10 (11) Writers Who Probably Would/Wouldn’t Sign My High School Yearbook

 

 Photo credit: The Little Hawk, Iowa City High School, Iowa City

11 Writers Who Would Probably Refuse to Sign My High School Yearbook

Salman Rushdie

Martin Amis

Graham Greene

Robert Lowell

T.S. Eliot

Jonathan Franzen

Cormac McCarthy

Thomas Pynchon

Jean-Paul Sartre

Samuel Beckett

Alice, of Go Ask Alice

 

11 Writers Who Would Probably Sign My High School Yearbook with X’s and O’s & Entreaties to “Stay Sweet”

e.e. cummings

Elizabeth Strout

Judy Blume

Jacqueline Susann

George Saunders

Stephen King

Anne Lamott

Walt Whitman

James Baldwin

S.E. Hinton (ok: “stay gold,” not “stay sweet”)

David Sedaris (ok: ironically, but I wouldn’t know that back then)

 

1 Writer Who Would Sign My High School Yearbook with Footnotes that Take Up a Whole Page

David Foster Wallace

10 (ok, 12) Writers I Read in College, Then Never Again & Why Not

Anthony Trollope, too many books

 

John Milton, too lovey-dovey with Satan

 

Samuel Pepys, too much gossip about people I haven’t met

 

Alexander Pope, too rhymey

 

William Makepeace Thackeray, too sharp

 

William Wordsworth, too flowery

 

William Faulkner, too many words

 

William Blake, too ambiguous; experienced or innocent…which the F is it?

 

William Carlos Williams, too William-y

 

Matthew Arnold...though I remain eager to publish my undergrad story about a frat party, title inspired by “Dover Beach”: “Where Ignorant Armies Clash by Night”

 

Jonathan Swift…though I continue to nod in pleased recognition at every newspaper op-ed reference to “A Modest Proposal”

 

Thomas Hardy…though I don’t know why not; I loved his books back then! Maybe too far from the literary crowd these days??

NOTE: I'm taking a summer break from writer interviews and am just going to have FUN with this blog for a month or so.

10 Writers to Road Trip With

 

Hunter S. Thompson, if he lets you drive

Jack Kerouac, if you’re a man

Laura Ingalls Wilder, if you enjoy a slower pace

Madeleine L’Engle, if you tesseract

John Steinbeck, if it’s California or bust

Joseph Conrad, if you think there’s a chance you won’t want to return

Geoffrey Chaucer, if you’re fine with a group rate

Robert Frost, though there are miles to go before you’ll sleep

John Milton, as long as it's not an island cruise

Flannery O’Connor, if you leave the grandmother and Pitty Sing at home

NOTE: I'm taking a summer break from writer interviews and am just going to have FUN with this blog for a month or so.