A friend writes:
You have now written books on yourself, H.L. Mencken and George Balanchine, and Louis Armstrong is next. How would they interact at dinner?
Needless to say, I’d revel in the company of all three men, whether separately or together. In addition to being famously companionable, they were good talkers–not to mention eaters and drinkers–and I’d be tempted to ask each of them an endless string of questions in between bites. Alas, cross-examination is a thoroughly unsound basis for a dinner party, and since Mencken had no interest in ballet and dismissed jazz as “undifferentiated musical protoplasm, dying of its own effluvia,” it’s possible that the conversation might grow a little bumpy if left to its own devices.
Instead, I’d start by nudging my guests toward the safer ground of classical music, to which they were all passionately devoted. With the arrival of the wine steward, I’d encourage a discussion of the relative merits of alcohol and marijuana: Mencken, who once declared himself “omnibibulous,” and Armstrong, who rarely let a day go by without getting high, would surely have had fun kicking that topic around. Then I might mention Isadora Duncan, for whose dancing both Balanchine (“To me it was absolutely unbelievable–a drunken, fat woman who for hours was rolling around like a pig”) and Mencken (“A mass of puerilities, without any more rational basis than golf or spiritualism”) had nothing but contempt. I’m not aware that Armstrong had any strong views about modern dance, but he certainly knew plenty about dancing in general, being a jazz musician, and I’m sure he’d chime in to interesting effect.
Over dessert, the talk would likely turn without prompting to women. Balanchine and Armstrong were both married four times, and though Mencken only tied the knot once, he had his fair share of girlfriends, going so far as to write a book called In Defense of Women. Between the three of them, I dare say quite a bit of light would be shed on the ever-intriguing subject of romance and its discontents.
Don’t you think that adds up to a pretty good conversational menu?