As Holden once told me, which authors would you call up?

[beer good]

One of my professors at UW-Madison tried very hard to get in touch with Thomas Pynchon, who's notoriously reclusive. He checked like every phone book, and none of them listed Thomas Pynchon. So then he checked the phone books for names of Pynchon's characters, and he found one (I wish I remembered who...my guess is Roger Mexico), got in touch with him, and made a lunch date. At this lunch, the guy kept insisting that he wasn't Thomas Pynchon, though my professor never suggested that he was. Very interesting, especially considering the vast paranoid conspiracies of Pynchon's books.

That was hilarious. Someone actually managed to snap a photo of Pynchon a few years ago, when he was picking up his son at school. Pynchon, apparently, chased the photographer for a while before giving up. It's not a very good photo, anyway. (He appeared on The Simpsons a while back. With a paper bag on his head and a sign saying "Have your picture taken with famous author". Nice to see the old guy has a sense of humour about his reclusiveness - though I wonder how many viewers got the joke...)

If it's just a phone conversation, I'd love to chat with... um... frankly, I'd probably say Stephen King or Terry Pratchett or someone like that. Meat-and-potatoes writers whom I like. If someone were to give me 30 minutes with Eco or Dostoevsky, I'd have to spend six months preparing first.

I have talked to Zadie Smith, though. For about 20 seconds. It didn't really change my life.

[Pensive]

I would love to have a little chat with:

George Eliot
Tolikien
Jane Austen
Bronte Sisters
Caroline Cooney

[Scheherazade]

Wilde and Shaw... not for an interview but for life-long friendship but I very much doubt if they would have suffered the likes of me.

[aydin]

An interesting question. I also am a fan of Salinger, but from what I've read of the guy, he's a total recluse and a bit of a grouch. So unless he's been wrongly portrayed by the many people who have written about him (which I guess could be) or one somehow manages to impress him before having met him, I doubt a conversation with him would go very far, or would be as enthralling as one might hope it to be.

[booksandtea]

if i knew how to speak spanish, i'd love to sit down with gabriel garcia marquez and chat. also haruki murakami. and if they were still alive - ernest hemingway, herman hess, and aldous huxley. i read that henry james was a sweet old lady. i still can't believe a man could write about women the way he did. oh there are so many others...some of whom i might end up sharing angry words with.

[EitherOr]

Kerouac before the later years, Malcolm Lowry and Koestler would all be good to talk to I think.

For entertainment purposes Jaroslav Hasek and Bukowski. I'd be a bit scared if they were both together though...

[Nick Rubashov]

would love to get a hold of Salinger, as well as Mark Twain. Not only do I think Mark Twain is an amazing writer, I think he lived a pretty interesting life as well.

[McGrain]

I'd phone Dickens and tell him to CHEER UP. I honestly don't think it would've ruined him.

[Pensive]

George Bernard Shaw is added to my list now. There are some questions I am dying to ask from him!

[Bebbin]

I would love if I could chat with the likes of Richard Bach, Herman Hesse, Ray Bradbury or Charles Dickens. And if I could add a poet, it would definitely be with Pablo Neruda. We would be able to talk about anything!

I'd phone Dickens and tell him to CHEER UP. I honestly don't think it would've ruined him.

[beat wanderer]

Hmmm theres a few of them. I'd love to hang with Kerouac when he was young and dig things together and talk about the joys of living. I have a feeling that talking to Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S Thompson would be absolutely hilarious.

[Stieg]

The Bard
Joseph Conrad
Jack London
John Steinbeck
Marquis De Sade
Roald Dahl
gee, I know I am missing many more...


And my three homies of course, Algernon, Howard, and Arthur!

[F.Emerald]

I idolise Vladimir Nabokov, so perhaps I'd like to have a chat with him. Wilde or George Orwell would be interesting too.
But I'd feel so insecure, and seriously intellectually inferior, especially in the case of Nabokov.

[andave_ya]

DOROTHY L. SAYERS!
I've practically memorized her mysteries and read her biographies and some of her correspondence. I've talked to her in daydreams. I'd sit at the feet of the lady and drink in her stories of Lord Peter and her reminescences (sp??) of things done and books read. Ahhhh, sigh. How mighty are the fallen!

And Tolkien. What a lovely imagination.

[kiz_paws]

Oscar Wilde would provide stimulating conversation, I'd love to do tea with him.

Frank L. Baum would have been cool to talk with because his endless imagination was fodder to how many books?!?

John Steinbeck would be fun to talk to, too.

There really are too many!