Dead Authors

[mrissa]

Bookslut points out a Dead Authors Party in Chicago. If you had to go as your favorite dead author, who would it be?

When scottjames asked me this, I told him Judith Merril, not because she's my absolute favorite of all dead authors, but because I feel a certain affinity for her and also because I would do a better job as her than as most of the other dead SF or fantasy writers. Almost no one ever mistakes me for Asimov or Tolkien or anybody at all like that.

I like plenty of dead non-speculative writers, but somehow they all feel wrong in my head. Dorothy Sayers comes the closest, but still no.

Comments

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

Sir Conan Author Doyle or Edgar Rice Burroughs.

[wolfshaman.livejournal.com]

James Joyce, but then I know I am weird.
:)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can't think of anybody with hair or features approximating mine; I'm the right gender for Judith Merril, is about the extent of it. I think we can assume costuming can include wigs and heavy makeup if needed.

I did read Better To Have Loved, yep, and lent it to dd_b and from him to lydy and will be perfectly happy to continue to lend it out locally. I liked some parts of it, but it had the opposite problem of Fred Pohl's autobio, I thought: his was trying to jam too much message into his life, and hers didn't have enough focus. Reading hers after his made his look...I'm not sure whitewash would cover it. Plastered over. Possibly with entirely new walls built for the plaster and whitewash to go on.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And they aaaall moved away from him on the Group W bench. :)

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Mmm... can dead include never-living? So that I could pick William Ashbless? (Or don't dead poets count anyway?) Or Paarfi?

Maybe Edwin Abbott.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't wear makeup in general, but if I absolutely had to look like a specific dead author, well, there are limited ways to achieve that. (Heh. I should probably have picked Sigrid Undset or Selma Lagerlof or Astrid Lindgren if I wanted to make the resemblance easier. Umm. Is Lagerlof dead? She seems dead from here, but....)

I'd recommend Better to Have Loved. I just wouldn't recommend it without reservations. Sounds like you've got the right sort of thing in mind approaching it, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The never-living are only included if they have died in their never-life. If some other Dragaeran had to finish Paarfi's books for him, then maybe. Until then, no.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Might be interesting to show up as Neil Gaiman for a party. I've already posed as Death twice . . .

Oh, wait, he's not dead.

Well, hm. I'd say Sylvia Plath, but she's not a favorite, and anyway, I don't think I could top the time my co-worker Jim showed up in a long wig, nightgown and oven-shaped cardboard box around his head. And I fear any makeup attempting to make me resemble Elizabeth Bishop would just make me look more like Judi Dench on a really bad day.

On the other hand, Sir Walter Ralegh... Hmmm. (Probably everyone would mistake me for Shakespeare, but still . . .hmmm.)

[pameladean]

I don't dress up as people, so that's that.

With regard to the Merril book, I heard her read huge excerpts from it at Wiscon a few years back, and that's really the best setting for it. I realize that this is not of much help just now. She added such interesting and droll faces and expressions, though.

Pamela

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I once dressed up as Albert Einstein. He wasn't a fictional author, but he wrote stuff.

Of course, I did that in third grade...

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I'm afraid I might have to say A.E. Van Vogt, or maybe L. Ron Hubbard. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What did the Scientologist elves fight with?