Writers love lists and we really love making lists of other writers. I have plenty:

  • My favorite writers
  • Writers I’ve read the most works by
  • Writers who’ve influenced me
  • Writers who’ve influenced my writing

While there is overlap, those lists are quite distinct. Very few appear on all four.

Here’s another: What writers would I like to meet?

All of them!

Ok…some of them. But still, that would be a lengthy list.

Which deceased writers do I wish I could have met, given the opportunity when they were alive? That’s an interesting one…

Patricia Highsmith
Caustic, cynical, racist, angry, and misanthropic only scratch the surface of Patricia Highsmith’s reputation. She has a bad rep, especially these days, when even the slightest slip of the tongue or insufficiently rapturous allyship can bring out the internet scolds. One can only imagine their response to someone as single-mindedly vitriolic as Highsmith.

Even her fans don’t like her. In the introduction to her recent graphic novel biography of Highsmith, Grace Ellis describes the writer as “appalling,” “destructive”, “a terrible person,” “nothing short of evil,” and someone who should be condemned “as vehemently as possible.” A blurb on the back cover calls her “vile and miserable.”

Thirty years dead and still so problematic a biographer is terrified of being judged guilty by association. Not sufficiently problematic to preclude Ellis from authoring the biography, but yucky enough to denounce after the fact. Ellis added that she “took no pleasure in writing about her prejudices,” but presumably her anhedonia did not extend to cashing the check.

You can search Google for some choice Highsmith quotes and in fact, they are quite awful. Some are anecdotal, though well-sourced, and some come straight from her diaries. It’s tempting to hope her quotes were taken out of context, but it’s hard to identify exactly what context would have rendered them appropriate. I talk shit with friends and have a dark sense of humor, but even I have been taken aback at some of what’s been attributed to her. The key point is there’s no indication her comments were made in jest or in an environment where they were welcome.

It’s likely Highsmith would have hated me, and I would have hated her back, the little shit. But I also hate mobs and I’m loathe to bandwagon the dead. And fuck it, she was a brilliant writer of some of my favorite books.

So, regardless of her crust, I’d love to spend an evening with her, not for the bonhomie but to try to understand where she came from. I want the context not of her words, but of her anger. Because that was one angry woman, and anger does not arrive unbidden. It rises up from wounds and serves as armor. It is a gift from the world. And as an independent woman, a lesbian, in the 1940s and 50s, trying to assert her talent in a male-dominated occupation, I’m certain the world bestowed many gifts on Patricia Highsmith. Having written for comic books – including for Stan Lee – and for trashy paperback hacks and for traditional publishers, I bet she had some great stories about the men of letters. As a lesbian who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II, I bet she had some devastating ones as well.

James Baldwin
I can’t guarantee James Baldwin would desire my company, but I imagine after a few cocktails, with some soulful dance music on the turntable, he and I would hit it off quite finely. And what a spectacular playlist that would be:

A brilliant mind and writer, gay and black in an era where neither was much fun and a life as both must have seemed nigh impossible to navigate. I’d ask a lot of insipid fan questions, certainly. Who was his inspiration for Giovanni’s Room? Did he sleep with Marlon Brando?

I wouldn’t even need to say much. Who wouldn’t want to simply sit and hear the man speak? A voice like liquid mercury dipped in butter. I’d gladly listen to him weigh in on the white devil, if that’s all he wished to discuss.

Joan Didion
Happy, keenly observant, California tan, 1970s orange and avocado Joan, not the grieving Joan of her later years. This is my fantasy, so why be sad?

Joan Didion reminds me of my late friend Sharan, who friends affectionately called Mama. I imagine Highsmith drinking dinner and Baldwin holding court at a restaurant, but I picture Joan putting together a simple but solid, literati dinner party meal, waving me through the kitchen and onto the back deck, offering cocktails and nibbly things as the entree simmered. While my interest is literary, I see her as both teacher and mother, raconteur and listener, giver of advice and drier of tears. Didion was an eyewitness to societal upheavals, the death of her family, and finally the Last View. She’d seen some shit, and she’d have many observations to share.

Harlan Ellison
Like Patricia Highsmith, but shorter and with less charm, Ellison would be a smashing dinner companion, provided he didn’t start a fist fight. Goad him into talking shit about people who wronged him, in real life or only in his imagination. Start with Republicans and work your way up to Star Trek.

Kurt Vonnegut
The funny uncle you always wanted, gentle, wise, the perfect combination of wicked smart and world weary. I wish I’d had someone around to tell my younger self to spend more time doing what I love and to not care whether I did things perfectly, but only that I did them with gusto. I wish someone had explained “learn by doing” better. If he could have read my stories and given me practical advice, recommended better books to read, explained the importance of having creative friends, that would have been even better. A little older, I wouldn’t mind asking Vonnegut what the hell do I do now?

Jenny Terrell
You’ve never heard of Jenny Terrell, but if Kurt Vonnegut is the writing uncle you always wanted, Jenny was the mom or aunt or teacher who treated you like a real person made of gold, and encouraged your interests and idiosyncrasies exactly when you needed it most.

I published a few of Jenny’s short stories in my small press. You can find one of them here. She wrote a very cute novel about nuns on the run, which you can find here. She was funny and talented, and with a few words could make you believe you were the brightest and most talented boy in the room. I never met Jenny in real life, but we emailed a number of times. She was one of a handful of writers I’d published who I friended on my personal Facebook page, and we shared greetings here and there. Jenny passed away a few years ago, having reached her early 90s. A good run by any stretch, but it’s never enough. She was a real doll, in the old, best sense of the word. I wish I could have met her, to tell her in person how much her encouragement meant to me, but I’m sure she got plenty of that without me. She was that kind of person.

Runners-up:

Ray Bradbury – I don’t want to have dinner with Bradbury as much as I’d like to have writing classes with him throughout eternity.

Octavia Butler – A brilliant talent, gone too soon. While I’d love to share a post-mortem meal, I suspect I’d find myself tongue-tied, a neanderthal in the presence of a divine intelligence.

Joe Orton – A writer I admire from a distance, but would probably loathe close up. Wicked intelligence, insouciance, and a puckish sense of adventure are attractive qualities, until you come home to find a strange man in your bed and all your library books defaced. He’s exactly the kind of guy I would have dated when I was younger, but only because I thought I could change him. I still spit when I hear Kenneth Halliwell’s name, though. We were robbed of a brilliant writing career.

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