/lit/ - Literature

Oscar Wilde once responded to a craigslist ad of mine for an old foolsball table where all the players had been replaced with little penises, but I decided not to sell it.

>>1574642

I once replied to a craigslist ad by Ernest Hemingway, it said

for sale: baby shoes, never worn

i also got my copy of american psycho signed by BEE himself

I met Neil Gaiman. He is a pretty cool guy.

>>1574642
man the minute i win the lottery i'm commissioning one of them shits

little soccer-playing dicks carved out of the finest elephant ivory

I went to readings by Yann Martel and Margaret Atwood's which had small Q&A and a bit of interaction, if that counts.

I liked Atwood. She still sounds like a dried up hippie.

>>1574671
>little soccer-playing dicks carved out of the finest elephant ivory

I lol'd heartily

I met Amiri Baraka.
He's an envious, bitter and agitated old man.

>>1574674
Did you ask Yann why he plagiarises? I would have.

I saw Billy Joel in a 7/11 this one time...

>>1574666

I got 666 mentioning Gaiman. Coolsauce. Also forgot Kates Adie and Atkinson. Met those, too.

>>1574680
that poster is obviously canadian and i think that as a people they are physically incapable of being that rude. you can think the question and your mouth won't make the words

Neil Gaiman responded to my question on his blog. He's a bro.

>>1574680
>>1574690
I should have, but I was with a former teacher and she fights like an ox. Would have slapped my shit.Also, yeah, Canadian. Polite wusses, etc.

Not from an author, but I have from a musician.

True fucking story, I once wrote Noam Chomsky and asked him if thinking could be aerobic. (The thinking was that if your brain takes up as much energy as people say, wouldn't it use more energy if you think about something really hard.) He wrote back a week later, saying "methinks, no."

I wrote Randall Munroe the same question, he also said probably not. He also offered that we could test it by checking the temperature of the head of someone doing something intellectually laborious (he offered math problems).

I've never seen so many grown adults with Bieber fever as at a Neil Gaiman reading/signing. Makes a Chabon reading look like Maddox's book tour

WHENEVER MY EX-GIRLFRIEND EVER SAW SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN ON TV, SHE'D GET ALL EXCITED AND TELL ME TO GO UP TO THEM AND STUFF.

I'D TELL HER TO SHUT UP, THAT SHE EMBARRASSES ME, AND THAT SHE SHOULD DO IT HERSELF IF SHE WANTS, BECAUSE I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEM. THEN I ASKED HER WHY SHE DOESN'T GET ALL WET LIKE THIS OVER MY SISTER, WHO'S ALWAYS ON TV ADS, THE NEWS, AND THE LIKE. SHE SAID IT'S 'DIFFERENT', BECAUSE SHE KNOWS HER PERSONALLY.

Also, general celebrity story, Andy Dick tried to pee on me once. He was drunk outside a coffee shop I was in, I saw he was Andy Dick and talked to his drunk ass for a minute. First he tried to kiss me, and when I wasn't having that, he tried to piss on me.

>>1574715
awesome

mark waid signed my impulse trade paperback when i was 12

feel free to bask in my reflected glory

>>1574723
I Google'd him that night because I couldn't name anything he'd been in and found out his behavior that night wasn't unusual. He was crying about how his career is over, and his handler (for lack of a better word) was making excuses for him.

>>1574715
Ahahahaha that's awesome (fuck andy dick though for real)

Used to drink with James Joyce. He was a little bitch.

>>1574715
the next time someone makes this thread i'm going to claim this happened to me with joyce carol oates

The only thing I can think of is this time some young, new author came to our elementary school and read a few of the stories in it to us. She later went on to sell millions and millions of children's books and she's really famous now in that niche but for the life of me I can't remember her name or the book/s. I just remember something about an old woman and a skeleton.

Fergie stepped on my foot at an Easter event at the White House. She's extremely short, I'm 5'6'' and she was almost half a foot shorter than me. And no she didn't apologize or shake my hand. But her husband did. He was nice, and very cute.

