Invitees To A Literary Dinner Party

Here's a fun question. Historian Joseph J. Ellis (The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789) was asked in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" feature (May 17, 2015) which three writers he would invite if he were hosting a literary dinner party. His choices: "For sheer intellectual fireworks, Joseph Brodsky, Susan Sontag and Gore Vidal." He would also invite Mark Twain who would "show up for dessert to assure we all ended up laughing at ourselves."

That got me to thinking who I would invite to a literary dinner party. My choices would be James Baldwin, Chester Himes, and Zora Neale Hurston.  All three were highly opinionated firebrands. I would sit back and enjoy hearing what they had to say about race, world travel, book publishing, and any other subject they cared to discuss.