Says "Grant Ginder Read One Novel 7 Times While Writing His Own/James Salter’s 'Light Years' had a big influence on 'So Old, So Young,' his new book about college friends drifting in and out of one another’s lives" (NYT).
I liked his answer to the old question "You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?"
I’m supposed to say Jane Austen, Sophocles and a Finnish novelist no one’s heard of, but actually the literary dinner party I want to attend already happened. It’s the one mentioned in a recent Times article where Joan Didion refused to give Nora Ephron her recipe for Mexican Chicken. I’d die to see that.
Posts
32 comments:
"So you went to a party at Jacqueline Onassis
If you're so smart, why don't you wear glasses"
- John Mellencamp "Jackie O"
So the dude wrote another version of The Big Chill. Sounds like that lady was right about him
Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, and a WWF referee.
“ It’s the one mentioned in a recent Times article where Joan Didion refused to give Nora Ephron her recipe for Mexican Chicken. I’d die to see that.”
So. A “literary dinner party” with claws.
Insufferable people. All of ‘em.
Ephron could have never have used the receipe, she didn't speak spanish.
three litrary figures: Lets discuss with WW 2 with James Jones, Earnest Hemingway, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Lets discuss film noir with Raymond Chandler, Hammett, and Mickey Spillane. Of course the whiskey bill will be outta sight.
The world is filled with people who will automatically try and tear other people down. It's important to realize this so that you don't let them damage your self esteem. A good teacher or mentor will not judge you. They will judge what you do and offer advice to help you improve what you do. (if required)
Joan and Nora- who’s the third?
I suppose two dooshbags me and Dorothy Parker could roast…
…maybe Benchley and Crichton and Fry. Hannah, not her dad…
James Gleick, John McPhee, Marc Reisner
Matthew, Peter, Luke
Then, Jane Austen, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien
Do autobiographies count? I’d love to have a meal with the late Richard Feynman! If restricted to people who make their living as authors or as writers of articles published online or printed on the remnants of trees, then I’d have to pass. The couple I’ve known whose writing interested me were actually pretty boring in face to face interactions.
"You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?"
Gemini, Claude, and Grok. (ChatGPT can sit at the kids' table.)
Reminds me of a story told by an actor or actress--I've forgotten which--about high school. They revealed their ambition to conquer Broadway to their theater teacher, who told them they didn't have the chops.
Years later, after becoming successful on stage and screen, they encountered the old teacher and asked why they had been so discouraging.
The answer was, "It was your final test--were you the kind of person who would risk following your dream, or the kind of person who would let someone like me tell you what you should try?"
I think I've told you guys before, James Salter is one of my favorite writers. Succinct, short, and precise.
So, this is the embodiment of the movie "Whiplash."
Winston Spencer Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, and Tom Holland (the historian, not the actor). CC, JSM
Gary Larson, Al Jaffee, PJ O’Rourke
Jaffee would of course give snappy answers to everyone else’s stupid questions. CC, JSM
James Salter is regarded as a "writer's writer." Like so many other mid-20th century writers he was also a "guy writer," so some contemporary writers don't look on him with favor. I remember him most because of V-E Day. The day Germany surrenders a POW returns home to Great Barrington MA. The celebration is cut short by Cadet Salter, on the way from Newburgh NY to Scranton PA, crashing his plane through the roof. I guess he got better at flying (and other things) as time went on.
When are dinner parties ever successful? A success means that you are all putting down the same outsiders and not each other. Dine with history's greats and either you will disappoint them or they will disappoint you. I can think of a lot of times and places I would have liked to go to a dinner party. What you could see once you left and walked out onto the street or road might be astonishing, but the conversation, maybe not so much.
Narr: I have never been very good at figuring out if teachers are using reverse psychology on me or actually giving candid advice. Being Socratized didn't help, either: when authority figures try to gently correct me by asking questions, I assume they are just asking questions, and I keep defending my idea. CC, JSM
@JSM--some tried to Socratize me, too, but I was too wily and didn't let them get close.
IIRC, Gore Vidal had an interesting idea about arts education in American schools: he thought it should be forbidden.
The talented would find their way, and the untalented wouldn't waste everyone's time pretending.
Of course the answer to the question is Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and Joyce Kilmer.
Montaigne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Apostle Paul
A "literary dinner party" sounds pretty awful. No thanks.
Writers put their best into their writing. Don't expect them to be as brilliant as their books. Some writers were great conversationalists: Samuel Johnson, Oscar Wilde, GB Shaw, Dorothy Parker, Sydney Smith, Gore Vidal. Whether you'd want to eat a meal with them is another matter, though. See the French film "Ridicule" to see the downside of the brilliant 18th century salons: everyone trying their best to outshine the others at all costs.
People who won't share recipes are asshats IMHO. As a chef, I have had to go to lengths to come up with a recipe of one of my dishes that could be translated into "serves four". But don't take my recipe, substitute many of the ingredients and methods for your own and then complain that it didn't come out as good as mine. Margarine is NOT butter, 2% milk is NOT heavy cream, and so on.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.