Once I emailed John Scalzi asking whether or not Old Man's War worked as a standalone novel or if I would have to read the whole series.

He replied back, saying it was originally written as a standalone.

I'm related to David Horowitz. I have lunch with him about once a year. It's always the most awkward lunch ever.

When I was 18 I met Geoffry Chaucer while I was at the market buying potatoes and scones for my poor ailing mother.

He was an asshole.

>>1574829

Oh wow. I bet.

I just happened to read an old review of Radical Son the other day that ripped it (and him) apart. I was interested in Horowitz about a decade ago back right after I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time but I've ignored him for a long time now.

I literally bumped into Bret Easton Ellis at the Kennedy Airport. I said "Sorry man!", he looked a little fazed, tapped me on the shoulder and said "It's alright."

>>1574849
Radical Son is actually one of the least crazy things he has ever written (plus he namedrops my mom a few times in it so that's always fun to see). He just gets worse and worse with the years. It doesn't help that I'm not the most politically minded person while he's nothing but crazy politics all the time.
The plus side is that he always takes me out to really nice restaurants that I'd never go to otherwise and sometimes even picks up the check.

Alan Sillitoe was writer in residence or professor emeritus or some fucking shit at my university, and one time in the bar he spilt my drink while he was waving his arms around and I said something along the lines of "OI!", or something equally brilliant, and he said "Oh, I'm really sorry, I'll get you another drink".

Fucking true story man - I know, you wouldn't believe it if you saw it in a movie.

I also punched the lead singer out of Cornershop right in the mouth once, over a woman. And I got into a fight with Stefan Denis in a nightclub, over a woman, but that's not /lit/ related.

Oh yeah, and Seamus Heaney told my mate Nigel to move his car because it was blocking him in once in Hay-on-Wye.

Wow. Crazy, crazy life, eh?

I had dinner with Stephen King and Jenifer Aniston once.

One of them gave me a kiss, but I won't tell you which.

I exchanged e-mails with Thomas Ligotti after buying one of his books on Amazon. Pretty cool guy, he signed my book and everything.

>>1574829
Ha ha, holy shit! I also used to be fascinated with him about a decade back, before I got burnt out on watching Fox News for sport

I was in Walter Williams's microeconomics class last year. He's a really old black conservative economist with a nationally syndicated newspaper column, so if you ever talk politics with your grandparents you've probably heard them say something from his column.

After the final he took the whole class out to a bar. I wound up sitting next to him and getting pretty drunk, and he told a bunch of hilarious stories from when he was in the Army in the 1950s. He got court-martialed for attempting to steal a tank, and won, haha.

I woke up to J.D. Salinger pissing on my head one night.

I have the kiss of Walt Whitman upon my lips...

>>1575120
hope that makes up for missing out on that sweet erotic foosball table

Saw Walt Whitman in the supermarket once. He was poking among the meats in the refrigerator and asking the stock boys questions. Also Garcia Lorca was chilling down by the watermelons.

met george carlin before his show in boise, one of his last ones. exchanged emails with rick strassman, he's chill I just needed some questions answered. Wrote chuck palahniuk a letter when i was a newfag back when he did that fan mail thing a few years ago. Saw Joe Pesci in a bathroom in las vegas. Told him i liked some of his movies then left. Bumped into wee man in downtown boise he was drunk as shit. I think thats it excluding musicians and athletes.

>>1575104
I am so jealous of you.

>>1574852
It would be awesome if there was a mention of you or a character talking about how he/she killed "you" in his next book.

>>1574715
>>1574715
best tripfag

>>1575319
aww thanks!

I met Dave Barry once
If screenwriters count, I also met Paul Thomas Anderson

>>1575335
Is that sound kind of clever swipe at his directing abilities? He's really a much stronger director than he is a writer yet he insists on being a writer first. We'll see how the Pynchon adaptation goes...

How was he anyway? Really coked up?

