Growing up, did your family have a large gathering during the holidays that required bratty children to be banned to a small side table? You know how it happened: A 7-year old version of yourself awkwardly sat beside your gawky cousins with the lazy eye and head lice who didn't have the motor skills to properly feed themselves without spilling half of their mashed potatoes all over their lap. Then you'd look with envy at the adults' table and silently pray you'd be invited over to dine with them.
That happened to a lot of us.
We were all kids at some point though. Some of us were debonair, and some of us ate paste. And famous writers were no different.
Here are famous writers when they were children or teenagers--and the decision whether they should luck out and eat with the adults or be at the kids' table for whatever holiday meal you're enjoying:
1.) Albert Camus
If Camus sits at the kids' table, that jerk cousin will make fun of his cauliflower ear and budding two pack-a-day smoking habit.
Verdict: Adults' table!
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2.) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Listen, if you're bringing Mr. Bear, that's just going to take up space. The sassy hand wave doesn't help matters.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
3.) Anna Akhmatova
The poor woman can't even get a seat during photo shoots with her brother. The least she can have is a proper seat at a holiday dinner.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
4.) Beatrix Potter
If I want to be scowled at over dinner, I'll just look to my uncle nursing his seventh scotch for the night.
Verdict: Kids' table!
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5.) Bertrand Russell
Is that a cricket bat or is he coming to dinner armed? If that's the case, he can lay down the law with the children.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
6.) Boris Pasternak
Boris, the older brother here, came dressed to the nines for dinner, or to lead a small navel ship into battle. One or the other.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
7.) C.S. Lewis
The hand on the knee and defeated face is the look of any adult over the age of thirty Monday through Friday.
Verdict: Adults' table!
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8.) Czesław Miłosz
That's the look of sheer enthusiasm right there. It's probably best to let him decide where the hell he'd like to sit to keep things calm.
Verdict: Wherever he wants to sit.
____________________
9.) Doris Lessing
Admit it, you just looked at her and immediately judged she shouldn't have to deal with those miserable cousins at the kids' table.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
10.) Ernest Hemingway
He's probably smuggling a small shotgun and a flask of whiskey under that gown. You don't need that combination headache.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
11.) Eugene O'Neill
He's just going to judge the side dish you brought and sit there sulking all dinner with that face. You know this is true.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
12.) Ezra Pound
A half hour into dinner, he's going to start promoting fascism, and then a fight will break out over the green bean casserole.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
13.) Frank O'Hara
That's the face of someone who's going to politely ask you to pass the peas, and then eat in silence beside the deaf elderly grandmother at the table.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
14.) Gabriela Mistral
Is this a holiday dinner or are we having a child bride? When did this become creepy?
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
15.) Gore Vidal
It's Gore Vidal. He'll write a scathing review of how you overcooked everything, and then make fun of your clothing, crow's feet, and lack of exceptional footwear.
Verdict: Not even invited to dinner.
____________________
16.) Hermann Hesse
Sure, he looks super serious, but someone needs to stand up to that aunt railing about her political leanings.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
17.) James Joyce
Oh, boy, I can't wait to listen to a twenty-minute, incoherent, stream-of-conscious story from him about his teddy bear and a fire truck.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
18.) Joseph Conrad
The heart of darkness isn't just the title of Conrad's most famous work. It's Conrad's childhood soul.
Verdict: Kid's table!
____________________
19.) Kurt Vonnegut
How can you watch this short interview Vonnegut did a few years before his death, and not want to share a drink and dessert with him?
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
20.) Octavio Paz
Admittedly, he looks like an insurance agent or an actuary, but he won't ruffle feathers at the dinner table.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
21.) Pearl Buck
She might be the most levelheaded guest at dinner, and that's even after four glasses of wine.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
22.) Samuel Beckett
If you offend him in the slightest way over dinner, he might sue you.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
23.) Thomas Mann
He needs to sit with the grown-ups just so he can have a serious conversation with his parents as to why they dressed him like a poor man's Tron.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
24.) Winston Churchill
The 1953 Nobel Prize winner in literature could tell a good story. He probably also has a half dozen nips of gin strapped to him in this photo.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
25.) F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you're already pouting before you even make it in the house, you're just going to be sour over dinner. No one needs that.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
26.) Gabriel Garcia Marquez
He. Is. Staring. Into. Your. Soul.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
27.) Gertrude Stein
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
27.) Gertrude Stein
Well, if you want her to critique how the appetizers ran too long, and how the main course was lacking a proper protagonist, so the whole meal needs to be done over--and THEN properly invite her when you goddamn know what the hell you're doing with this meal, you might as well send her to the...
