Husband challenged me-what composer, visual artist, and writer would you invite to dinner? I am still thinking. I know the composers would be either Brahms, because I love his harmonies, Bartok, because I want to know if he is really on the Autism Spectrum, or Stravinsky, because I think he would be a good conversationalist. Visual artists, well that would be Vermeer, and for the writer, either Dorothy Sayers, because she is both a theologian as well as a mystery writer, or C.S. Lewis, for sort of the same reasons.
What composer, visual artist, and writer would you invite to dinner? What would you serve?
Trail Baboon 
William Shakespeare, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Michelangelo.
And the alternate all-women gathering would be Hildegard Von Bingen, Christina Rossetti, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
Menu will be harder actually because I so often tend to experiment on people with new dishes. But my go-to dish I guess would be Minestrone with Parmesan cheese, adding crusty garlic bread followed by some kind of cake and ice cream, homemade. Oh and a lot of good wine.
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Rise and Shine Baboons,
This question sounds like a discussion held while in the car driving across the Great Plains over the weekend. My answer is only my first thought—I think I could get all three categories into one by selecting Bob Dylan, that musician, poet and visual artist. I also want to know what is going on with him, in the same sense of curiosity as Renee has for Bartok. The problem with inviting him to this meal is this: would he come? If he did come, would he talk? The Nobel Prize seemed to challenge him to attend, so why would he come to my party. On the other hand it is an easy out! Maybe I could get him to attend by tempting him with a seance in which we call up the ghost of Johnny Cash—another interesting possibility.
About once a month I am part of an Artist Group that hangs out and eats. We have a pot luck with a theme. The rice noodles with sesame sauce has been my favorite to date, and I might replicate that menu ( with shrimp and chopped fresh veggies). Cherry pie would be dessert because I have two servings of sour pie cherries left in the freezer (one is reserved for Thanksgiving), and that is too delicious to resist.
Today I am going to work for 5 hours, my longest outing since my surgery. I am walking well, almost without a limp (the knee straightens to 0 degrees, and bends to 110 degrees. Yeah). After the pain med reaction last week, I take something different for PT appointments which seems to have cleared my mind quite a bit. The biggest issue is that my knee cramps when bent to sit in a chair, so my friend and co-worker found me a recliner to sit in, bless her. Maybe I am seeing a light down that rehab tunnel!
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Made it through the day, then slept for 40 minutes.
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I think Bob as the only guest would make conversation kind of difficult, so I would need a few others to keep the discussion going. As for food, I would ask husband to smoke the big brisket we have, because I bet the folks I invited never had barbeque, and we need to clear some space in the freezer for the lard that I render this weekend. Lots of French bread, too.
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Funny, my first thought when you mentioned inviting Dob Dylan, was “ew, he’s a heavy smoker,” that would completely ruin the dinner for me. For that same reason, I’d not enjoy the company of Joni Mitchell, though I think she’s fascinating and a creative genius.
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Funny, I never thought of that—just his not talking
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I grew up in a cloud of second hand smoke, Jacque, but I never liked it. Now that I’m never around smokers, I’ve grown hyper sensitive to it, I become physically ill. It’s one of the first things that register with me when I first meet someone.
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I couldn’t agree more about the prodigious musical talent of Dylan and Mitchell. My reading about them, however, leads me to fear how they would function in a social setting.
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I suppose you could argue that if you can revive someone who has been dead for many years for a sociable chat at a dinner party, it should be possible to endow your invited guests with whatever social graces are needed for an evening of fine dining.
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Good Point. Since it is all fantasy anyway, we can endow the guests with anything.
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And wi e, of course.
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*wine
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I might invite the writer Alma Mahler, although I haven’t read anything she wrote. She was more famous for her husbands and lovers than her books. I would let her choose the visual artist and the composer, and then I could count on them to carry the conversation.
Here’s Tom Lehrer’s song about Alma…
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I cannot think of a better reason than husbands and lovers!
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My nomination in the category of most interesting array of husbands and lovers would be Miriam Folline Squier Leslie Wilde. Also known as Mrs. Frank Leslie, although she changed her name to Frank Leslie after he husband died.
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Interesting sounding woman. I bet she had quite the stories to tell.
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I first read about her in a book about her by Madeleine Stern, but here’s a briefer account:
https://www.americanheritage.com/mrs-frank-leslies-illustrated-newspaper
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My party guests includes some people who might be talkative: Pablo Picasso, Molly Ivins, Sarah Bernhardt, George Burns, Studs Terkel, Oliver Wilde, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anthony Quinn and Janis Joplin.