Met T.C. Boyle. Nice guy.

>>1575344
No, no insult meant towards his directing abilities; he's actually my favorite director of all time.
And nah, he was cool.

Not a writer, but once i mailed Architecture in helsinki and they answered :P

pta is incredibly foxy by "talented film director" standards. like i think he's just about peerless in that regard

>>1574666
Elaborate?

>>1574692
What was the question? What was the answer?

>>1574704
Cool stories, bro.

>>1575104
Why the fuck did I lol hard at this?

A friend of mine went to a creative writing conference where he took a class being taught by a local poet named Antler. Antler was good friends with Allen Ginsberg and has been nationally published. He made a splash appearing at the concert; my friends tell me he just kind of emerged from the forest that surrounded campus like it was no big thing. He was so impressed with my friend's poetry he gave him contact info (a feat on par with being invited to Cormac McCarthy's house to watch baseball) and told him to send him poetry for critique.

So...pretty cool.

>>1575448

This is Antler, btw. Circa 1970-ish.

In eleventh grade we read some stupid fucking essay (Life with Daughters by Gerald Early) and everyone in my class hated it. I told the teacher I was gonna send the author an email and since the teacher was a total bro she let me do it during class.

Sent him this:
"Hi my name is ------ and I'm an English 3 AP student. My class and I are having a debate about your essay Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss American Pageant, which we just read in class. Your last anecdote, describing the conversation between you and your "daughters"...

"'how can two black dolls have a white daughter'...'we'ere not racial. That's old-fashioned. Don't you think so, Daddy?'".

...seems a little too perfect of an ending. Some people in my class are saying you just made that up to sum up the essay, and some people are saying that the conversation actually happened. If you could settle this debate for us we would be grateful.

Thanks for your time-

----
"

Got this back:
"I think it is insulting that you would write to me and ask if I lied in
my essay.
Gerald Early"

Class lol'd hard.

Me, the class and teacher decided to send him this:

"I'm sorry that you feel insulted by our question. However, in light of the recent James Frey incident, we know that it's not impossible for an essayist to embellish in order to make a point.

I would like to add that after i read the class your curt reply, our class now feels that there is a good chance that you are exaggerating, but honestly it's not that big of a deal that you may have made that conversation up.

Thank you once again for your time

------
"

>>1575456
Leary got real mad.

He sent me this:
"The fact that you would think because of the Frey incident that I would
have made up what I wrote is silly. Do you think this about the
nonfiction that you have read that was written before Frey? Did Orwell
make up the incidents about his school life in "Such, Such were the
Joys"? Did Virginia Woolfe make up incidents in her autobiographical
writings? Did Richard Wright make up his life in Mississippi in Black
Boy? I did not make any unusual claims in what I wrote. I did not say
anything unbelievable: what I described inthe entire essay was ordinary,
ordinary life. If you think I would lie about that, then you and your
classmates miss the point of the entire essay. That is very sad, indeed.
And jumping to the conclusion that I must be lying because I gave you a
curt response seems a bit strange to me. A curt response is a curt
response. I don't owe you or anyone else any explanation or
justification for what I write. The justification and explanation is in
the writing itself, as Conrad once wrote. Why don't you ask my daughters
if what I wrote is true? They are real people. You have their real
first names: Linnet and Rosalind. They are living in the world. One
lives in Houston and the other is currently living in Germany. Of
course, you might be thinking I am making this up as well. Or you can
contact my wife, Ida, who lives in St. Louis and works at Washington
University. I will state emphatically in this final communication with
you that everything in the essay is absolutely true and happened as it
was written and if you contact my wife or my children they will say the
same. Shame on you for having to ask me this!
Gerald Early"

Met with Salman Rushdie, have a copy of The Satanic Verses signed by him.

>>1574829

Man, I got excited when that name sounded familiar but it turned out the author I was thinking of is Tony Horwitz. =(

>>1574829

Haha!
I'm here procrastinating on an essay about him right now!