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
28.) Hans Christian Anderson
He'll somehow venture off into a story of how you could kill an evil witch by boiling her in the gravy boat--and it'll be subtly creepy, no doubt--but he'll keep things interesting.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
29.) Henry Miller
No one is allowed to dress more flamboyantly at the dinner table than grandma who's completely bought out the Home Shopping Network of their most garish clothing and jewelry.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
30.) Jack Kerouac
Something about Kerouac makes me uneasy, like he's the kid who has a meltdown and throws his whole dinner plate against the wall while screaming that no one understands him. Admit it--this is the face of a kid you could see doing that.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
31.) Countee Cullen
The most sane and level-headed conversation you'll have over the entire holiday season of dinners and get-togethers will be with him. High five him if he sits beside you at the table.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
32.) Truman Capote
He looks so sweet and innocent! Then, in twenty years, he'll create a fictional character on you that's befuddled, a lush, and acidic in nature, and he'll say it was all because you didn't hand the peas and carrots over to him at a holiday dinner quickly enough when he was 5-years old, and he holds grudges. So, you know...
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
33.) William Faulkner
True story: In this photo, William Faulkner had already downed two bottles of vodka.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
34.) Ayn Rand
HA! Hahahahahahaha...hahahaha. ((catches breath))
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha--------no. She hates us all.
Get a restraining order.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
35.) Yukio Mishima
He might try to throw a coup d'état if dinner doesn't go as planned, and then things will become really grim after that.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
36.) Rudyard Kipling
It depends--are you going to get the relaxed, humbled Kipling who wrote "Gunga Din," or the elitist and creepy Kipling who wrote "White Man's Burden" to sit across from you during dinner? If you have to ponder the question, the answer is clear.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
37.) Julia Kristeva
Even as adorable as she looks, she's going to psychoanalyze you and then write a cultural study on the events that occur at dinner. You won't understand half of what she's alluding to, you'll feel stupid, and then suddenly the holiday party just became sad.
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
38.) Pablo Neruda
Not everyone can rock sensible slacks underneath a flowing robe.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
39.) Rabindranath Tagore
The rakish headwear will be a talking point at dinner. We all know this.
Verdict: Adults' table!
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40.) Alice Walker
As if.
As if you'd send that adorable face to have a miserable dinner with unruly distant cousins.
Verdict: Adults' table!
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41.) Seamus Heaney
He's Irish, so at least he'll be a little lubed up by the time the main course is served. Then the real conversation begins.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
42.) Sylvia Plath
Are you her father? No? Her husband? No?
Okay, dinner will be safe.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
43.) Katherine Mansfield
She'd probably politely ask you about your work, life, kids, and then help you clean up after dinner, all while profusely thanking you.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
44.) Lewis Carroll
He had honours in mathematics while at Oxford. In other words, a real live wire of excitement.
Verdict: Kids' table!
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45.) Marcel Proust
Do you have 38 hours to spare to listen to Proust detail the significance of candied yams?
No?
Verdict: Kids' table!
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46.) J.D. Salinger
The younger tyke in this photo--the real question is would he even show up to dinner, or go into hiding all day and make people question where he is?
Verdict: Kids' table!
____________________
47.) Jack London
I mean, he is bringing along a dog, as well as apparently a scuffed-up fedora, so things might be fairly interesting.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
48.) Maya Angelou
Okay, so she will speak verrrrrry slowly during conversation, but she's not going berate you for overcooking the carrots at dinner, so take what you can get.
Verdict: Adults' table!
____________________
49.) John Steinbeck
Here's the sweetest kid at the holiday dinner party. He'll even offer to remove your plates, serve you dessert and coffee, and regale in you talking about yourself all night because he's honestly interested in you as a person. So, duh.
Verdict: Adults' table!
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