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If you could get one author, dead or alive, to write one more book, who would it be?

This intriguing question, asked by an audience member at the ALA panel I moderated in Chicago, got answers of Jane Austen from Charlaine Harris, Charles Bukowski from Charlie Huston, and Gene-Stratton Porter from Marjorie Liu. Since then, I’ve been asking the question of others, and have found no end of entertainment in their answers.

The question would also make a great book group theme, providing each reader a chance to revisit a favorite author and reveal their choice to the group. I love themes that help the members of a group get to know each other better.

For my own entertainment, I’ll keep asking this question to co-workers. They’ve told me about their passions for Dorothy Dunnett, Thomas Mann, Raymond Chandler, and J.R.R. Tolkien among others. Here are a few of their more unusual answers:

“I’d want to bring back Ernest Hemingway – although I’d settle for finding the manuscript his wife left on the Paris subway.”

“William Shakespeare – so he could write for the movies like all the movie writers insist he would, and maybe put some of them back in advertising where they belong.”

“Let’s give Miss Goody Two Shoes Jane Austen a chance to write in the aftermath of the Holocaust, two world wars, global warming, overcrowding, genocide, class warfare, irreversible pollution, and nuclear weapons. I’m not asking for zombies or sea serpents, Jane, just something with a little more depth. Or, if we’re picking someone I actually like: I’d like to see what Mark Twain would make of the twenty-first century. Maybe he could bring perspective to the wars, pollution, etc., I just mentioned.”

“V.C. Andrews. Oh wait, I’m getting it backwards: That’s a dead author I wish would stop writing new books.”

“The person or persons who wrote Beowulf. People back then knew
how to tell a story. Or I could take the authors of the Mabinogion for the same reason, and also because I just read an article the other day about a professor who thinks the Mabinogion may have been written by a woman. How cool would that be?”

I’d love to hear your answers too… What writer would you bring back for one more book?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under Book Club Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.