Gee, I was goimg to say “Jean Harlow, Theda Bara and Anna Held,” so I could ask them if I did a good job with their biographies. But then I was overwhelmed by the mental image of the three of them whalin’ away at me with baseball bats for either getting everything wrong or giving away their real ages . . .
. . . So, I guess Abraham Lincoln, Marie Antoinette (if I could speak French or Austrian) and Oscar Wilde.
NOT myself at a younger age—I’d hate to have to either disillusion or lie to the poor little sprat.
[ul][li]Thomas Jefferson. Reasons: doesn’t require assuming that language barriers could be overcome, I know enough about him to be able to have a good sense of what things I’d want to ask him, his range of knowledge and interests was broad enough that you’d never run out of things to talk about, and it’d be fascinating to hear his take on everything that’s happened in the last 175 years. I can’t think of any one figure offhand who could authoritatively tell you more about the world from say 1760 to 1825.[/li][li]Benjamin Franklin, for many of the same reasons as Jefferson, plus his experience as a printer and that he probably would be more fun than Jefferson.[/li]OK, two fairly conventional choices, so for the third . . . probably someone else from the book arts; maybe Frederic Goudy, perhaps Bruce Rogers, or more likely Jan Tschichold. I don’t think I’d be able to stand an entire day with Eric Gill, fascinating though it undoubtedly would be.[/ul]
John Wilkes Booth. I’d tie him up on the night Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater.
Lee Harvey Oswald. Likewise. (Except for the Ford’s Theater part. Kennedy never went to Ford’s Theater. As far as I know.)
Adolf Hitler during his stint as a soldier in the 1st World War. The Germans would hardly notice one more casualty if I shot him.
Or didn’t you mean we could change the past when we travelled back in time?
