Bring them back from the grave

Probably Doestoevsky. I want to know if he really believed in God, because I have serious doubts. He's too gloomy and pessimistic, yet practically every page oozes biblical allegory. Man, I love that stuff. He's currently one of my top two favorite authors, Proust being the other. Proust, however, I have no desire to meet. First of all he's already gone over every intimate facet of his thought in his novel so there's not much more to talk about. Secondly he'd probably spend the whole time discussing trivial matters in minute detail, say, the color of my shirt or something.

Shoot... I can't believe I forgot Borges. Now that would be an interesting guy to talk to. So erudite and strange, and such a copious imagination. I bet he could spin up stories on the spot that would leave you just barely thinking he had revealed the essence of eternity and the meaning of life, yet in reality leaving you even more befuddled than ever.

What about Mr. Taine, Where you get your name? :lol:

Good choice. I love Doestoevsky, Watch out for old Bazarov, hes nuts about him....He'll corner you and talk for hours about the colour of the shirts Doestoevsky used to wear! :lol:

Just kidding Baz, Ol' Buddy! :lol:

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Originally Posted by Asa Adams

H. D. Thoreau. Sitting upon the shores of Waldon. We would eat mixed veggies grown from the garden. He would teach of the simplicities in life, that do so easily blow past my very eyes. We slow down and enter a peace as the sun hits the waves and angers the tree line with shredded bits of light and shadow.

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Asa, that is just beautiful....all of what you wrote but especially "the simplicities in life, that do so easily blow past my very eyes". So poetic. Makes me want to go to the shores of Walden and just sit and absorb it all forever.

Bye the way, what color shirts do you wear?:lol:

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Originally Posted by Janine

Asa, that is just beautiful....all of what you wrote but especially "the simplicities in life, that do so easily blow past my very eyes". So poetic. Makes me want to go to the shores of Walden and just sit and absorb it all forever.

Bye the way, what color shirts do you wear?:lol:

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Thanks I fancy myself alittle wannabe poet :blush: :lol:
Funny....Actually wearing my Blue sleeve shirt with the tie Firmly tied around my head! Party time! :lol:

I have a blood red shirt, Blue, White, Green, Black......and many others! Im a shirt and tie, blazer kinda chap! ;) :lol: Except for after hours when I let loose and tighten the ties around my head! :lol:

My two favorite authors, Dostoyevsky and C.S. Lewis, have already been mentioned. I think I would enjoy a conversation with Lewis, but I'm not so sure about Dostoyevsky. I think he would find me rather boring and shallow and might request returning to the dead early.

My guest would be the author of The Odyssey, just because I would want to see if a single person comes back. Or maybe the author of Beowulf.

I never thought about Homer. Good one, Orual!

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Originally Posted by Orual

My two favorite authors, Dostoyevsky and C.S. Lewis, have already been mentioned. I think I would enjoy a conversation with Lewis, but I'm not so sure about Dostoyevsky. I think he would find me rather boring and shallow and might request returning to the dead early.

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You can't be serious...I'm so funny guy:lol:

Baz. What would you do if Orwell came to you, and asked your thoughts of Animal Farm? :lol:

You would probably admit to translation difficulties! :lol::lol: ;)

Know what I would do --- I'd moo :lol:

Nice. I would crack a whip and make some plans on further land development. Can't forget the bowler either. :lol:

Someone at my library tonight told me the film version of "Animal Farm" is great - it is really serious and well done. I have to see it now. I read the book yrs ago and loved it. Orwell is one of my favorites, along with Huxley. What visionaries they were. How unique Animal House was when it first came out.

Did anyone bring Walt Whitman back yet?

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Originally Posted by Asa Adams

Thanks I fancy myself alittle wannabe poet :blush: :lol:
Funny....Actually wearing my Blue sleeve shirt with the tie Firmly tied around my head! Party time! :lol:

I have a blood red shirt, Blue, White, Green, Black......and many others! Im a shirt and tie, blazer kinda chap! ;) :lol: Except for after hours when I let loose and tighten the ties around my head! :lol:

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Asa, somehow I missed this post before and it really cracked me up finding it tonight. :lol: :lol: Well, you pretty much described yourself and your mode of dress - quite a variety - you are especially daring with that blood red shirt. How did I ever come to ask you to begin with? Guess I will just have to read back more posts. Blue is nice - wear it to the Lawrence discussions, will you, since Lawrence had lively blue eyes! About the ties - how inovative to wear them on your head:D Could you revise your photos or add to them in the "Photoalbum" thread to show one with this particular mode of dress? I have to see it to believe it!:brow: I must ask - blazers with the patches on the elbows, like real authors wear? You are so spiffy!

