Dirda on Books

Michael Dirda (The Washington Post)

Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda took your questions and comments concerning literature, books and the joys of reading.

Each week Dirda's name appears -- in unmistakably big letters -- on page 15 of The Post's Book World section. If he's not reviewing a hefty literary biography or an ambitious new novel, he's likely to be turning out one of his idiosyncratic essays or rediscovering some minor Victorian classic. Although he earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell, Dirda has somehow managed to retain a myopic 12-year-old's passion for reading. He particularly enjoys comic novels, intellectual history, locked-room mysteries, innovative fiction of all sorts.

These days, Dirda says he still spends inordinate amounts of time mourning his lost youth, listening to music (Glenn Gould, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall, The Tallis Scholars), and daydreaming ("my only real hobby"). He claims that the happiest hours of his week are spent sitting in front of a computer, working. His most recent books include "Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments" (Indiana hardcover, 2000; Norton paperback, 2003) and his self-portrait of the reader as a young man, "An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland" (Norton, 2003). In the fall of 2004 Norton will bring out a new collection of his essays and reviews. He is currently working on several other book projects, all shrouded in the most complete secrecy.

Dirda joined The Post in 1978, having grown up in the working-class steel town of Lorain, Ohio, and graduated with highest honors in English from Oberlin College. His favorite writers are Stendhal, Chekhov, Jane Austen, Montaigne, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Nabokov, John Dickson Carr, Joseph Mitchell, P.G. Wodehouse and Jack Vance. He thinks the greatest novel of all time is either Murasaki Shikubu's "The Tale of Genji" or Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu." In a just world he would own Watteau's painting "The Embarkation for Cythera." He is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, The Ghost Story Society and The Wodehouse Society. He enjoys teaching and was once a visiting professor in the Honors College at the University of Central Florida, which he misses to this day.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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Fairfax, Va.: Could you suggest books from American authors. I am Indian, and have just started reading books by Steinbeck, Hawthorne, etc. Thanks.

Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! This week's show is coming from Silver Spring, where the weather has turned cold and snow is predicted for Thursday morning. Which means that I should drive back to Westminster later tonight, rather than tomorrow, since I have to teach a class at 10. Sigh. No rest for the wicked.
It's been a hard week, but I trust that life will continue to return to its normal level of chaos and distress. I've been advised to look for one thing each day that brings me joy--and so I'm expecting some cheery postings. But enough of the usual preliminary blather, and onto the usual . . .hmm. . . elevated discourse.

Gee, American authors. This is a big subject. You might go to a library and look for an anthology of American literature--those from Norton are well established--and flip through the pages looking for writers or works that appeal to you. But if I had to pick say a handful of classics that define being American, and are still engaging to a modern reader, I 'd probably point you to:
Walden, by Thoreau
The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler
Selected short stories of Eudora Welty, John Cheever and Raymond Carver

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Washington, D.C.: Michael,

Love the chats! Your recommendations have always taken me the right direction.

I've got a business trip to San Diego later this week, but will have some free time. Do you or the chatters know any cool literary diversions in the area? Book stores, libraries, small museums, that sort of thing.

Thanks!

Michael Dirda: Thanks for the compliment. If anyone has advice, get back to me right quick and I'll try to post it before 3.

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Alexandria, Va.: Which of Iris Murdoch's novels do you think are her best? Thanks.

Michael Dirda: For a short one, A Severed Head, for a midlength one The Black Prince, for a longish one, The Sea, the Sea.

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Oxford, U.K.: Mr Dirda,

You have advocated that a comprehensive education should consist of first reading the classics -- from the Greeks all the way down. Unfortunately, that is not possible most of the time, whether it be because of educational curricula dictates or because personal tastes point toward reading later works such contemporary fiction, Edwardian comedies, or what have you, for pleasure. But reading "what comes after" will necessarily diminish our appreciation for the earlier, pathbreaking works that changed the contours of literature as an art form. I am thinking of works like "Pamela," which, back when it was published, was one of the first novels of character study -- something that told the story of individuals rather than events. But as 21st century readers with modern sensibilities and access to all the novels that came to be influenced by Richardson, and for whom a story that examines the interiority of a charcter is no longer a novelty, we fail to appreciate the value of such works. I must confess, not having read literature chronologically, to have been horribly bored by all the tedious details in Richardson's work. So what, in your opinion, is the future of such works such as "Pamela" or "Clarissa"? Will they become (as they already have) obsolete and exist only as objects of academic scrutiny?

Michael Dirda: I'm afraid that Richardson is already an academic subject, as is, say, Smollett. Of the 18th century English novels I suspect that people still read Tristram Shandy for pleasure, and Tom Jones, Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders. But that's about it.