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Molly Ivins and Studs Terkel would be great fun. Pretty sure they must have known each other. Don’t know who Oliver Wilde is; another relative to Oscar?
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Ach! Of course, I meant Oscar.
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Molly Irvin’s is a brilliant pick
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Ooh, I like the idea of Molly Ivins.
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We met her at a party once. She was never “out of character.”
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I don’t think I would choose any composers or, for that matter, famous artists for my dinner party because I have no sense of them as conversationalists and I have no particular desire to meet them. The exception I in the artist category I would make is Maira Kalman because I find both her art and her commentary delightful. She’s about the only contemporary person on my list. I had an easier time coming up with women than with male counterparts. Besides the aforementioned Miriam Leslie, I would invite Sarah Willis Eldrich Parton, who wrote under the pseudonym Fanny Fern and was the highest paid newspaper columnist in the mid-1850s, essayist Agnes Repplier, Ina Coolbrith, librarian and first California poet laureate, who was a niece of Morman Joseph Smith (although she was not herself a Morman) and a mentor to the likes of Jack London. On the male side, I would invite Laurence Oliphant, who was a British diplomat but also a traveler and adventurer who had the Zelig-like talent for showing up in historically significant places and times. I would also invite George William Curtis, writer of satires, traveler, and who, when he was young, was a member of the Brook Farm utopian community. He interests me. Also invited would be Charles Farrar Brown, humorist and lecturer who went by the name Artemus Ward and George Derby, another humorist who used the name John Phoenix. And maybe, just to spice things up, I would invite spiritualist David Dunglas Home.
I don’t know what I would serve. Some of these people were those who dined occasionally at places like Delmonico’s. Coming up with a suitable menu would be intimidating.
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We just talked with a friend last night. T and M are just such cool people. She was at rock festivals BEFORE Woodstock, and they were both in the Peace Corp and they just have such a cool outlook on life.
haven’t seen them in a few years but we pick right up like we never stopped.
it was fun and we PROMISE we’re going to get together again soon. Right after this and that… 🙂
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I would have an easier time picking writers than other artists, based on their work, but even so, it probably is a bit of a crapshoot. Bill Bryson and David Sedaris come to mind as writers who probably have a ton of interesting stories to share, so is Russell Baker. I enjoy people who have an eye for the absurd, can laugh at themselves, and don’t have huge egos. It helps, too, if they have lived interesting lives, traveled, read, and in general pondered big ideas and life’s persistent questions.
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vonnegut,barbara streisand’s and claude monet at party 1
ee cummings leonard bernstein and jackson pollack
pat conroy miles davis and henri moore
it’s a fun thought process
james joyce, paul mccartney and modigliani
herman hesse louis armstrong and rembrandt
fondue is the conversationalists meal
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tim I think you are exactly right. Melty cheese, crusty bread, wine and then chocolate fondue for dessert. Perfect. Scratch the minestrone.
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And good grief, what would Shakespeare and Hildegard Von Bingen think about fondue.?!?
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I am sure they had dishes with melted cheese and bread. Welsh Rarebit, for example. Those Germans would have to do something with all that cheese from all those cows and goats.
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Richard Feynman and Ursula Le Guin
Ralph Waldo Emerson and A. Bronson Alcott
Elisha Kent Kane and Fritjof Nansen
Rudolf Steiner and Arthur Conan Doyle
Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain
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I like how your brain works, Bill. With those pairings you could just sit back and listen, and have a very interesting evening, no doubt.
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Well, I certainly wouldn’t presume to have much in substance to add to those conversations. I would also expect the pairings to cross-fertilize.
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OT – Folks, this is probably shooting myself in the foot, and I know I have mentioned it on here before, but please, register with Radio Heartland and/or The Current for their ticket give-aways. We have just won two tickets to Friday night’s acoustic concert at the Fitz by Richard Thompson. One of the world’s finest guitarists, and we have two free tickets to go hear him! I’m beyond thrilled. The tickets we have won are numerous, and the concerts have all been amazing. Please support this local resource for quality music.
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thanks pj
i won pink martini tickets at st catherine’s and another big name acoustic person at the fitz
i still listen on occasion but it bothers me how the tweaking of the playlist is so much less satisfying than when it was under sales gentle watch
mike pengra is my last positive association but i’m resentful that he is there because he’s a grunt and they don’t have to pay him like a talent
i resent bill klings treatment of our people and mprs culture that allows that to continue to be ok
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Yes, exactly.
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maya angelo barrack obama and leonardo da vinci
ann lemott bonnie raitt frida kahlo
ayn rand marilyn monroe andy warhol
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