In April 2023, I was interviewed by Joe Dimino for his podcast, Famous Interview with Joe Dimino. (Watch the video here or listen on your preferred podcast app.) Joe guided our conversation with grace and expertise and asked thought-provoking questions. One, however, left me speechless. I should have had an easy answer ready, but I had so many answers they collided in my brain and cancelled each other.
Joe’s question was, “if you could go back in time and interview or hang out with an author, alive or no longer with us, what author would you want to be around?”
I paused, looked at the ceiling and then at my bookshelves. I pivoted and stumbled through an answer about Max Perkins, acquisitions editor extraordinaire who brought the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Scribner (in my flustered state, I erroneously said Perkins was with Simon and Schuster) at a time when other publishers didn’t want them. I’d like to know what he saw in them, how he knew the time was right to bring new voices to the reading public. Perkins was not only a publishing visionary, he was the original book coach, nurturing writers, helping them hone their ideas, and being a collaborative editor—a role few editors today have time or bandwidth to play.
In the days that followed, I gave it more thought. When I look at my bookshelves or Kindle content, I still have a bit of short-circuitry in my brain trying to choose among so many books and authors. Any list I create feels inadequate, so I’ve limited it here, and it would probably be different on any given day.
If I were hosting a small luncheon for women writers who are no longer with us, I’d have an eclectic invitation list. I like to think that like a great stew that results from whatever vegetables happen to be in the kitchen, this mix of writers from another time would make for lively, delicious conversation. I’d gather Louisa May Alcott, Pearl S. Buck, MFK Fisher, Nancy Mitford, Eleanor Perenyi, and Barbara Pym. I’d want to ask them about the courage they had to write about their lives, whether fiction or nonfiction, and the sacrifices and rewards writing brought to them.
I’ve limited my conversations with living authors to two:
I’d like to chat with Ann Patchett about her ability to observe a seemingly simple inciting moment and create a story of depth and unpredictable, lifelike truths and consequences. I wonder if the scenes flow spontaneously or if she is more calculated. Does she ever write a scene and think that’s too cliché and then revise it?
I would like to ask Michael Pollan about his process—I’m waiting for him to write a book about writing. Time and again he astounds me with the depth of his research and his willingness to immerse himself in a subject and weave together the science and facts with his own experience. He is a master of compelling nonfiction narrative.
Which authors would you like to speak with? Who would you invite to lunch and what questions would you ask?
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