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.