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Guest
Guest
I like the idea of such a guest list and hope to come up with my own later. How about you? If you think others may not know of your choices (e.g., I hardly know sci-fi or fantasy writers), please explain why you'd invite them, why they'd be a good mix (even if of different decades or centuries). As a theme, let's make it a Christmastime dinner party. At present I am certain I would want Shakespeare and Wilde, will think on the rest. - Perdita
Guess who's coming to dinner - Robert McCrum, The Observer, Dec. 5, 2004
Christmas is the make-or-break season for almost every bookseller. Last Thursday, Hatchards invited a bunch of writers with new books just published to come and sign copies at its Piccadilly store. It does this every year. It's a convivial occasion, and a rare one. Nowadays, it's unusual for so many writers to be found together under one roof, with the possible exception of literary festivals. In the past, especially in London, the casual social interaction of writers was taken for granted.
In Shakespeare's day, as Stephen Greenblatt points out in his wonderfully suggestive new biography, Will in the World (Cape), it's clear from the surviving documents, and from the internal evidence of their work, that Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson were well acquainted, as were many of the smaller fry from Kyd and Nashe to Fletcher, Webster and Beaumont.
By the beginning of the last century, regular literary meetings were less commonplace. Still, occasionally, there were some extraordinary conjunctions. For instance, Arnold Bennett writes in his journal for July 1917 how, after dinner with JM Barrie and Thomas Hardy, the party was joined, following an impromptu phone call, for coffee and cigars by HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Arnold astutely noted the 'comparative youth' of Wells and Shaw next to the aged figure of Hardy who was, he observed 'incomparably their superior as a creative artist'.
It's hard not to wonder at the remarkable luminosity of that occasion. What must it have been like? London was suffering Zeppelin raids. Did these great writers simply discuss the war? Or did the conversation range more widely? Running on a bit, it's not hard to wonder whom you would invite to a dream literary dinner party of, say, 10. You can play this game any number of ways but, limiting the invitations to English and American writers, here's my guest list. I'd start with Chaucer. He'd be excellent company, perhaps get slightly drunk and tell good stories, mainly gossip from his career in politics, especially to do with the court of Edward the Third.
Next, it would be hard not to invite Marlowe and Shakespeare, for obvious reasons. Shakespeare probably wouldn't say much, but he'd contribute an air of benign good fellowship. And Marlowe? He'd show off, hogging the limelight So much for the head of the table. Next, to keep things lively further down, I'd hope to get Aphra Behn and her much later admirer, Virginia Woolf.
Coleridge, a one-man dinner party, would be my next essential guest. And so would Byron, who'd probably disdain the whole occasion but who might make great conversation. With seats at a premium, we could not omit Dickens, and (to represent America), Mark Twain. Which leaves one more place for... who? 'Mad' Shelley? Thackeray? Jane Austen? George Eliot? Disraeli? Mrs Gaskell? Emily Dickinson? Charlotte BrontÀ? Trollope? Robert Louis Stevenson?
My preference, because she would be tremendous company - and because I think she would be a short-cut to some excellent conversations about all kinds of Americans, including Henry James, would be Jackie Collins. I'd also hope to persuade Oscar Wilde to drop by on his way home from the theatre. He is always said to have been a great talker, but the most reliable accounts of his conversation take pains to point out that he was a great listener, too. In this company, he might need to be.
This is only a Christmas game and should not be taken too seriously. But try it: that guest list is not as easy as it looks.
Guess who's coming to dinner - Robert McCrum, The Observer, Dec. 5, 2004
Christmas is the make-or-break season for almost every bookseller. Last Thursday, Hatchards invited a bunch of writers with new books just published to come and sign copies at its Piccadilly store. It does this every year. It's a convivial occasion, and a rare one. Nowadays, it's unusual for so many writers to be found together under one roof, with the possible exception of literary festivals. In the past, especially in London, the casual social interaction of writers was taken for granted.
In Shakespeare's day, as Stephen Greenblatt points out in his wonderfully suggestive new biography, Will in the World (Cape), it's clear from the surviving documents, and from the internal evidence of their work, that Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson were well acquainted, as were many of the smaller fry from Kyd and Nashe to Fletcher, Webster and Beaumont.
By the beginning of the last century, regular literary meetings were less commonplace. Still, occasionally, there were some extraordinary conjunctions. For instance, Arnold Bennett writes in his journal for July 1917 how, after dinner with JM Barrie and Thomas Hardy, the party was joined, following an impromptu phone call, for coffee and cigars by HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Arnold astutely noted the 'comparative youth' of Wells and Shaw next to the aged figure of Hardy who was, he observed 'incomparably their superior as a creative artist'.
It's hard not to wonder at the remarkable luminosity of that occasion. What must it have been like? London was suffering Zeppelin raids. Did these great writers simply discuss the war? Or did the conversation range more widely? Running on a bit, it's not hard to wonder whom you would invite to a dream literary dinner party of, say, 10. You can play this game any number of ways but, limiting the invitations to English and American writers, here's my guest list. I'd start with Chaucer. He'd be excellent company, perhaps get slightly drunk and tell good stories, mainly gossip from his career in politics, especially to do with the court of Edward the Third.
Next, it would be hard not to invite Marlowe and Shakespeare, for obvious reasons. Shakespeare probably wouldn't say much, but he'd contribute an air of benign good fellowship. And Marlowe? He'd show off, hogging the limelight So much for the head of the table. Next, to keep things lively further down, I'd hope to get Aphra Behn and her much later admirer, Virginia Woolf.
Coleridge, a one-man dinner party, would be my next essential guest. And so would Byron, who'd probably disdain the whole occasion but who might make great conversation. With seats at a premium, we could not omit Dickens, and (to represent America), Mark Twain. Which leaves one more place for... who? 'Mad' Shelley? Thackeray? Jane Austen? George Eliot? Disraeli? Mrs Gaskell? Emily Dickinson? Charlotte BrontÀ? Trollope? Robert Louis Stevenson?
My preference, because she would be tremendous company - and because I think she would be a short-cut to some excellent conversations about all kinds of Americans, including Henry James, would be Jackie Collins. I'd also hope to persuade Oscar Wilde to drop by on his way home from the theatre. He is always said to have been a great talker, but the most reliable accounts of his conversation take pains to point out that he was a great listener, too. In this company, he might need to be.
This is only a Christmas game and should not be taken too seriously. But try it: that guest list is not as easy as it looks.
Right now, all of them are heavy drinkers - lol - I need at least one sober author! That might take me longer to find 
