In a July 15, 1924 letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Harold Laski writes:
“I have had
an amusing time with [August] Birrell on
the best dinner-party to consist only of people in fiction and limited to ten.”
As parlor
games go, this isn’t bad. Even critics identify good guys and bad guys, charmers
and bores, when reading fiction or watching a movie. That may not be
sophisticated but it is healthy and human. Birrell (1850-1933) was a British lawyer,
politician and literary critic who specialized in appreciation. In an earlier
letter, Laski describes Birrell as “a great joy and full of real learning taken
with the right leisurely feeling.” Laski continues:
“We agreed
that Pickwick should head the table and Elizabeth Bennet sit at the bottom. The
other guests would be Florizel of Bohemia, Colonel Newcome, Diana of the Crossways,
Becky Sharp, Shirley, Dr. Thorne, Barry Lyndon and Manon Lescaut.”
The authors,
respectively, are Dickens, Austen, Stevenson, Thackeray, Meredith, Thackeray
again, Charlotte Brontë, Trollope, Thackeray a third time, and Prévost. A
Victorian focus representing the grand age of the novel. The outlier is Manon
Lescaut – eighteenth-century and French. No Russians, no Americans. Laski asks
Holmes: “Can you better that list taking into account the variety of temper and
experience to be fitted in?”
In his July
23 reply, Holmes makes no attempt to "better that list," and writes, “At your imaginary dinner who is Br. or Dr. Thorne?” No
reply from Laski.
One
immediately begins assembling a guest list. The first is obvious: Natasha
Rostova. You’ve already fallen in love with her. The eponymous heroes of Daniel Deronda, Nostromo and Invisible Man.
Valentine Wannop of Parade’s End,
without her husband. Misail Poloznev of Chekhov’s My Life (for what he learns). Perhaps Leopold Bloom but definitely
not Stephen Dedalus. Mr. Biswas. David Bendiner in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Certificate. Robinson Crusoe after he
returns to England and takes a shower. Isabel Archer. One looks not necessarily
for “good” people but people who have lived, and the experience wasn’t wasted on
them. They have something to say worth listening to.
Readers, have at it.
[All
quotations are drawn from the first volume of the two-volume Holmes-Laski
Letters, edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe and published by Harvard University
Press in 1953.]
5 comments:
I wouldn't mind sitting between Falstaff and Huck Finn.
All right, just for fun, let's give it a try:
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman in Night Moves)
Renata Bella (Holly Hunter in Once Around)
Mike Kendall (John Hawkes in Small Town Crime)
Isabelle (Marie Riviere in Conte d'automne)
Fanfan la Tulipe (Gerard Philippe in Fanfan la Tulipe)
Eve (Loretta Young in Zoo in Budapest)
Johnny O'Clock (Dick Powell in Johnny O'Clock)
Gail Hendricks (Stella Stevens in The Silencers)
Daryll Deever (William Hurt in Eyewitness)
Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams in Red Eye)
[And I the nonfictional fly on the wall!]
My dinner would include Falstaff, Eloise, Sam Weller, Uncle Fred, Philip Marlowe, Moll Flanders, Imogene (Cymbeline), and the members of the Drones Club.
If it were at my house, I might invite Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, but not H.G. Wells'(I don't want His Transparency following my wife into her dressing room).
I thought of this group, but there might just be too much wit fizzing here to be bearable.
Elizabeth Bennett
Cordelia Marchmain
Viola
Janet Raden (Buchan's)
Dr. Watson
Kim
Reginald (Saki’s)
Dr. Maturin
Dale Nelson
If we're going to have someone from the Dance, I'd vote for Uncle Giles.
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