09 October 2011

Literary Blog Hop: Dinner Party Decisions...

Engraved by my DH, used with his permission

 This week's Literary Blog Hop, sponsored by the good folks at The Blue Bookcase, have asked us to name the three literary figures from different eras we would like to invite to Sunday dinner.  A few months ago, I was the lucky person profiled in Algonquin Book's Booksellers Rock monthly series and they asked a similar question, and I think my answer still stands, although arguably two of my three choices are from the same era, since they're both 20th century American writers.  But perhaps I can argue that they were such vastly different products of their very different ages that their books are wildly and widely divergent:

1. Jane Austen.  Because she is the first adult writer I fell in love with.  Because she has such a sharp wit (usually held in check) that I would love to see released on my #2 choice

2. Jim Harrison.  Because he's a great storyteller (I've been privileged enough to meet him a few times in my bookselling career) and he's led an exciting and full and possibly tawdry life, but he lacks the ego and misogyny of, say, Hemingway. 

3. Miss Eudora Welty. Because she was the first writer I read who made me proud of my home state of Mississippi.  She's genteel and gently funny, but beneath that exterior lay a will of steel, unafraid to write of what she saw around her without excuse or embellishment. If you can read Miss Welty without seeing her profound compassion for the people she writes about or her subtle cries for social justice, then you're blind. 

4 comments:

  1. Your choices are very interesting-I like Welty a lot and need to read more of her stories-have you thought about what you could serve for dinner-Jane Austin would probably be at home with some of the food at a Mississippi feast but not with everything-

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  2. Eudora Welty is a great idea! She would have so much to say about the American south.. I ALMOST included Flannery O'Connor for the same reason, but I'm not sure I could put up with her Southern Baptist ideals in person (they're great in her writing... but eek).

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  3. I haven't read anything by Harrison, and all I've read by Eudora Welty is Why I Live at the P.O. from back in like 7th grade. And now I feel bad.

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  4. Jane Austen is probably one of the first adult writers I fell in love with too. great choices, your dinner party would be such fun.

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Please, sir, may I have some more? (Comments, that is!)