|
Author
|
Comment
|
redtriskell
Registered User
(2/5/05 12:20 am)
|
dinner parties
BlackSheep- I do in fact have an extendable table, though it would be a squeeze... I was writing the list on the board very late the other night and was horrified to realize I'd forgotten Emily. Did you know you can sing a lot of her poems to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"? I agree with Jane that she would probably hide in the kitchen. And Jane pointed out I left off Angela Carter- I hang my head in abject shame. I love Angela's dark and lusty take on so many tales. I also forgot Tanith Lee and Melanie Tem (along with hubby Steve Rasnic Tem). The real difficulty is that I would actually have several dinner parties with assorted guests... I suppose you're right that many of my imaginary guests aren't exactly dinner party people, but I don't let a pesky thing like reality get in my way. Why the objection to Heinlein? Perhaps we could keep him in line by seating him next to Mark Twain- they could duel verbally for our entertainment. Or maybe we could watch while they duked it out in the living room... In either case, it certainly wouldn't be dull! I like the idea of adding Sappho, but I don't speak ancient Greek. I also wouldn't mind some of the lady erotic poets of Japan, but I don't speak Japanese, either. Alas. And last, but certainly not least, I have to confess I don't know who Mary Butts is- please enlighten me. ( any menu suggestions? snicker);)
|
Black Sheep
Registered User
(2/5/05 1:29 pm)
|
Re: dinner parties
Menu suggestion: if we're inviting Mary Butts then you should infuse some poppy heads because I'm not sure she'd get through a whole social gathering without her opium fix. But if you're waiting till we're all dead then I suppose she'd be cured. I hope being dead would also solve the language problem as Aramaic isn't easy to learn and who wouldn't want to listen to Jesus? And what did Buddha speak? A form of Sanskrit maybe? I suppose I was assuming that the fantasy element took care of those details. You probably ought to cook vegetarian though... ;)
I'd ask Margaret Atwood but she's probably too clever to put up with the likes of me. I'm not sure about meeting Lewis Carroll as he was reputedly a bit socially inadequate and sometimes it's better not to get to know the authors whose books one admires. Heinlein is out for me because when I was a teenager I read something he wrote which made me genuinely angry and somehow the teenager in me can't ever quite forgive him...
The list could be endless but if we stick to literature, and I restrain myself severely, then I'd have to add Coleridge (when he was older) who was reputedly brilliant at dinner parties.
Mary Butts was a 20th century English literary modernist. Think of her as somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Angela Carter (if that's not impossible to imagine!). She wrote the only successful modernist autobiography I've encountered ("The Crystal Cabinet"), some memorable short stories (reprinted in U.S. "From Altar To Chimneypiece" and U.K. "With and Without Buttons"), and one of the few modernist novels which I've bothered to read more than once ("Armed With Madness").
The only book I can think of which includes a story by Mary Butts and which readers of this forum are likely to know is "The Virago Book of Ghost Stories, Volume Two, The Twentieth Century" edited by Richard Dalby (1991). It includes Mary Butts' short story "With and Without Buttons".
There's a short biography of Mary Butts at the top of this page:
webtext.library.yale.edu/...S.con.html
And an interesting article about her most readable novel "Armed With Madness" here:
www.findarticles.com/p/ar...89967/pg_1
Now I'm off to find a website which plays "The Yellow Rose Of Texas" so I can try singing those poems (that suggestion's a new one on me!)
:)
|
redtriskell
Registered User
(2/14/05 11:38 pm)
|
Re: dinner parties
BlackSheep- Thanks for the bio on Mary. Now I have someone new to check out. The singing for Emily's poems has to do with meter... much of her work was composed in the same meter as traditional hymns. Obviously, the "Yellow Rose" isn't a hymn, but its meter is the same. My father, a big fan of Emily, told me about the tune; I didn't believe it until he sang "I could not stop for Death" to a recording of "Yellow Rose" that he checked out of the library. My 10th grade English teacher had never heard of it, either. And everyone in my class that year thought I was peculiar... I wonder why.;)
Actually, a friend of mine once called me a useless vat- he meant to say I was a vat of useless knowledge- and he was right. I collect factoids like English ladies used to collect fans.
On a side note, since neither you nor Jane Yolen are dead, if you're ever in North Carolina, let me know and you can come to dinner. It can be practice for that post-mortem dinner date.;)
|
Black Sheep
Registered User
(2/19/05 10:41 am)
|
Re: dinner parties
When I heard "Yellow Rose" and realised it was in ballad form then I realised why it was compatible (yes, with my fave E.D. poem too).
My friend's children used to call me the "walking encyclopaedia" but now it's inevitably altered to "Google on legs".
I appreciate the kind dinner invitation Redtriskell but you're fairly safe, heh heh. I'd return the compliment and invite you here but, despite the shiny piece of superfluous technology which I'm using to post this message, I don't possess anything as grand and exotic as a dinner table (or even enough books to construct a makeshift tablesque sculpture...)
|
redtriskell
Registered User
(2/25/05 1:12 pm)
|
Re: dinner parties
BlackSheep- I myself am a walking phone book, rather than a Google on legs. I remember phone numbers forever. I imagine that someday when I am very, very old, I will amuse myself by dialling numbers from my past just to talk to whoever answers. Assuming, of course, that phones haven't become obsolete by then. The dinner invite stands- for you or Jane Yolen or Terri Windling or any number of folks on this board- because I would love to have faces and voices to go with all these names.;) Maybe when I write the Great American Short Story and become wildly famous... :D
|
spoonmoonhollow
Registered User
(2/25/05 10:41 pm)
|
move over judy chicago...soup is on!
please invite jane austen (i adore her) but make her sit between two people of questionable character (that she may have material for more stories) and don't forget leonardo da vinci, picasso (sit him beside leo for humility's sake), mary shelley (purposefully leave out her husband and byron but keats could come), arthur rackham, and jane morris (be sure to invite elizabeth siddal too).
|
|
