MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

DEBORAH CROMBIE:We've talked about which famous people (dead or alive) we'd all invite to our fantasy dinner parties. Mixing and matching any writer/artist/thinker from any era is fun, but it's a bit of cheat, really, isn't it, putting people together who would never have met?

Having recently seen MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (a bit behind on my Oscar viewing...) which I adored, I started to wonder two things.

First, if we could pick any group of writers/artists/thinkers, a "salon", which would it be? ("Salon" is defined by Wikipedia as: "... a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" ("aut delectare aut prodesse est"). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, were carried on until quite recently, in urban settings, among like-minded people.")

Would we, like Gil in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, choose Hemingway's Paris? Or the Romantics of early 19th century France? And what about the Bloomsbury group in Edwardian England--Rupurt Brooke, Virginia Woolf and their set of writers, poets, painters, and philosphers? Or the Beat Poets of 1950s America?

My choice from my teens, and I think still, would be The Inklings, the informal Oxford University discussion group which met from the early 1930s to 1949, often at the Eagle and Child (the Bird and Baby) pub in Oxford, and included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis among its members. They read aloud from their works in progress--and I suspect downed a pint or two while they were at it.

Unfortunately, except for the occasional inclusion of Enid Blyton, all the members were male... Hmmm. Definitely a gender issue here. Maybe I should rethink Paris...

My second question is whether the physical salon is a thing of the past. In our mobile age, will like-minded artists and thinkers ever again come together as a group in a way that will influence contemporary culture--except on the internet?

And if so, is the virtual salon a substitute for midnight in Paris?

(By the way, if you Google virtualsalon.com, you get beauty shops.)

RHYS BOWEN: I think one would have to go back into the past to find a salon. I'm not sure why, but modern writers tend to talk about anything other than their writing when they are together. I've been at a meal with A list writers and not one of them has spoken of the angst of creation of a work in progress. Occasionally we bitch about the latest twelve year old publicist who has messed up a book tour, but mostly the talk is of non-writing related things.

I'm not a big drinker so I don't think I'd have fitted in well with Scott and Zelda and Hemingway in Paris, although it might have been fun--and I would have loved to have met Dali! But on the whole I'd prefer a gathering of women. Men tend to hog the conversation! I think Dorothy Sayers and her Oxford friends in the 1930s would have been entertaining.

JAN BROGAN - As we all by now know I'm totally hot for Herman Melville, I'd have to go with Anne Charlotte Lynch's Greenwich Village salon in the 1840s (also the period I'm researching). Besides Melville, who was a regular, Edgar Allan Poe allegedly read "The Raven" at the Waverley Place house, and Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly came to hang out.

As for now? Salon.com, right? And Facebook groups, that's probably the closest you will come.

LUCY BURDETTE: In a great burst of serendipity, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS came to us from Netflix last week so we watched it Saturday night. So much fun! And such a Woody-Allenish leading man--we could picture Woody wishing he could play the lead but realizing he was a little too old...And can't you imagine how many trips to Paris that movie sold? Showed the city at it's absolute best.

Anyway, Debs, back to the subject--I'd choose Gertrude Stein's salon because it seemed like she could manage whoever came. I studied surrealism in college, actually wrote a thesis on Max Ernst, so I'd love to meet that crowd!

As for real salons today, maybe that's why we're still drawn to attending mystery conventions, even if we don't sell enough books to nearly pay our way. We're alone so much of the time--we love getting together with other writers and readers to gab! Speaking of which, 7 of 8 Jungle Reds will be at Bouchercon--really looking forward to that!

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I confess this is something I've never really thought about. I'd love to say "Oh yes! Vita-Sackville West!" and really mean it, but I'm quite happy talking to the dog and my husband about writing! And talking to myself, of course. My favorite salon takes place when I'm in the car talking to myself!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Rosemary, I do love you. (And I adored the movie. Especially the message that NOW is best. I did think, though, that Owen Wilson would never have been engaged to that woman in the first place. But, whatever.)
Anyway, thinking about this, what I'd prefer is to be INVISIBLE, and get to listen in as everyone else talks. Then I wouldn't have to worry about being clever or brilliant, I could just soak it all in. Stephen King, say, talking to...oh, who knows. Paul Simon. Wouldn't that be great?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'd sort of like to say the Bloomsbury group for their amazing wit and talent, but I suspect all their adulteries and triangular relationships and seething semi-repressed homosexuality would be exhausting to be around. Sort of like freshman year in a dorm full of high achievers.

So instead, I'd pick Concord in it's 19th century flower. Hawthorne and Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau, and the Bostonians who were their friends, like the Peabody sisters and Margaret Fuller. Transcendentalism! Poetry! Women's rights! All amid the lilacs and maple trees of one of the most beautiful towns in New England.