>>1574889
>>1574889
>punched the lead singer of cornershop

i hope he was smoking, so that he spat out his mouthful of ash(a)

>>1575458

Haha. Sounds like he lied his ass off to sell an essay and he doesn't like being reminded of it.

Met with Aubrey Lanslidel, she gave me a bj

I met Houellebecq at a bar in my hometown (south of spain). He was fucking a local 18 year old girl and went there with her. He was just an old guy completely out of place, nothing special

I met Darren Shan when I was young, like maybe 11 in our local library. He called me up and I got to pretend to be the woman in the first book who gets her hand bitten off by the wolfman (the wolfman was some other 11 year old) and then he signed my book with "Thanks for the help, you're a true vampire"
One of the coolest guy's I've ever met to this day

When I was on holiday in Paris a while back, I met Jeanette Winterson in a cafe. Shamefully enough, I'd only read one book by her before then, but we had a little chat anyway, she was really very warm and very friendly. When I admitted that I wanted to be a novelist too one day, her eyes just lit up and she was very encouraging - she just told me to keep plugging on at it, and words to effect that haters gonna hate. Words to live by!

I got an email response from Kate Beaton discussing Hume?

Unrelated to literature at all, my grandfather met Judy Garland the night she killed herself.

This is a general celeb story.

My friend and I were walking through the city when we saw Russell Brand, my friend turns and shouts
'OI RUSSELL! Do you know how many wanks I've had over your missus?'

Russell turns, without stoppIng, and shouts 'Not as many as I've had mate'

Was a good day

I met Terry Brooks. Yeah, the guy who wrote like fifty Shannara novels, which /lit/ thinks of as shitty. Anyway, he was a nice guy. Signed my copy of Sword of Shannara, said I had an interesting name and then we joked about him using it for a character.

I've met Jeff Vandermeer, M. John Harrison, GRRM and Alastair Reynolds, but they were all at a genre convention, so there's no cool story behind it. Reynolds was quite nice; very friendly.

>>1575650
hey he published two more books than anyone on /lit/ ever will

One time I met a really shitty fantasy writer at a pizza hut. I'm not sure why I said hello to her... just because I recognized her I guess. Anyway she gave me a copy of her then new book and signed it for me. I read the first 20 pages.

Another time I met ol' Safran Foer, but it was a book club thing and I only said "hi nice to meet you I like your work thanks for coming here", though actually I haven't read anything from him.

Some guy who wrote really popular children books came to my school once when I was about 9. I had never read any of his stuff, so wasn't particularly interested, but I had a very supportive teacher at the time who showed him one of the stories I had written. He sorta skim read it, said it was very interesting and spoke to me a little about what I was reading currently and other books I had read.

Meh.

>>1574715
>>1574756

Did you ask him why he killed Phil Hartmann? I would have.

Or I'd just have battered him - I hate Andy Dick. I don't think I'd ever get tired of punching him.

I met Nikki Giovanni at a local independant bookstore, years ago, I was pretty young, don't remember much except that she had a regal bearing. I've also seen Ronald Isley at the STL Airport, and his ex-wife Angela Winbush at a mall. She was walking around a ladies' clothing shop singing, and the clerk was also a singer, so she struck up a conversation. AW still has a beautiful voice.

>>1576000
Just came here to agree with this post (fuck Andy Dick, seriously fuck that guy)

One time, We had to write 3 letters to famous Belgian asking them what they though about George Simenon for school. I wrote to a guy who went by the name of Paul Nothomb. His reply was written down on a lined sheet of paper and was a full page long. It was the best of the 3 reply. Later, I read his autobiography about the time he was caught by the gestapo because he was a communist. His book moved me so much I though about writing him another letter, but I learned he had passed away a few month before.

I took Patrick Rothfuss out for not only dinner and drinks but partying. The guy is fucking awesome beyond belief - this was before he was done with the second book. He was hitting on all of these chicks by asking them what it was like to fall in love and fuck a new girl. Strictly for research.