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Alexandria, Va.: At your suggestion, I tried Stanley Elkin's "The Living End", but found the humor a little sardonic for my taste -- the book lingered too long in Hell, however, the Heavenly final third was worth the wait.
Can recommend another Elkin that's not so dark? How about "The Franchiser" or "Mrs. Ted Bliss"? I also want to try "The Dybbuk" by S. Ansky. It got me to wondering why angel wings are like birds and not like butterflies ... and why does Heaven have a pearly gate but not a pearly fence ... and if you donate an organ to someone else, who claims it at
the Rapture?

Michael Dirda: Ah, you should be living in the Middle Ages, and thinking about how many angels can dance on a pin.
All of Elkin is dark--he specializes in gallows humor, graveyard humor, black humor, however you wish to call it. Both the novels you suggest are very good choices. But don't expect P.G. Wodehouse. Elkin, after all, wrote a comic novel about dying children at Disneyworld.

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Boston, Mass.: Mr. Dirda,

While reading your colleague Henry Allen's great piece on Hunter S. Thompson, I came across this passage:

"Thompson's writing had the venerable American quality of boys' literature, in the manner of Hemingway, Jack London and Mark Twain. And of: old-fashioned sports writing, with its flamboyance and moralities, and the good but long-forgotten men's magazines such as True or Argosy, which honored the courage, luck and jocularity of the lone cowboys lurking in American men."

Though probably more than a bit old fashioned, True and Argosy sound like the perfect antidote to the weakened sense of masculinity that men of my age suffer from (I'm 28 and, honestly, beyond Han Solo/Indiana Jones or possibly Russell Crowe, I've never really had truly masculine models. Tobey Maguire or Leonardo DiCaprio? Please…). What do you know about these old magazines? Are they available in book form or is it possible to collect back issues? Any info would be great. Thanks.

Michael Dirda: There are magazine dealers who might stock old issues, and there have been albums devoted to the cover art and interior illustrations of "men's magazines," but I don't know of any anthologies of True or Argosy. But that isn't to say they don't exist. These magazines emphasized things like survival (guy cuts off leg to get out of bear trap and crawls 20 miles to civlization), Nazi atrocities, crimes (especially murder), babes (nothing pictorially more explicit than underwear). I don't know how well they'd hold up today, but they certainly portray men different than do Maxim or Men's Health.

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Washington, D.C.: Dear Michael,

I asked for, and received, a copy of "Gilead" as a Christmas gift. I glance at it each time I pass by the table on which it lies. I can't bear the thought of starting it because I can't bear the thought of having finished it.

I had not heard of Marilyn Robinson before you discussed "Housekeeping" in the Washington Post Book Club. As I read the book I began underlining beautiful sentences until I had to stop lest I leave every second one marked. Robinson can lavish on a sentence the attention and care that might go into the making of an entire poem.

This is a book that I will re-read numerous times over the years. Twice (so far) is not nearly enough.

I still cry over the beauty of passages like this:

"The years between her husband's death and her eldest daughter's leaving home were, in fact, years of almost perfect serenity. My grandfather had sometimes spoken of disappointment. With him gone they were cut free from the troublesome possibility of success, recognition, advancement. They had no reason to look forward, nothing to regret. Their lives spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle, breakfast time, suppertime, lilac time, apple time. If heaven was to be this world purged of disaster and nuisance, if immortality was to be this life held in poise and arrest, and if this world purged and this life unconsuming could be thought of as world and life restored to their proper natures, it is no wonder that five serene, eventless years lulled my grandmother into forgetting what she should never have forgotten."

Thank you for bringing this book - and soon, Gilead - into my life.

Can you recommend other books that I perhaps ought not to read with a pencil in hand? ("Lolita" is already on that shelf.)

Thank you.

Michael Dirda: I'm glad to hear how much you admire Robinson's first novel. Gilead is different in focus and not quite as strikingly original, but equally beautiful.
I think you might like Turgenev--try The Torrents of Spring or First Love. Also, Madame Bovary is the classic of the carefully and beautifully composed book. James Salter's Light Years is exquisitely written and heartbreaking--a Tender is the Night for our time. WHich, of course, calls to mind the lyric gracefulness of Fitzgerald in general.

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Atlanta, Ga.: Which critics through the centuries, writing in English and French, have held up best over time?

