Fans of Norah Lofts discussion
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Guess who's coming to dinner Part 2
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Peggy
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Sep 25, 2015 05:59PM
OK, a different question with the same theme. If you could invite five authors from any era (besides Norah Lofts--it is a given she would be included), who would you invite to dinner?
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Oh, good one, Peggy. Will have to ponder.......
Wow - I'm with Sallie - I need to think about that one for a bit. There are so many!
John Steinbeck....still thinking a out the other 4
Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner, first, so that the three of them could chat up a storm about their respective fictionalized parts of the world--or maybe bristle at one another like three cats. (Well, more likely, Faulkner would bristle, Hardy would mope, and NL would be comfortably charming to both of them--and then, since she outlived them both and was still writing--;)) As for the others, I'm trying to choose from among Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Marie de France.
OK - here goes:Geoffrey Chaucer, the Venerable Bede, Nancy Mitford, Mark Twain, Samuel Pepys, and NL. I'd really love to see Mitford and Twain together (fireworks?), and the historical knowledge of the others would be fascinating.
If I had eight, I'd add Michael Crichton, Elizabeth Peters and Anya Seton.
I would prefer to have all of my guests one at a time (not good with big dinners). Margaret Mitchell (one book, but I read it 10 times!)
Anya Seton
Gene Stratton Porter
Oscar Hammerstein (librettist)
Charles Schulz.
What great names! I see I need to finalize my list after I see who everybody else suggests. Hadn't thought of Mark Twain. I've read his biography--a fascinating person. My first list was Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Pearl S. buck. I always thought Pearl and Norah had possibly read each other's books.
Judy's point about historical knowledge really set the wheels turning though! What about somebody like the poet Thomas Wyatt who could tell us what Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were really like!
Of course, Wyatt might be a bit biased! :)As for NL and Pearl, they do seem to cross paths in the last episode of I Met a Gypsy, don't they?
MaryC, hadn't made that connection! I think Sylvia had mentioned once that a librarian insisted that Buck's pseudonym "John Sedges" was actually for Norah Lofts--Syb, did I remember that right?
Yes, Pegs, I had read Sedges' "The Townsman" as a girl. My mother had received a copy in the 40s through a book club. Later, working in the town library, I noticed that our cataloguer had written "pseudo. Norah Lofts" on the title page. I don't remember if she corrected it, but I can understand her confusion. "The Townsman" is written in the style of NL, I think. And I, too, am sure that Lofts and Buck read each other's work!
Sylvia wrote: " . . . Sedges' . . . 'The Townsman' is written in the style of NL, I think. And I, too, am sure that Lofts and Buck read each other's work!"The only NL that I can think of with an American setting is Winter Harvest, and she certainly handled that well!
BTW, we finished War and Peace 9on audio) the night before last. I'll reserve any comments until I'm sure that no one here who hasn't already read it ever plans to! However, while we were reading/listening, I became sure that Margaret Mitchell must have read it--and was somewhat surprised to read later that she hadn't!
