Fran Lebowitz told the Paris Review:
"If I had to, I would rather have dinner with James Thurber, than, say James Joyce. I’m not the biggest James Joyce fanatic and I would rather have dinner with someone who was funny. I would have liked to have met Nabokov. When I first came here, meeting writers wasn’t available to me; but now that I have met tons of those people, I wish I hadn’t. I never make the connection between someone’s writing and who they are. In the case of most good writers the writing is better than they are. I mean, knowing James Joyce . . . was he fascinating? No. He was probably grumpy. Meeting James Joyce would be more on the order of sightseeing, like seeing the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial.
There are some great writers who are great talkers, but there are more great writers who are not great talkers. People seem to think there is some connection between talking and writing, but I love to talk and if there were some connection between the two of them I would be the most prolific writer in the history of the world."
Which she isn't.
I think I might choose Dickens--he was reportedly great at talking as well as at writing. With Jane Austen you know she'd be polite but making mental notes of how to write about your gauche table manners later. Kafka would be too depressing, you'd want to kill yourself before dessert. Twain probably would be great, I suspect you wouldn't get a word in edgewise with him, which would be OK with me. Who would you fancy?