Michael Dirda: Not many. Criticism is a mug's game--posterity usually find that you were wrong in most of your judgments. The critics who are still read are either 1) important theorists, or 2) literature in their own right. In earlier times, criticism was something that a poet or essayist might do in his spare time--not a regular occupation. So figures like Dryden, Addison, Johnson, Wordsworth, Arnold, T.S. Eliot are all important English critics, but a lot more as well. But does anyone read I.A. Richards any more? Even William Empson--my hero--may survive more as a poet than a theorist. For Americans the only French critic, before the 20th century, is Sainte-Beuve and no one reads him now. As I said, a mug's game.

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Venus: Hello Michael, I just finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri's excellent "The Namesake" which I thoroughly enjoyed, not just for the beautifully simply writing style but also for the lovely meandering plot and the character sketches. Have you read it?

Also, for the Indian poster who's looking for American authors... I am from that part of the world as well and in my adolescence read more English authors than Americans. Discovered Americans in my young adulthood. Ernest Hemingway made a big impression. But you know what I enjoyed most of all in my early years of reading American novels? The hard-boiled mystery novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. And I still love them.

Michael Dirda: I love them too.

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Virginia: I have an odd question, but after years of perusing these chats I have come to realize that we are an odd group. I am becoming enamored with early printed text and the physical layout of the books, typeface and words. I have found a few good websites which display some books, but was wondering if the other Dirda-philes might have know of some good resources on the web.

Thanks much.

Michael Dirda: Any help, people? I would imagine that you will find examples of early printed books at the web-sites of great libraries. I know the Smithsonian Libraries have an extensive web-site.

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Tysons Corner, Va.: In an effort to read the Classics I missed out on as a young man, I picked up Susan Wise Bauer's "The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had." I've read the first chapter, giving guidelines on how to read critically, but I haven't moved into the chapters covering specific genres and the author's recommended titles that best represent those genres. Are you familiar with Wise Bauer and this book? Do you like her approach?

Michael Dirda: I know of a couple of books like this--there was one a few years back called, I think, An Incompleat Education or something like that. As I expect to write a similar book later this year, I've rather stayed away from titles like Bauer's. Still, I'm sure her list will be good--the world is filled with terrific books.

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Chamblee, Ga.: Auden turned to Horace and Pope for refreshment as he grew older. To whom do you turn?

Michael Dirda: Auden, Horace and Pope.

Actually, I turn to my commonplace book--a collection of passages from my reading that have meant the most to me.

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Fair Oaks, Va.: Your mention of the carefully crafted prose of "Madame Bovary" reminded me of the time I studied the book in college. The teacher said that Flaubert considered each word (literally, EACH word) and that the words themselves are full of symbolism if we only look. She demonstrated several examples and it was all convincing. The name "Bovary", for example, makes us think of "bovine" ,which fits Charles to a "t". However, there was one example that made me leery of her theory (hmm, that rhymes): the use of "lui" was intended to make us think of "Louis", as in the Bourbons. "Lui" was therefore bad.

Michael Dirda: Lui is a pronoun and there are times it is, as a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, only a pronoun.
Of course Flaubert considered every word. Nearly all good writers do.

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Washington, D.C.: Hullo,

What do you think is the most underappreciated book ever written about the rich and the wealthy in America?

Michael Dirda: Speaking of paying attention to every word: Either rich or wealthy would do in your question. By underappreciated, I presume you mean a really good book that isn't well enough known? I mean, it's easy to underappreciate a novel about the well to do by, say, Judith Krantz. But a good book: Have you read Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class?

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Ashcroft, BC: I'm currently reading (and enjoying) Wayne Johnston's THE COLONY OF UNREQUITED DREAMS, about Newfoundland, but it raises a question: how far can an author of fiction go in altering historical facts for dramatic purposes? The book is told by Joey Smallwood, who is (was) a real person, and as I know very little about him I can't say how accurate Johnston is in his facts about him. However, for plot purposes, Smallwood has sailed out with the sealing fleet aboard the sealer NEWFOUNDLAND, which was involved in a terrible loss of life in 1914; the loss may have been averted had the ship been equipped with a telegraph, which it was not, the owners having removed it as it was too costly. In the book, however, Johnston has moved the event to 1916 (presumably to make Smallwood's presence on board more believable; he was born in 1900), and has also provided the ship with a telegraph. Should a writer be able to rewrite history in this way with impunity? What do you and others here think?

Michael Dirda: In general, historical novels need to be true to the facts. Even something as flamboyant as Burgess's novels about Shakespeare and Marlowe stick pretty close to the record. La Princesse de Cleves includes only real people--except for the Princess and her mother. But her presence allows for a slightly different interpretation of the Duc de Nemours's actions than that of history. But the facts are no different; the novel merely adds "secret history," or data that has been overlooked by researchers. But these are all doctrines of perfection--it's possible that Johnston figured no one would remember the exact date or the importance of the telegraph--but if these things are known and important he's going to mar his novel.

