Dinner and a good author

[Redlass]

What author (dead or alive--if they're dead, we'll assume they get to come back to life for a few hours) would you most like to share a meal with? Which meal and what would you serve?

[Joubert[$]]

I'm going to answer this in stages.

For fun and frolic - Lord Byron. Dinner would be at some chic SoCal restaurant followed by a night of clubbing. He would make Puff Daddy look like Pat Boone.

For getting crazy - Nathaniel Hawthorne. A nice stormy New England night with all sorts of good winter-type foods (soup, hearty breads, etc.) punctuated by Plucky's Apple Cider recipe.

To solve the mysteries - Moses or Peter. McDonald's on a crowded Sunday at about 12:45 when all the little kids are coming out of church and Mommy & Daddy promised them a Happy Meal if they just behaved.

Bonus - Robert Heinlein. He's our family favorite and was just so damn passionate about everything that he must have been fun to dine with. Any sort of sybaritic feast would do for good ole' RAH.

[Redlass]

I think I would invite C.S. Lewis over and serve roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and then move to a parlor afterward for sherry and cigars while he gives lectures on theology.

Then, perhaps Dostovesky for tea served with rye bread & caviar, and thick slabs of butter.

[Grouch]

Flannery O'Connor (well, duh!)
On the menu tonight: roast peacock with a delicate Catholic glaze

Charles Dickens (well, double-duh!)
On the menu tonight: A crust of bread (hors d'oeuvres), the biggest turkey I could find, and for dessert, figgy pudding (whatever that is)

C.S. Lewis
On the menu: Who cares? I'm not eating anyway, I'd be too busy engaging in stimulating conversation

[AmyBean2]

Geez, you guys are choosing all these great authors. It makes my pick seem inferior.

If I look back on my list of books read, I am sure I'd find more impressive choices, but...

The first thought that popped into my head upon hearing this question was Lawrence Sanders (the McNally guy).

I'd sure love to eat one of the famous sandwiches featured in his books. I'd even let him pick the beer to accompany the meal.

I'd also like to know what he thinks of the guy who's writing more McNally books under his name. My guess is Sanders wouldn't be too thrilled.

[sylvanb]

Jane Austen. The only meal I can think of in her books is the picnic in "Emma", and I think a picnic would be lovely. At Tanglewood, maybe, with little sandwiches and strawberries. And some cold fried chicken and potato salad. And I would wear a cream colored sprigged muslin with blue trim and a big skirt and a high waist and a VERY low neckline. And a bonnet.

[eplovejoy]

I'd like to sit down with the author(s) of the Bible. It would be fascinating, even if all I learned was how many places to set.

As for food, I suppose bread and fish, but I'd be worried I wouldn't have enough to go around.

[pageclot[$]]

I'd like to have pizza and beer with Thomas Harris.

pageclot

[murasaki]

Dorothy Sayers

The menu would be Cornish game hens or something else equally Britishy with good French wine--something of the Lord Peter Wimsey caliber.

--naomi

[kurt_messick]

Breakfast with Oscar Wilde
Omelets and french toast, with strong coffee, in the bay window area of his house on Tite Street, London, currently owned by my former secretary from my Parliamentary days -- I've actually had breakfast in that window. :smileo: I wouldn't presume to know what turns the conversation would take.

Lunch with Arthur Conan Doyle
At the Dorchester -- tomato soup and light sandwiches for lunch, with a nice claret. We could talk about the differences between empirical observation a la Holmes and mystical searching a la his later works.

Dinner with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle
Chateaubriand all around, garlic potato, shrimp bisque, with a Chateau Margaux. Macallan 25 afterwards. Philosophy and literature the main topics, particularly German literature and American Transcendentalism, both of which I've had romantic flirtations with intellectually for decades.

Dessert with S.T. Coleridge
Bananas Foster for two, a nice Rothschild dessert wine, and poetry, poetry, poetry.

[machkick]

Good mood: Chesterton. At a Dunkin Donuts; sweet pastries being really the only point our tastes appear to overlap.

Bad mood: Thomas Aquinas and the Universal Translator. A good-natured, serene intellectual with an unswerving faith in God, man, and the universe at large looks pretty good when things are blue. Something in the beefsteak variety to eat.

Brave mood: Jane Austen. She'd rip me to shreds. The traditional British tea for her, I drink Mountain Dew for that caffeine courage.

Cowardly mood: P. G. Wodehouse. A funny, fluffy naif kinda guy. Tea for him, milk for me (I hate tea), scones for both.

[erik_kosberg]

Breakfast (prawn and potato omelettes, fried plantains, and Colombian coffee) with Gabriel García Márquez.

Lunch (Chicken Kotletki, Golubtsi, and Yutangza) with Mikhail Bulgakov.

Dinner (Lobscouse, Spotted Dog, and Plum Duff) with Patrick O’Brian.

And late night drinking with George Orwell and plenty of Victory Gin.

[KristenNC]

Who needs to eat?

I'd rather drink with Hemingway and get into a barfight.

Or maybe watch a baseball game with Stephen King and Dave Barry (and laugh so hard that I wet my pants.)

I guess I'd like to sit down to eat with Patricia Cornwell, but she'd blow me out of the water cooking, so I would have to take her out to a restaurant (anything but Northern Italian, cause she'd blow them out of the water too.)