We all love a listicle. We all think we’re above them, but we’re all hooked like a large salmon on an MSC certified line every time we see them. So I’m giving you what you want.
The dream dinner party is a tried and tested format, mostly done by that fine publication, the FT. I suspect the idea is un-copyrightable, so I’m going to go ahead. I’ll start with the guest list.
Erwin Panofsky
Erwin Panofsky was an art historian. Because of this niche interdisciplinary subject, he’s a little under-rated (outside of art history!). Yet, in my opinion, he was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. The man wrote in English and not German only because of the rise of the Nazis, who forced him to flee and he set up shop in Princeton. Panofsky had a habit of linking abstruse shreds of intellectual history with painted and carved objects, in a remarkably convincing way. I suspect this would make him a great conversationalist, segueing from one notion to another, and introducing something peculiar at every suggestion. I seat him across from Nancy Bauer.
Nancy Bauer
Nancy Bauer is still with us. Bauer is a philosopher based at Tufts University with an interest in contemporary matters—notably gender politics. I confess not to have read anything of hers apart from How To Do Things With Pornography. This makes her an excellent pairing with Erwin Panofsky who, among other things, wrote some very high minded stuff about Titian’s erotic paintings. Bauer, on the other hand, calls a spade a spade. I will enjoy watching the two minds clash over the significance of images. Bauer’s writing is witty, incisive, and open minded. It brings hope that contemporary philosophy can talk about real things—rather than language games—in the rather breezy way that the ancients did.
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs is no longer with us. Jacobs was the great urbanist thinker of the 20th century, an enemy of the concrete-headed Robert Moses who wanted to desecrate New York with big roads. Jacobs wrote about how cities work and do not work in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It is a long book, but it is written in staggeringly precise and quick prose. Her polemic is sharp and her observations keen. She wrote it from the perspective of a mid-century woman with things to get done, while the men of her generation swooped in and out of the city in fast cars and arrived home with food already on the table. In other words, the men who designed mid-century cities didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Jacobs did. Her writing recalls early modern proto-science in that it relies on first-hand experience. The ambition and confidence of this is impressive and like Bauer, refreshing.
Porphyry of Tyre
I seat the mid-20th century polemicist Jane Jacobs opposite the 3rd century polemicist and philosopher Porphyry of Tyre. Tyre is in modern day Lebanon, by the way. Porphyry’s work is only known through fragments because it was too spicy for the Christians to handle, once they monopolised the religion of the Roman Empire. Porphyry, among other things, was an important critic of early Christianity. He got under the skin of Christian thinkers to such a degree that his work survives in quotations by Christians where they were arguing against it. Porphyry’s criticisms are fundamental and remain valid. I can’t quite predict what topic Porphyry and Jacobs will consider but I feel sure the discourse will be frank and energetic.
Barbara Kingsolver
I have waxed lyrical about Barbara Kingsolver before, and in the intervening time I have read her celebrated Demon Copperhead. It’s a Great book with a capital G. Her endless inventiveness in prose, command of character and readers’ emotions are rare talents. Kingsolver thinks quite carefully about her symbolism and writes a fair bit about contemporary evangelical Christianity, which hovers on the edge of Flight Behaviour. Kingsolver is liberally minded and has an academic background in evolutionary biology, but I get the impression she won’t go full Richard Dawkins on her dinner mate. Her dinner mate is Saint Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine of Hippo
I have deliberately placed Augustine of Hippo opposite Barbara Kingsolver rather than opposite Porphyry of Tyre, to avoid a punch-up. Augustine goes opposite Kingsolver not in his capacity as a philosopher, but as a literary critic. Augustine wrote about rhetoric, the means with which one persuades people, and about the coherence of the New Testament. Like many Christian authors he was interested in typology, the connecting-up of image from one part of the Bible to another in an effort to bend the literary anthology into a coherent shape. Challenging work. This makes him interesting from a narrative point of view, and he has some real wisdom about how to write and speak well. It’d be good to hear Augustine bounce some ideas off Kingsolver and vice versa. At the same time, Augustine famously wrote the Confessions, which may come to light in the context of Kingsolver’s ‘confessional’ works which delve so insightfully into characters’ inner thoughts, shames, lusts, etc. My hope is that Kingsolver will get a rise out of Augustine, who had some major shame issues, and get some literary inspiration at the same time.
—The Menu—
We’ve got some dietary requirements in our guest list. Some guests are hard to work out. I don’t know the dietary requirements of Nancy Bauer or Jane Jacobs. I guess I could email Bauer (she most certainly has better things to do than respond), but I’m out of luck with Jacobs. Panofsky fled Germany because he was Jewish, but I do not know whether he was practicing, and whether he would have avoided non-Kosher foods.
Perversity of perversity, I do know Porphyry of Tyre’s dietary requirements. Porphyry was a vegetarian—like Pythagoras—on moral and spiritual grounds. This sets the bar relatively easily: we will eat vegetarian, and I’ll make it vegan just to be on the safe side.
Starter: pennywort, three-cornered leek and bittercress salad. A nod to Barbara Kingsolver’s project of eating local, documented in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (non-fiction).
Mains: Parthian chicken a la Apicius, ancient Roman chef. The chicken will have to be mock duck, or perhaps lab-grown chicken by the time I assemble the time machine to get these guests together. Parthian chicken is a dish based on the principle of absolutely drowning a chicken in asafoetida. My hope is that the Roman provenance of this dish will make Porphyry and Augustine feel slightly more at home.
Dessert: vegan rocky road sundae, to wind up Jane Jacobs.
We will drink an extortionate Barolo wine (vegan) with the main because it’s a very special occasion. Porphyry will probably go to the kitchen to dilute his with tap water; Augustine will feel guilty as he drinks and enjoys it.