Patrick Modiano: Nobel Prize winner jokes about multiple personality in New York Times Book Review Interview

“You’re organizing a literary dinner party.  Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I don’t know if one could organize a literary “party” inviting 20 writers as one would organize a meeting of club members. I’m afraid these writers, unless they are already friends, wouldn’t have much to say to one another. James Joyce and Marcel Proust met once when they were invited to a party in Paris. This was reportedly their only exchange:

“It’s raining.”

“Do you have an umbrella?”

“No.”

“Me neither” (1).

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/books/review/patrick-modiano-books.html

Comment: The joke is based on the fact that a fiction writer’s regular, “host personality” is probably not the personality who wrote his books.