandi
and ME!

A fun night I think!

 

[Guest]

Goldie, that is a very interesting group, but I think I would specify at what age you'd want Elizabeth R. and Mr. Dylan to appear (could make a big diff ).

Perdita

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

In a mystical land where I flawlessly spoke Japanese, I'd love to have a dinner chat with Masamune Shirow (most famous for writing/drawing the cyberpunk classic Ghost in the Shell and famous for opening much of the greatest speculation into what would make a human human in the world of machines and whether a machine could truly exhibit all the desires and fear of a human and otherwise show all the traits of a soul. Also, all of his works would revolve around the uncertainty of reality in clever and intriguing ways that truly brought meaning to "twist endings"), Sadayuki Murai (who wrote the screenplays for Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress, Kino's Journey, and Paranoia Agent. All very well done psychological explorations that truly capture the essence of emotion and conveys it in a way that rings truer than I've seen in even the best emotional fiction by "real" writers), Ryutaro Nakamura (who designed the two single best explorations of nihilism and existentialism in Serial Experiments: Lain and Kino's Journey and tackled the Matrix quandary of reality in the Net back when the net had no porn and did a better job of it (which is to be expected of the original to a Westernized rip off)), Reiko Momochi (who writes the Confidential Confessions, the ultimate guide in bittersweet emotion and who writes activist fiction better than any Western author including dear old Hunter S.), and finally Yasuomi Umetsu (whose anime Kite is the only piece of erotica I have yet to see that I would firmly call brilliant and deserving of the term literature. Again tackling the issue of nihilism, the fragile irony of the world's events, and that type of sympathetic pain you have when things that shouldn't happen do)

I realize that the table would have some disagreements, especially on the issues of nihilism and hope and that Umetsu and Momochi would not likely get along, but I think a truly in-depth exploration of how to convey emotion in all mediums, the nature of reality, and how to tackle nihilism in fiction would be both fascinating and propel my capacity as a writer.