Fiction

Date, Dump, or Marry: Famous Author Version

Elizabeth Bastos

Staff Writer

Elizabeth Bastos has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and writes at her blog 19th-Century Lady Naturalist. Follow her on Twitter: @elizabethbastos

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You played Date, Dump, or Marry in seventh grade with your friends using celebrities. I would have like totally, dated Simon le Bon at that time (it was the 80s) but this time we’re playing for Literature. The stakes are higher, you and your friends are older and have New Yorker subscriptions and your experience of love and bookshelves is deeper, wider, and more revealing.

Dump: Faulkner (I just never know who is talking).

Date: Nick Hornby (I mean c’mon, horny is right there in his name) and Junot Diaz (awesome facial hair, dirty-minded although they say where there is a lot of talking there isn’t a lot of doing, so hmmmm)

Marry: Herman Melville (see the world, learn about cetaceans plus, I like beards). I’d marry George Eliot (to be called “The Other Mrs. Eliot” and share bon mots and tweed over a plate of lovely crumpets)

You?