Books with just two (or something like that) people?

December 11, 2008 5:23 PM

Are there any books out there that are basically just two people having a conversation and going about their business? Sort of a book version of Before Sunset, or My Dinner with Andre?
posted by Xere to Grab Bag (19 answers total)

Sandor Marai, Embers -- not exactly like My Dinner With Andre (it's closer to a monologue than a conversation) but it might be in the neighborhood of what you're looking for.
posted by scody at 5:38 PM on December 11, 2008

Nicholson Baker's Vox is a single phone call -- a phone-sex call, actually.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:42 PM on December 11, 2008

Another Nicholson Baker book, Checkpoint, is a conversation between two friends, one of whom is convinced he must assassinate President Bush.

Fried Calamari is a dialogue/conversation between two people on a first date.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 6:11 PM on December 11, 2008

Marguerite Duras's The Square is a novel (more like a long short story) about two people talking in a park.
posted by oulipian at 6:12 PM on December 11, 2008

Philip Roth, Deception.
posted by jayder at 6:27 PM on December 11, 2008

Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages by Manuel Puig.
posted by Wreath Ass at 6:48 PM on December 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Waiting for Godot.
posted by oulipian at 7:01 PM on December 11, 2008

A couple of William Gaddis novels, JR and A Frolic of His Own, are entirely conversation.
posted by dfan at 7:02 PM on December 11, 2008

Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:11 PM on December 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy is a "novel in dramatic form," according to the cover. I'm not sure what makes it a novel in dramatic form instead of regular old play, but it's good and interesting and a pretty quick read. It's just a conversation between two strangers referred to only as "Black" and "White." It's about race and class and suicide and spirituality.
posted by aka burlap at 8:17 PM on December 11, 2008

A couple of William Gaddis novels, JR and A Frolic of His Own, are entirely conversation.

I was going to suggest Carpenter's Gothic - which is just conversations between people in a particular house at different times. It's the only Gaddis novel that doesn't require heroic levels of commitment to finish. [Not that they don't reward such commitment.]
posted by Joe Beese at 9:19 PM on December 11, 2008

It's a religious text, but the Bhagavad Gita!
posted by sian at 10:56 PM on December 11, 2008

Camus' The Fall.
posted by juv3nal at 12:01 AM on December 12, 2008

The Five Temptations of a CEO
posted by boeing82 at 12:18 AM on December 12, 2008

Plato's Dialogues :)
posted by cardamine at 5:00 AM on December 12, 2008

Probably not exactly what you want, but...

Pietro Aretino, The Secrete Life of Nuns.

Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master.

D.D., Rameau's Nephew. (It's been a long time since I've read it, but IIRC, it's in dialogue form.)
posted by cobra libre at 6:08 AM on December 12, 2008

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit is a book length conversation between an unnamed narrator and a gorilla.
posted by copystar at 6:40 AM on December 12, 2008

Another another Nicholson Baker book, The Mezzanine, takes place on an escalator. See a pattern?
posted by spamguy at 7:20 AM on December 12, 2008

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Also, this might be a moot point since you mention the movie My Dinner with Andre, but I have seen a book version of the screenplay -- probably pretty obscure, but my local library had a copy.
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:41 AM on December 12, 2008