I like to read interviews in which authors are asked to imagine a dinner party with a few other writers, living or dead. The question gets at the neglected topic of compatibility between writer and reader.
I think a more telling question would involve having a drink at a bar. In some cases, the sensibilities of writers and readers are so incompatible you’d have to worry about fistfights.
I’m willing to concede that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh and T.S. Eliot belong in the canon, but it would be ill-advised for me to have a drink with any of them.
Q: What great writer who unquestionably belongs in the canon would you be afraid to have a drink with on the grounds that the conversation might lead to something unseemly?
Maybe William Faulkner? Because there couldn’t be just one drink.
ReplyDeleteAnd Dylan Thomas. This list is longer than I'd imagined. A friend said Céline would be high on the list.
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