DEBS: Oh, I can see us going off on SO many fun tangents... Hank, I think you definitely have a thing for Paul Simon... (and I agree that Gil would never have really been engaged to that horrible woman.) Jan, fascinated by the 1840s New England writers. Imagine having heard Poe read! (Isn't John Cusack going to play him in a movie? How fun is that?) Rhys, oh, to have eavesdropped on Dorothy Sayers and her chums... Ro, I talk to the dog, too, and I have a thing for Vita Sackville-West, but that's another post. Lucy, yes, 7 out of 8 of us--as Hank said, the whole point of the movie was that we should make our own glamor, and so let's hope that we do.

Readers, what group would you like to have joined? Or, would you, like Hank, have sat quietly in the corner and listened?

Dinner Party with Dead Authors

JAN BROGAN - As I've been mentioning as of late, I've been reading Moby Dick and developing a huge crush on Herman Melville even though he is dead. Quite dead. By crush, I do not mean that I am loving the book itself. Although I AM LOVING the book itself, the prose, the adventure, the romanticism. The complete genius. What I mean by developing a crush on Herman is strictly personal. I feel as though, if I couldn't marry him, I'd at least want to sit next to him at a dinner party and monopolize his time.

And not just to get a blurb!

I am enthralled by his observations about life, people, even the whales. I think he's got an awesome sense of humor, and that I could banter with him for hours. And of course, it's totally, maniacally presumptuous, but I sort of feel like he and I would understand each other. (I am also picturing him tall, handsome and alpha male, but I won't go into all my delusions.)

And I've felt the opposite about male authors, even while liking the books. For example, when I read the Witches of Eastwick by John Updike, I felt that no matter how great an author he was, I just really didn't like that man. I was convinced that he had only a egocentric view of women (and I'm pretty sure that was the book he wrote to address criticism by feminists.) Even though one of his short stories is my all time favorite, I am sure that if I had to listen to him talk about himself at dinner party, I'd get up and move my seat.

So Reds, what dead authors would you like to sit next to at a dinner party. And who would you like to avoid?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I guess one of us should say Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers but I'd rather sit down with Robert Graves who wrote, among other things, I,Claudius and Claudius, the God. I was addicted to that television series and read both books and since then a biography of Augustus and one of Livia. What an incredible time. And how Graves humanized them. I'd want to know how much was fact and how much was fiction!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Jan, now I have to put Moby Dick on my to-read list!!! Can't believe I never have. But then I was always reading those English authors...

I'm going to cheat, and pick not one, but three, with the occasional fourth: C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien (and sometimes Dorothy Sayers.) The first three were part of an Oxford group of writers who referred to themselves as The Inklings. They met for regular discussions about their writing at a pub in Oxford called The Eagle and Child (affectionately known as The Bird and Baby.) Sometimes Sayers would join them.

From the time I was in my teens I wanted more than anything to be an Inkling, to have that sort of intellectual support and camaraderie. My first trip to England, I went to Oxford, and of course made my pilgrimage to The Bird and Baby. I'd still give anything just to sit and listen to them talk.

Avoid? Too many to list. Mostly having to do with American literary male angst.

RHYS BOWEN: I think I'd find most dead male authors pretentious and patronizing to a woman who dares to write books. They'd mention my "little scribblings" then ignore me,I suspect.It would be fun to sit down beside Jane Austen because I bet she could give some lovely witty and bitchy asides about the other people at the dinner table. I'd also enjoy being with some of those 20s and 30s women--Gertrude Stein. having adored Midnight in Paris, or Virginia Woolf.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Edith Wharton. Can you imagine the scathing dinner-table conversation? I'd add in Dorothy Parker and Patricia Highsmith. We could be all catty and socially superior and talk about living abroad and the failings of American society. Dorothy would drink too much and Patricia would smoke too much and Edith would point out how sadly lacking the wait service was. Nothing like it had been when she was a girl.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, absolutely. Edith Wharton. Number one choice. Then-Truman Capote. And Thomas Wolfe. And Shakespeare. F. Scott and Zelda, for sure. And Agatha Christie. Love this idea! (Hallie will cook, right?)

JAN: Definitely F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I think Zelda would annoy me. She was always diving into pools as I recall.

HALLIE EPHRON: Are we having dinner? Then most definitely Julia Child. And to make sure I mind my manners, P. L. Travers (Mary Poppins). And Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Little Princess and The Secret Garden and a gazillion other titles). And Lucy Maud Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables.

LUCY BURDETTE: I just want an invitation--you all have done such a good job. But I don't think we should have Hallie cook if the women are likely to complain about the help....

JAN: How about the rest of you, which dead authors would you invite to our dinner party and who would you shun?