ILB Brief Encounters: Literary Figures Appearing in Interesting Situations

Ha, exactly

From the Julie Phillips Sheldon/Tiptree bio:

It was true: writers did like it. Answering an admiring note from Tiptree in 1970, Italo Calvino wrote, “A letter like yours is actually the best present a postman can put down in my mail-box. It is for the unknown reader that any author writes, but it is a rare chance to meet him, even by letter, and to discover that he is such a nice and witty person.”

As they set off in Odilon's taxi Joyce obliviously opened a window and lit a cigarette, and Sydney Schiff hurriedly shut the one and asked Joyce to throw away the other. Joyce complained of his eyes, Proust of his stomach. Did M. Joyce like truffles? He did. Had he met the Duchesse de X? He had not. 'I regret that I do not know M. Joyce's work,' remarked Proust. 'I have never read M. Proust,' replied Joyce. When they reached 44 Rue Hamelin Proust said to Schiff, politely but firmly: 'Please ask M. Joyce to let my taxi drive him home.' Thus the two greatest novelists of the twentieth century met and parted.

The one and only exchange between Michael Dummett and Ludwig Wittgenstein, recounted in Williamson's "How did we get here from there? The transformation of analytic philosophy":

Dummett was going for a tutorial at Anscombe’s house. She kept the door unlocked. As was the practice, Dummett went in, and sat down to await her summons. An elderly man in a dressing-gown came downstairs and asked ‘Where’s the milk?’; Dummett replied ‘Don’t ask me’. That was the extent of his conversation with Wittgenstein.

TIL that Shizuo Kakutani was the thesis advisor of Saul Bellow's fourth wife, Alexandra. I wonder if this created a conflict of interest for Shizuo's daughter, Michiko.