Manuel gives the straight-up case for the TV star:
Diana Rigg’s daughter remembered her deceased mother in The Guardian and described her as: famous, beautiful, a star, courageous, truth-teller, naughty, fun, curious, a prodigious reader, self-educated, cocktail inventor, and stoic (among other things). I was voting for her anyway, but this seems a good mix for delivering a seminar.
-1 for not calling it the Grauniad but, yeah, seems like some good seminar possibilities. A bit of stoicism could be helpful in dealing with the quiet grad students in the audience. We gotta watch out for the cocktails, though, in case anyone under 21 shows up.
Raghu argues in favor of the novelist:
I had never heard of Elizabeth Taylor (the relevant one). Reading the Wikipedia page, which is glowing but rather dull, I see “Michael Hofmann noted that the novel [Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont] was nominated for the Booker Prize, but that the novelist Saul Bellow, a ‘celebrity judge, thought he heard a lot of tinkling teacups in Mrs. Palfrey, and there went her chances’”. Since a seminar isn’t a seminar without tea (or better: coffee), this seems like a datapoint in favor. I’ve skipped out on seminars when the pre-seminar coffee failed to appear. I’ll keep my cup quiet.
I’m not a caffeine drinker myself, but I appreciate this counter to Bellow’s smug sexism. I’m sick on account I just ate a TV dinner. As an extra benefit this reminds us of how annoying Martin Amis is, even though, yes, he’ll have to be included along with H. P. Lovecraft and H. L. Mencken in the Pyrotechnic writers category in some future competition.
Anyway, I was all ready to go for Taylor, but then I came across this argument from Tom:
There is a clear confusion of Elizabeth Taylor’s, which begs the question of whether they have ever been seen together. Invite them both and we can find out if they are each others alter ego.
That’s a pretty compelling case to invite her, but . . .Tom made a tyro mistake with his apostrophe. I can’t imagine that a proper British author would tolerate that, so Diana it must be.
Today’s matchup
OK, now we’re getting to the heavyweights. Legendary war novelist Joseph Heller is second seeded in the Duplicate Names category, and, as for our other contestant: the Traitors category is so damn deep that ol’ Benedict here doesn’t even merit a seed.
It would be amazing to see either of these guys. Heller was a Columbia grad so he might even show up. Arnold would probably reveal the time, room number, and zoom password to the British. But that could be ok . . . better attendance, right? I feel like there’s a joke here about having to fly 50 missions, but I can’t quite make it work, but, hey, that’s your job in the comments!
Well Benny can stretch to a double major – Major General for us, working with the Brit’s Major Andre. But that’s not close to Major Major Major so it has to be Heller.
I’d go with Heller, if only because Arnold can be invited back in a future “two first names” category.
Is this a breakfast seminar? Literally no other reason to go Benedict.
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? Working for the Russians! Gotta go with Heller for this prescience. I’d like him to lecture on family gatherings; Good as Gold was clearly written verbatim at my family dinners.
I have a Benedict Arnold conundrum that I wouldn’t mind some resolution on.
I biked up in the direction of West Point once. I didn’t make it, but on the way there I passed through a place my phone calls Haverstraw and another place called West Haverstraw.
There was a sign on a trail in the woods in Haverstraw titled “Treason Site”. There was a sign at a Ford dealership in West Haverstraw titled “Treason House”.
Where, precisely, did the treason-ing happen? How many other treasonous places are there between Haverstraw and West Haverstraw? I think Joseph Heller would agree this is a worthwhile question.
Irrelevantly, here’s a nursery rhyme written by James Thurber about Haverstraw:
Half a mile from Haverstraw there lived a halfwit fellow,
Half his house was brick and red, and half was wood and yellow;
Half the town knew half his name but only half could spell it.
If you will sit for half an hour, I’ve half a mind to tell it.
PPS The web knows the answer https://benedictarnold.smugmug.com/Meeting-of-Arnold-and-Andre/Treason-House/
There’s something suspicious about Benedict Arnold in a bracket next to Diana Rigg / Elizabeth Taylor, so that if he advances he’s guaranteed to be paired with a Britisher, regardless of who won the last match. One might say that it’s Rigged.
Benedict Arnold because he was discriminated against for being loyalty fluid.
In favor of Joseph Heller – he might be able to give a nice talk about why he could write one truly great book amidst a bunch of later awful ones.
In favor of Benedict Arnold – he could give a nice talk about what it means to sell out to the team offering the highest reward (don’t know if it was money, fame, or military standing)
this is a tough one but I would rather hear from Benedict than to have my fondest memories of Catch-22 possible ruined by an incoherent talk by the author.
Alan:
I kinda liked Something Happened. Not that I ever quite got past page 50 or so, but I’ve liked what I’ve read of it so far. Are you so sure you want to commit to calling it “awful”?
Andrew,
I you got to page 50, that is about 45 more pages than I read. I first read Catch-22 when the paperback first came out in 1962 (I was in 10th grade) and read it through twice at the time. It’s one of the few books that I pick up every five years or so and re-read it as I found it so well crafted (very few books other than some Pynchon, Gaddis, Oates, and Powers fall into the re-read category). ‘Something Happened’ failed for me, likely because it did not live up to Catch-22.