More Guests

No sooner had I posted yesterday's rather funky guest list than I realised I'd made at least two startling omissions. Which means I'm going to have to increase the numbers, not to twelve, a number I don't care for, but fifteen, which is curiously satisfying.

The first missing person that came to mind was Chekov. I'd sort of run down the list of Russian novelists, briefly considered Dostoevsky, simply for his capacity to cause an entertaining scandal, then decided it was safer to stick with writers who were basically sane, and completely forgot the dramatists. Chekov always strikes me as a nice guy (have no idea why) and with two notable hypochondriacs at the table - I'm thinking of those princes of Modernism, Proust & Joyce - we need a doctor at hand.

Then I suddenly remembered Coleridge. Not sure how I overlooked this master of table talk - and, by the way, he came to mind long before I read young Daryl's uncannily canny suggestion/comment to be found in yesterday's comments. (I'm completely dismissing Trebuchet's characteristically mind-bending surfacing of Velikovsky on similar grounds to my stand against Dostoevsky - can't really deal with loonies at the dining table.)

But if you're going to invite Coleridge how can you leave out his eighteenth century equivalent, the Great Cham himself, old Sam Johnson? The question now, of course, is whether anyone else will get a word in edgeways.

Which is why I'm happy to invite the laconic Kurt Vonnegut to table. I feel a bit guilty actually over my critical comments regarding our (former) colonial cousins, and remembering just how excited I was to realise that the major early novels are now available in two fine volumes from the Library of America it seemed churlish to leave out one of my teenage idols.

And, finally, it occurred to me that having invited a fair number of folks who are somewhat challenged on the glamour-front (pity anyone opposite Johnson) I needed someone very easy on the eye as well as being able to offer intelligently fresh perspectives. Ms Chimamanda Adichie more than fits the bill on that front - so that's my fifteen, and enough of this for now.