There was this meme, once upon a time… Suppose it turns out you can summon characters out of books. And frankly, if I could summon characters out of books, I’d do it all the time, and spend inordinate amounts of time with them… er, yes – I’m that far gone. But for the moment, let us stick with the meme: which five characters would I want as company for a wild night out?
Well, I was reminded of this meme when my friend G. told me about a wonderful RPG she plays at college, involving randomly assigned literary characters. On being reminded, I sought and found the answer I wrote, once upon a time, on my Italian blog, and realised that, if I were to do it again, I’d choose different characters – at least most of them. After all, one wild night is one wild night, and a girl doesn’t have to want to hang out with the same crowd forever, right?
So, considering that my notion of a wild night, out or otherwise, includes (but is not limited to) endless and occasionally argumentative talk on a variety of subjects, impromptu theatre games, nonsense galore, and a certain quantity of eccentric mischief, here is my round of invitations:
1) Beatrice, from Much Ado About Nothing. Unbeatable at wordplay without being too waspish. Merry, witty company – and she sings too.
2) Sarah Thane, from Georgette Heyer‘s The Talisman Ring. A woman with a taste for absurdity and the right turn of phrase – and a prodigious liar when the occasion requires it. I’m sure we’ll go along very, very well.
3) Kit Marlowe – Anthony Burgess‘ version – strikes me as the sort who can be relied upon for vertiginous conversation about almost anything. And all the theatre one could wish for. The trick will be to keep him from becoming nasty when in his cups.
4) Alan Breck Stewart. A man with a dancing madness in his eyes, who can improvise extempore ballads at the least provocation sounds far too perfect to leave out. He has enough of a temper to cause trouble, and of course Scotland, England and Scotland and England as conversation topics are out of the question, but I’ll be careful.
5) Ned Henry, Connie Willis‘ historian-cum-time-traveller. He can be a tad scatterbrained, especially when time-lagged, but adorably so – and he is one of the nicest imaginary persons I know. Plus, he is a time traveller, and really, nothing would make my wild night like some time travel .
Well well well, considering that my first choices were Nicholas Christopher‘s Veronica, Emily Brontë*, Puck, Sidney Carton and Kit Marlowe, I’d say that this time I’ve equipped myself for a far jollier wild night, wouldn’t you?
And what about you? Which five characters would you invite out of books for a wild night?
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* Yes, I was cheating. You could say I cheated again with Marlowe, but I mean Marlowe-as-a-character. Or else I just cheat at memes, so sue me.
This began as part of one of those catching-up phone calls you do around the holidays: we started with the Plague, of course (who doesn’t, these days?) and at some point, mercifully enough, we found ourselves discussing To Read Lists instead.
“Imagine you can spend a day inside a book,” was the prompt – one of those things going around on Facebook, you know, that a friend passed on to me. “What would you choose?”
Scribblings 