Posted: Dec 3, 07 8:18pm

[Your Highness, I hope you weren't kidding about introducing ourselves and our guest for the holiday shindig, and pray that I'm not making a little fooless of myself]: Ahem:

I accept the royal invitation with pleasure and am excited to bring as my guest Ernest Hemingway. Mr. Hemingway high-jacked my attention as a teenager from the usual authors assigned to us in class. I discovered Mr. Hemingway one day in the attic among my stepfather's discarded college texts. I sat and baked under the dusty eaves, stunned by "The Snows of Killemangaro" and blown away by the wounded lion as a character in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber."

In place of the wide-angled omniscience of an avuncular Charles Dickens or the richly-woven wordplay of a Thomas Hardy - all very fine - I discovered that prose could be blunt, spare and strong, and that how you said a thing, and where you said it, and what you left unsaid could speak more than an avalanche of words. From him I learned to waste no words, to pick only the right one. He was my break-out man.

Now he warned me he'd be wearing his jungle gear and packing his own G&T, and hoped the party would be lively and smart. He asked if the bard would be there, and as I couldn't tell him, he grumbled over the guest list's not being yet available. Surely that will slowly be revealed.