DINNER COMPANIONS
By Leanne Shapton, in the New York Times, March 5, 2009

Alone in London last spring, I took Grégoire Bouillier’s short book “The Mystery Guest” to my favorite restaurant, propping it up over my baba ghanouj, chorizo and tortilla. I slurped mansaf soup between page turns and crumbled bits of yogurt pistachio cake into the book’s gutters, simultaneously finishing my meal and the story. It was a lovely date.

A week later, at the Hay Festival, a literary gathering in Hay-on-Wye, the writer A. A. Gill was asked who his ideal dinner companion would be. His reply: “One of the great joys is to go to a restaurant you can’t afford and sit and eat with a book.” This led me to wonder whom other authors were taking to dinner, so I asked a few of my favorites.

Jay McInerney
Over a recent solitary meal at Otto in New York, I was reading A. J. Liebling’s “Between Meals,” a kind of gastronomic memoir of Liebling’s early years in Paris. I find that it stimulates my appetite.

Rebecca Miller
“The Assistant,” by Robert Walser, is a rare glimpse of suppressed hysteria and paranoia in a male psyche. It’s such a modern, interior book, and it’s funny, too, and strange. Perfect for moments of alienation while eating a sandwich alone.

Lydia Davis
“The Catcher in the Rye” is so over-­assigned to high schoolers that I had forgotten how present, real and funny Holden Caulfield’s voice is. Certain things he did so suavely in an older New York can’t be done anymore, but the many varieties of “phonies” he complained about still exist.

Jo Ann Beard
“One Man’s Meat,” by E. B. White, is a book of bright essays about dark days in America and a perfect complement to vegetarian dining.

Read the rest of the selections here at the NYT online.

Leanne Shapton’s most recent book is “Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry.” She is the art director of the Op-Ed and editorial pages of The Times.