Simple You Tell Me today.
Which writer would you most like to meet?
Let’s go with one dead and one living.
For me:
Dead – F. Scott Fitzgerald. He’d know the trendy spot to hang out and we’d have a great time until he stuck me with the bill at the end of the night. (Kidding! I would have insisted on paying. My imagination is quite thorough.)
Living – J.K. Rowling. SO MANY QUESTIONS.
How about you?
Alive: S.E. Hinton–just to say thank you for creating a brand new genre
Dead: Shakespeare–just to ask how he got those ideas.
Dead: Margurite Duras (want a night in her study – we can order pizza – I just want to talk writing)
Alive: Helene Cixous (tie with Elfride Jelinek)
Alive: U. K. Le Guin
Dead: that might change on a daily basis, at the moment probably Charlotte Bronte or Henry James
Agatha Christie and Alexander McCall Smith!
Dead: We'll start with Andre Norton. She was prolific, wrote some really awesome stories (some crappy ones too), and spawned a world that drew guest writers to play in it.
Alive: Pretty much any author I read. I'd love to get to meet them, maybe get to know more about the person behind the writing than blogs and Twitter posts show.
George Orwell for sheer his sheer imagination – would it rub off if I gave him a hug before and after the tea? Phillip DePoy for his voice, sense of place and character – where's the next Fever Develin Blue Mountain mystery??
Dead: Can't decide between Edith Nesbith and Astrid Lindgren
Alive: Diana Wynne Jones
Hands down, Jane Austen. Today, Melissa Marr.
Living: Margaret Atwood
Dead: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
I would love to talk to Danish author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke who wrote Out of Africa. I love that she was an independent woman when it wasn't fashionable to be so and her words just sing.
I met Wally Lamb a couple years ago in Boston. He's one of my favorite current authors.
Flannery O'Connor
Harper Lee
Dead: Beatrix Potter
Alive: Nathan Bransford
Dead: Frank McCourt
Living: Charles de Lint
Dead: Frank McCourt
Living: Charles de Lint
Lisa: Great choices! Duras and Cixous would be fantastic, especially at the same dinner.
I could spend all day reading through the comments…and maybe I will!
Dead: Sarah Teasdale, my favorite poet and highly underrated.
Alive: Catherynne Valente. I did meet her briefly at BEA this year. She's brilliant and opinionated. Not only would I learn a lot but I think we'd have a great time.
Dead: Dorothy Parker
Living: Elizabeth Berg
Living: Jennifer Donnelly. Especially after reading the ARC of Revolution. What a book! What a writer! Yes, questions, many questions, about voice, about character…
Dead: Yukio Mishima or Konstatin Paustovski. Can't choose. Both are my shining examples when it comes to painting the scenery, the landscape and the way people move in it.
Dead: ShakespearCSLewisDickensAustin
Living: Yeesh. All of them. But mostly, JK Rowling.
And I do know "Shakespeare" has an "e" on the end.
Living-Haruki Murakami
What an honor that would be. So many questions and I think he might be the first person to make me blush.
Dead- C.S. Lewis
Living – Stephen King – would love to discuss writing with that dude.
Dead – Ayn Rand – would love to talk current politics with her – though I think it would take longer than one discussion!
Hmm…Living is easier than dead. The Classics never really got to me.
Living…Either Juliet Marillier or Laurel K Hamilton. Both are such brilliant women.
Dead…T.H. White. King Arthur is awesome and his writing is genuinely hilarious.
Dead: Ernest Hemingway. I want to know if his "suicide" is an unstoppable choice.And why he did it. Living: Wilbur Smith just to find out where he based his novels from? Because it seemed to me based on one specific family.
Dead: Mark Twain
Living: Thomas Pynchon
Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller (in Paris), James Ellroy, Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Hunter S. Thompson, Roger Ebert, Jimmy McDonough, Jim Thompson, Ovid, Chaucer…
dead – em forster. I love his imagery.
alive – margaret atwood
Alive and well: Charles de Lint. I have no trouble walking down the street in the worlds he builds, and that is rare. Also, I'm pretty sure we'd go to an Irish pub and he'd play music for me, too.
Dead and Gone: Mark Twain would be a hoot.
Someone asked if Robert Jordan was as smart as they believed. He was, and gracious and mischievous as well. I got that out of one chance meeting and count myself blessed to have had it.
Anyone who wants to know why Hemingway was the way he was should read the works of Dr. Hilary K. Justice. It's all in there. And no, I would not like to meet him because I'm fairly sure he would despise me for wanting to.
Dead: Charles Dickens and Margaret Mitchell
Live: J.K. Rowlings and Stephanie Meyers, Stephen King and Dean Koontz
Dead: Tolkien
Alive: Mercedes Lackey
Dead: Agatha Christie
Living: Ravi Zacharias
Mark Twain and Mary DeMuth–Easy one.
Dead – John R.R. Tolkien – LOTR
Alive – David Morell – Rambo
(note: to the other annon up there ^^^ that thinks you would bore them. Think of all you can learn by listening to them. Hope your day gets better.)
W Somerset Maugham. the absolute God of the short story.
Kiran Desai.No, Orhan Pamuk. Maybe both.
To Jen P. –
There are so many comments that you probably won't see this, but I read that you wanted to meet Patricia Wood after book club skyping with her. I met her a couple weeks ago and she was a very cool person. Full of energy and drive and passion but also normal and down to earth. And the reading she did of Lottery was amazing. Good choice!
It would have to be Anais Nin. Her words are so palpable!
I want to have lunch with Margaret Atwood. I used to never want to meet my heroes, but then I had a class with a girl who used to be her neighbor. She said Atwood brought her cookies to welcome her to the neighborhood, and my classmate bought a chair at Atwood's garage sale. I just don't think of Margaret Atwood as a bake cookies, have garage sales kind of lady.
Yes, Richard Matheson is very much alive (as the author of RICHARD MATHESON ON SCREEN, I should know!). He even has a new novel, OTHER KINGDOMS, coming out in March, by which time he will be 85.
Dead: Elizabeth Bishop.
Living: Colm Toibin.
Jane Austen and JK Rowling. Both started me thinking I could do the same, writing to entertain others. Silly of me, huh?
Oh…what a question! So many temptations and desires stirred by the thought! If I must settle, then my top four would be:
Past Tense: Henri J.M. Nouwen or J.R.R. Tolkien
Present Tense: J.K. Rowling or Ray Bradbury
Dead: Kurt Vonnegut
Alive: Dean Koontz or Stephen King (I have actually met Stephen King at a book signing but all I could manage to say was a squeaky "thanks"
Dead: Louisa May Alcott. Maybe MFK Fisher.
Alive: Gail Collins. Or maybe Sarah Vowell. Or both. A party with Gail Collins and Sarah Vowell in attendance would be fantastic.
Actually, mine are all dead. Dickens, so I could ask him how he meant to end The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dorothy L. Sayers, so I could ask her how she meant to end Thrones, Dominations. Lord Byron, to find out whether women really fainted in his presence!