make the bitterness of life more bearable
This is obviously a little on the late side, but I wanted to link to Alain de Botton's fantasy about the perfect New Year's Eve dinner party.
In my ideal New Year's Eve dinner, everyone would agree to give up the masks of ordinary life. The whole point of the evening would be to create an atmosphere of exceptional intimacy, where everyone could stop trying to seem impressive and instead reveal themselves to be the flawed, anxious, silly, profound, doubting creatures we all are underneath. Rather than boasting about achievements, people would be encouraged to reveal their fears and regrets.
Men are generally very boring companions, because it takes them so long to stop trying to appear impressive. So the men I'd choose for my dinner party would be people who, in their writings, have given evidence of baring their souls.