I also had drinks and a long conversation about Buddhism with Keanu Reeves. at the end i asked if he was truly immortal.....he laughed and then shrugged


only two i think /lit/ would care bout.

>>1576090
>I also had drinks and a long conversation about Buddhism with Keanu Reeves.

>>1576111
>>1576111
>>1576111

He was filming some movie in the town I was living in at the time. Tarrytown, NY to be exact. It was pretty fucking crazy but he is an awesome guy.

met most czech writers
Met Sapkowski, he was drunk as fuck. Sort of saw it coming either way. Met Harry Harryson, he was a strangely normal guy.

I met Mario Vargas Llosa at a Fernando de Szyszlo exhibition in 2008. He lives in Europe most of the time but was in Peru for a short while. I just politely said hello to him, told him about how in high school many of his novels were mandatory reading, and how "The War of the End of the World" was my favorite. He recommended some writers to me (he has a thing for Sade) and that was it.

My aunt was actually there when Vargas Llosa famously socked Gabriel García-Márquez in the face, though. She said he was down like a sack of potatoes. I don't blame him, Vargas Llosa is a pretty big guy.

I shot the shit with Christopher Hitchens. What up.

No, but seriously - he didn't let me talk, not once. He's one of those guys who has to dominate every conversation he's in

>>1576220
How was he in bed?

>>1576234
I wasn't aware he was a faggot when I met him, I only read his memiors later so I didn't entertain the possibility

>>1576220
>>1576245
Is he as much of an asshole as he seems to be from his media appearances?

I met Elie Wiesel a little over ten years ago because he was speaking at my middle school. I shook his hand, but I didn't really talk to him.

At that same school we had this Columbine victim's parents come to our school and talk--it was real preachy stuff.

Last year at my college we had Bobby Seale come and do a Q&A sort of thing. There was a woman that kept hassling him about how the Black Panther Party was a bunch of murderers and now everybody hates her.

>>1576260
Not at all. He was really nice to me and actually smiled a lot once everyone had left which i didn't think he was capable of

>>1576271
>bobby Seale
>her
'sup whitey

>>1576280

Her as in the woman who has hassling Bobby Seale.

I used to work at Border's bookstore and here are the authors I've seen:

Orson Scott Card (signed first edition of Ender's Game is worth over $2,000 I found out)
Ted Nugent (plugging his cookbook or something)
Bruce Campbell (plugging for his autobiography)
Terry Goodkind (he lives in Las Vegas NV so I've seen him a couple of times; he looks like a short irish leprechaun...he's also kind of a douchebag).

I also saw Michael Jackson there...he came into my store with like 5 bodyguards and filled up like 6 baskets full of books..he just walked through the aisles pointing at books and his handlers would just throw them in the basket. Them he rushed out the store (I gave him a thumbs up as he walked by me, he gave me a peace sign), then one of his handlers paid for the 6 baskets of books with a huge fucking wad of cash he pulled out of his pockets.

Other random celebrities I've seen:

Bill Clinton in a purse shop in the Caesar Forum Shops in Las Vegas (seriously)
Sylvester Stallone a whole bunch of times (I work at Planet Hollywood)
Arnold Schwartzenegger a couple of times
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Pauly Shore
Jason Statholm a couple of times
The black guy from the Green Mile and Armageddon
Jerry Springer a shit load of times (he had a residency at Planet Hollywood for America's Got Talent and he came into my restaurant to eat almost every day)
And a whole shit-load of others I can't really remember right now.

>>1576275
I'm not a big fan but I've always read that he is surprisingly broriffic in person (despite thinking he knows everything)

>>1576149
Harry Harryson or Harrison?

the guy who wrote the Stainless Steel Rat books?

you know Assange used HH as an alias in his online dating profile

I talked to Ray Bradbury over the phone once. He invited me to attend San Diego Comic Con with him but I couldn't make it. I'm going to visit his house in a few months though and ask him to sign my copy of Dandelion Wine.

