Suppose you could invite any two authors, living or dead, to dinner. Who’s on your guest list and why? Deciding that question may say a lot about you. Martha’s choices: Sappho and Toni Morrison. Grant’s: Akhenaten and Ben Franklin. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “If You Could Invite Any Two Authors, Living or Dead, for Dinner”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. At one time or another, you’ve probably played the game of imagining what famous people you’d like to invite to dinner. Who are the people you’d want to have around your table? And I’ve been thinking lately more seriously about that in terms of writers specifically, and I’m finding it’s a really good exercise to ask myself, if I could only invite two writers, who would they be and what would we talk about and why?
And one of the people that I would invite is Sappho. She lived in 600 BC. So I guess we’d need a translator in part because she spoke a dialect of Greek that I’m not familiar with. And besides, it’s hard to converse in ancient Greek anyway. But one of the things I would want to know is what she looked like. For one thing, we have no representations of her whatsoever. She was this renowned poet in the ancient world, and supposedly she wrote 10,000 lines of poetry, but we only have 650. So, of course, I want to know what else did she write? What is your oeuvre? You know, what don’t we understand about you? And how did we do translating you into English? Did we miss something?
And then I want to know things about her life, too. You know, what was life like 1,400 years ago? How different would she be from somebody like me who grew up in this culture as opposed to hers? And did she jump off a cliff because some dude broke her heart? You know, that’s the story. But I kind of doubt that that was the case. So what did we miss in her body of work? There must be something. There must be many things. Oh, so many things. And I also wonder, who were the other women who were writing at that time? Did she have a rival? So lots of questions like that because there’s just so much I don’t know.
Sounds like a very long dinner party.
Yeah. So the premise is good, and I’m just accepting that there’s some kind of universal translator nearby.
Okay. We’re going to skip the obvious William Shakespeare. I think it’s too much of an obvious one.
Oh, yeah. He goes to lots of parties. He’s a freebie, right? You get him at your party, no matter who else is there. And I’m going to go with a couple outliers. The first one is Akhenaten.
Really?
Yes.
Okay. Well, that’d be cool. A monotheistic leader of Egypt. He died around 1300 BC. And the reason he stands out for me is he was monotheist at a time when polytheists were the going action. That’s what you were. And he broke ranks. And as a matter of fact, he broke ranks so hard that when he died, a lot of his images and a lot of the writing about him were obliterated. And that writing is still here. Some of it survived. And that’s how we know about him. And so when I think about ancient writing, I do think about Akhenaten and the ancient Egyptians. And I think about how his legacy has kind of continued on despite the best efforts to stomp him out. If you think about, say, the Soviet era when they would edit pictures to eliminate people in them who were no longer in favor with the powers that be. That’s the kind of thing that happened to Akhenaten. And by the way, King Tut was one of his descendants.
Yeah.
In common.
Right, right. And the art changed a whole lot under him after many, many, many years.
Yeah, well, when you think about the Egyptians and the long reign, the many thousands of years, they existed as a force and a power for longer than Western society has existed now. You know, we’re in the year 2019. They existed more in the other direction of the year zero than we have in this side of the year zero, which is crazy, right?
Right. So what would that be like? But I also want to find out what kind of strength a person has to have to break with tradition like that. What gave him the power to do that? What was the personal power and the political power at the time to let him do that? Did he force it upon people? Were they inattentive? Did he have a large army? I don’t know those answers.
We have you, me, Sappho, Akhenaten. And the other person that I want to bring to the party is Toni Morrison.
Oh, please. Just because I think she’s one of the greatest writers ever of English. And I love her work. And ideally, she would write about our evening. I would love to see what she makes of the same experience that I’m having. You know, I would just love to see what she writes about. And I’m already stressing about the menu, but for some reason, I just want to serve them both comfort food.
Yeah. And we’ll throw Akhenaten in there, too. Mine is brief. The other one is Benjamin Franklin, who I think of. I first encountered him through his autobiography when I was a kid and learned that he was in the printing business, which I later got into as a young journalist after a fashion and Poor Richard’s Almanac. And I think of him as a writer, although he was a statesman and a linguist and an inventor. And the other reason I want him there, and maybe the best reason, he was a rascal.
Oh, yeah. And I like rascals at my dinner parties.
Yeah, you two would be at the same end of the table. I think that he would turn a few chairs over.
I think he would.
Well, I love this image, and I would love to hear from our listeners about what their ideal literary dinner party would be. So send us an email and let us know, words@waywordradio.org, or call us 877-929-9673.
