Rachel Cohen was Lisa Simpson's imaginary Jewish friend

She's also a real-life writer who just wrote an intellectual history inspired by a very, very long roadtrip around America. Her book A Chance Meeting is a compilation of non-fiction encounters between artistic giants:

Much of the book's delight is in the detail. Charlie Chaplin turns up, unannounced, at Hart Crane's flat at two in the morning. The photographer Richard Avedon tapes a negative of his sister's portrait on to his shoulder until it creates a kind of tanned tattoo. Norman Mailer bids farewell to James Baldwin beside the Playboy mansion pool while recovering from a 36-hour bender. The book opens with the young Henry James's visit to the New York studio of Matthew Brady to have his portrait taken by daguerreotype. It ends with Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell marching on the Pentagon during the Vietnam war.