dinner party meme

Continuing the meme from adoor‘s continuation, “If you could throw a dinner party for twenty guests (living or dead) who would you invite?”

My list (in no particular order):
Benjamin Franklin
J. R. R. Tolkein
Joseph Campbell
Robert Gregg
Baruch Spinoza
John Donne
Pablo Picasso
Thomas Jefferson –actually, the whole team: him, Hamilton, Washington, etc…
Mae West
Dorothy Parker
Queen Maeve of Connacht
Albert Einstein
St. Augustine of Hippo
Jack Kerouac
Pablo Neruda
King Edward I of England
Hypatia of Alexandria
Gloria Steinem
Michael of Cesena
…and one of the first black women to break the color line mid-20c, preferably a musician. (Need to think more about which)

This isn’t neccessarily the list of people I’d like to speak to, but a list of people to lock together in a party for sheer devilment’s sake – and for the interesting conversation.

(Robert Gregg, btw, is a prof at Stanford, and an extraordinary fellow – the rest are all in the books)


And the second-tier list, people who just wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the group for some reason or another…
Odysseus
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Neil Gaiman
Voltaire
Lorenzo di Medici
Alexander of Macedon
Lenin
Elizabeth I of England
Robert Heinlein
Richard Feynman
Aristotle
Frederick Douglass
Helen of Troy
Ernest Hemingway
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lao-Tsu

I’d be quite interested to see more people’s lists; it’s remarkably evocative to think of these things.

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Published in: on September 17, 2002 at 00:45  Comments (4)  

4 Comments

  1. On September 17, 2002 at 00:54 adoor said:

    interesting list….
    *sigh* i can’t believe i forgot voltaire and feynman. that’s just shameful.

  2. On September 17, 2002 at 02:06 jrpseudonym said:

    Of course, two of the people on your list remind me of Steve Martin’s brilliant play “Picasso At The Lapin Agile”, about Einstein and Picasso meeting at bar in Paris at the turn of the century, before either was famous. Worth mentioning that filming on a movie version begins next year, directed by Fred Schepisi (of “Six Degrees of Seperation” fame), with a cast including Ryan Phillipe, Kevin Kline, Juliette Binoche and Steve Martin as a time-travelling Elvis…

  3. On September 17, 2002 at 06:22 azyuna said:

    Wow…
    I’d adore to be a fly on the wall at either one of those gatherings…

  4. On September 17, 2002 at 10:13 zunger said:

    Interesting… I’ve never heard of it. Going to have to see the film when it comes out, then.


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