I'd like to meet Dickinson, Orwell, Oscar Wilde, Poe... oh damn I could go on forever. Lets not forget the man responsible for my love of reading...Theodor Seuss Geisel.

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Originally Posted by Asa Adams

Baz. What would you do if Orwell came to you, and asked your thoughts of Animal Farm? :lol:

You would probably admit to translation difficulties! :lol::lol: ;)

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He would be shocked how could someone get his ideas sooooooooo good:lol:

Out of all the Russian writers, I would choose Chekhov. Turgenev would be too daintily European, Dostoevsky would brood the whole time and talk about nothing but 19th century newspapers, Tolstoy, post-A Confession, too strict, and Tolstoy, pre-A Confession, too haughty.

Chekhov was probably the most enjoyable to be around, and the only one who wouldn't, voluntarily or involuntarily, make you feel like a peasant at the feet of the master. He could crack an irreverent joke and delve into the hopeless hope of the future or the eventual triumph of life. All the others would find it difficult to make that transition. He possessed within himself both extremes of Russia: the maudlin, philosophizing and the devil may care galavanting.

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I would ask him did he ever killed anybody because I don't understand how could he describe Raskolnikov so good, why didn't he finished those two novels what he started to write, what does he think about mushrooms in Anna Karenina, does he believe in happiness, does he believe in destiny or everything happens by an accident...

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the mushroom part is hilarious :lol: :lol: :lol: Good ideas, baz!:thumbs_up

I'd choose nobody but Oscar Wilde (before he was put in Reading jail).
Only one fairy tale of his will absolutely fullfill the whole tea time with "odour of roses". :yawnb:

http://manolomen.com/images/Oscar%20...0bow%20tie.jpg

Jane Austen (I know she's already come back once). We'd sit very demurely in my sitting room and drink tea. Not that I like tea, but I'm sure I could make the sacrifice...

I'd like to find out which of her heroines she is most like... and what it was like for her trying to become an author. And also why her stories always have happy endings. I love her books but sometimes they can seem a little 2D after a while; it would be nice to find out about the woman behind them.

I would like to meet Franz Kafka. First we would go to cinema and then we'd spend the rest of the evening in a café in the old town of Praha. :)

I'd go for a chat with Emily Dickinson.

D.H.Lawrence, aka Bert Lawrence, aka Lorenzo Lawrence, aka DHL, aka David Herbert Lawrence

By now, I sure would have a lot of questions to ask him. We would definitely have a nice cup of tea in a garden, somewhere in England, Nothinghamshire or Cornwall, as he would have remembered it.

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Originally Posted by Janine

D.H.Lawrence, aka Bert Lawrence, aka Lorenzo Lawrence, aka DHL, aka David Herbert Lawrence

By now, I sure would have a lot of questions to ask him. We would definitely have a nice cup of tea in a garden, somewhere in England, Nothinghamshire or Cornwall, as he would have remembered it.

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I think I would like to sit with him in Italy somewhere. He loved Italy.

Rabelais, Cervantes, Diderot, Voltaire or Baudelaire I believe.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I think I would like to sit with him in Italy somewhere. He loved Italy.

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Well, we would just get on the magic carpet and spend the evening in Italy. He loved his England too, but just not what it had become to him. His remarks in "Kangaroo" about England made me see it even clearer. It was sad reading it and how displaced he actually felt. You could feel his longing for the wild flowers and the hills and the fields. England was his first 'native' home, so tea there would be nice and then off to Italy we would fly to have dinner in a great Italian restaurant. ;) :lol: It would be a balmy evening and we could really talk about what he meant by all his stories we have been discussing. We might just be surprised by his comments.

Another title for this thread is "Who is your most favourite writer and why".