Ahmed Rashid and Gretchen Peters both responded to letters that I sent them, although both were more practical questions about their work than fan letters. Rashid thanked me for reading his books, though.

I emailed to John Dolan once and his reply was personable and without pretense. He is exactly what he says on the tin.

Maybe four or five years ago, I went to a popular breakfast spot in Atlanta (Flying Biscuit--the first one) with some friends. It was the weekend, so there was a wait. When we came out, who should be milling around on the sidewalk with his party waiting to be seated? Salman Rushdie, that's who. I was like "doesn't that guy still have a million dollar bounty on his head? how can he just be hanging out?" I tried to act nonchalant and point him out to my friends, but they didn't care. Later, I found out he had just moved here to teach at Emory.

Anyway, that's it for /lit/ related, but if this had been /mu/, it'd be a longer post.

>>1576445
fucking love that book. Luck-yyyyyyyyyyyy

what a cool thread this turned out to be. I thought this was going to be nothing but stories about trying to own Harlan Ellison at a reading q&a

When I was 5 my parents took me to visit cousins in England. Played football in his backgarden, invitably kicked ball over fence. Rolls into an old hut/ shed type thing.

Climb fence to retrieve. Frightened by unexpected old man sitting silently in hut. Start crying. Old man tuts, gives me sweetie, gives me ball sends me back.

Cousin pissing himself, tells parents.

10 years later, watching BBC news. Father: "He gave you a sweetie once."

"Who?"

>Look at TV
>Roald Dahl had just died

>>1576536
I think we have winrar here

>>1576536

>Look at TV
>Roald Dahl had just died
>and he raped me

>>1576536
awesome!

wasn't he one of those children's book authors who didn't like children, too? so double winrar really, i bet that if you hadn't been particularly cute or endearing he'd have pissed in your eye instead. or maybe i'm thinking of shel silverstein or someone

>>1576090
Not to cast doubts on your story but isn't Patrick Rothufuss (a) a tremendous neckbeard (b) married with a kid

>>1576463
That's pretty cool. I'm more familiar with the War Nerd persona than with Dolan himself (although I've read his stuff in the Exile) but he seems like an awesome guy.

Saw William Gibson recently while he was on his book tour. He told me that the bleeding edge of pan-American slang in 2032 will remix Western lettering and Chinese diction like a fucking Slapchop and every spook from Bali to Langley will rush to construct computation machines that will shape this delicate glossolalia into an techno-Orwellian doublespeak and all I said was "Yo man I just asked if you want curly fries with that."

I live in Scotland. It's a small country, so I've met a lot of local authors, some of them very big names internationally. A number of them are my friends.

You jelly?

I also endeared myself to James Ellroy at a book signing by asking him when he was going to get around to writing "Dick Contino's Magic Fuckpad".

>>1576854
Ellroy is the fucking man.

>>1576854
I am terribly, terribly jealous that you've met some 'internationally famous' authors you don't even name. How will I ever deal with this crushing envy.

>>1576857

Yeah, he's a great writer and a cool guy. He signed my copy of "My Dark Places" with "She lives!" in reference to his murdered mother.

>>1576861

Okey dokey: Doris Lessing, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood, Iain Banks, Ian Rankin, China Miéville, Terry Pratchet, Neil Gaiman ... tell me when to stop...

>>1576870

Say what each of them was like and how you met or your full of it.

Carol Ann Duffy :P

>>1576874

>Say what each of them was like and how you met or your full of it.

And break my anonymity on 4chan? Go fuck yourself, you douchebag.

I'll throw you a few crumbs, though.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is an excellent place to meet authors, especially if you're participating in the event in some way.

Doris Lessing was wonderful.

I've interviewed the majority for one market or another.

I was able to give Margaret Atwood a little bit of advice when she was looking for a Canadian performance poet. (I basically said, "He's right behind you.) She's tiny, by the way.

>>1576874

Way to go with a snappy comeback, sunshine.