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Originally Posted by Simao

Another title for this thread is "Who is your most favourite writer and why".

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:D :D

Actually no, for example, Gogol, I mean I would probably find the conversation as boring as him.

J.R.R.Tolkien.

I adore people whose imagination creates miracles and masterpieces.

I think Dostoevsky would be kind of a downer.

I'd like to be with Hemingway,off in some exotic land,hunting dangerous game.

Seems like a good time.

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Originally Posted by Hippolite

Probably Doestoevsky. I want to know if he really believed in God, because I have serious doubts. He's too gloomy and pessimistic, yet practically every page oozes biblical allegory. Man, I love that stuff.

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Dostoevsky most certainly did believe in God. Wikipedia:

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Dostoevsky's experiences in prison and the army resulted in major changes in his political and religious convictions. Firstly, his ordeal somehow caused him to become disillusioned with 'Western' ideas; he repudiated the contemporary Western European philosophical movements, and to instead pay greater tribute to traditional, rural-based, rustic Russian 'values'. But even more significantly, he had what his biographer Joseph Frank describes as a conversion experience in prison, which greatly strengthened his Christian, and specifically Orthodox, faith (Dostoevsky would later depict his conversion experience in the short story, The Peasant Marey (1876)).

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There you have it. :)

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Originally Posted by Janine

Did anyone bring Walt Whitman back yet?

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No, but I would. :) I would love to meet anyone who said "America is essentially the greatest poem." :D We would walk out on lectures by a learn'd astronomer, "tired and sick" of "charts" and "figures," and experience the stars by ourselves. :D

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Originally Posted by Etienne

Rabelais, Cervantes, Diderot, Voltaire or Baudelaire I believe.

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Diderot and Voltaire would be excellent people to bring back, no doubt. :thumbs_up

Has anyone mentioned Shakespeare? Now that would be interesting communing with Shakespeare. I would like to ask him many, many questions about Hamlet.

I also was thinking 'could the person we bring back be other than an author?' I was thinking of interesting people like Gandi or the Roosevelts, Lincoln, JFK.

Hi Dori, yes, wouldn't Whitman be great? At one time he lived in the next town over from me. I wish I had been alive at that time.

I would like to talk with Willa Cather and Streinbeck, since I read many of their novels. I think they would be great conversationalists.

It's too hard to choose between Voltaire, Vonnegut, Hemmingway, and Joyce.

If I chose Joyce, I'd smack him on the head and inform him that word play and puns for 600 pages is a major pain in the *** for the reader. After that I'd congradulate and thank him for Dubliners, Portrait, and Ulysses.

If Voltaire or Vonnegut, I'd ask how they setup their satires. I actually might wanna call Swift and Orwell back too... damn!

If Hemmingway, I'd ask how in the hell can you put so much into so few words.

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Originally Posted by Dori

Dostoevsky most certainly did believe in God. Wikipedia:



There you have it. :)

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Or just read Karamazov's...

Oh Yes, APEist's post has reminded me now that I would very much like to visit with Huxley (Orwell and Huxley always relate in my mind to each other). I have read "Brave New World" twice, and "Brave New World Revisited". Wow, I would have tons of questions for him on both novels; and since he was very close friends with D.H.Lawrence, we would have so much to discuss. Another friend of Lawrence and author would be Katherine Mansfield. Definitely, she would be invited to our tea. This way I could get a lot of inside information on my author.

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Originally Posted by bazarov

Or just read Karamazov's...

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There's that way too. Whichever floats your boat. :p

Well Dostoevsky did have a somewhat ambiguous relation with God, which is somewhat well represented by the ambiguous and maybe even evasive psychology of Dostoevsky's characters, I believe. And to loop back to the topic: we could bring him back from the dead to have a discussion about it.

I'd resurrect the Apostle Paul. Saw it all and lived to tell about it ;)

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Originally Posted by Homyrrh

I'd resurrect the Apostle Paul. Saw it all and lived to tell about it ;)

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Why not simply Jesus? Oh you want to skip those parables :p

No, the Christ never wrote anything official :D

Thus the scribes...though parables were'n't the most convenient.

Edgar Alan Poe in an opium den. Would be very interesting to see were the inspiration came from.