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Refreshment: Back to your commonplace book, would you share a few references that you turn to the most?

Michael Dirda: I'm mining it for a little book I'm working on, so bide your time, bide your time.
If, however, you read my Readings columns as they appeared in Book World, I used to insert quotes at the end of them, and these were drawn from the commonplace book.

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McLean, Va.: I know you didn't care for Tom Wolfe's new novel, but I'm smitten with the audio version, read by Dylan Baker. I'm nine discs into it, and I can't wait for the next CD. I wonder if I'd like the book as much if I had simply read it, rather than listen to it. Hmmm...

Michael Dirda: Wolfe is a dazzling stylist, and I can well imagine that the book could be brilliantly read. My objections were to the book's atttitudes, philosophy, characterizations.

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True Story: A vivid memory of childhood is seeing a TRUE story on man-eating baboons with a cover illustration of baboons attacking three buxom women, ripping their clothes to shreds.

And as for Nazi atrocities, I'll just add "ILSA, She-wolf of the SS".

Yes, masculine indeed and Freudian beyond belief".

Michael Dirda: Ah, yes--that sounds like a typical True cover. They knew about art in those days.
I've never seen Ilsa, but I do remember the movie posters--the inspiration for dominatrix's (dominatrices'?) everywhere.

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Washington, D.C.: Will Hunter S. Thompson be remembered? Do we see his style being added to the soup that makes up current authors? Or is he a flash in the pan that had a few good stories to tell and did them with flair... but thats all?

IS he significant?

Michael Dirda: Hard to say. But I'm fairly confident that if he survives at all, it will be for Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and his youthful letters. I doubt that anyone other than future specialists will bother with the rest. But then nearly everyone is forgotten after a hundred years. Eveb serious readers probably couldn't name more than a couple of dozen American writers of the 19th century. If that.

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Atlanta, Ga.: I don't recall seeing any comment over time from you about Pynchon....

Michael Dirda: I have a long essay on Mason & Dixon in Bound to Please, and thought it a masterpiece--autumnal, witty, wise overlong, but still astonishly good. Everyone, of course, wanted another Gravity's Rainbow. But readers always want writers to keep doing the same thing, over and over. Which is what most writers would rather not do--unless they have no other arrows in their quiver.

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Laurel, Md.: Mr. Dirda -- I have an older book that is very important to me and I would like to preserve it in some way -- I am thinking of some sort of shadowbox, but I don't really know the possibilities. It isn't important to me that the book continue to be readable -- it's more important to me to preserve the volume. Do you know anyone who specializes in this kind of work? Thank you.

Michael Dirda: Call the Restoration Office of the Library of Congress and they will refer you to either a conservator or a supplier of acid-free storage boxes.

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Austin, Tex.: If I want to read Georgette Heyer, where should I start?

Also, Bound to Please is excellent reading, and I got my mother hooked on it and Readings as well. When does your next book come out? (Greedy, I know, considering Bound to Please was just recently released, but I thought I'd ask nevertheless.)

Michael Dirda: Do you have the memoir An Open Book? My next books--if all goes well, which it isn't just now--will be out next spring and, possibly, next fall.

Heyer: A Civil Contract, Sprig Muslin, Regency Buck. Also: Jane Aiken Hodge's excellent biography.

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Scarsdale, N.Y.: Hi Mike,

My 9 year old daughter has quite a knack for writing, (I've been told), and has written a few poems that some people seem to consider quite good. Is there someplace I could send them to have them published or reviewed?

Thanks.

Michael Dirda: How about the school newspaper? Odds are this is where they should go. Your daughter has lots of time to develop as a poet. She should be reading lots of poetry too. That's probably what really matters. Auden said that a poet wasn't someone who had anything to say, but someone who liked to play with words.
However, you might check out some of the kids magazines like Cricket and see if they run items by children.

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Washington, D.C.: Dear Michael,

Thank you for the recommendations for gorgeous writing. I love your chats - many thanks for doing them.

My French teacher once told me that there is a passage in "Madame Bovary" that, in French, mimics the clopping rhythm of horses' walking that the passage describes. Have you read the novel in French? (I probably won't but will at least try to find this passage.)

On the topic of deep and lovely experiences with books, I find that being read to can be one of the most sensual experiences there is, if the person reading feels the words in his/her body while speaking them and if you feel them in your body as you hear them.

I once heard Margaret Atwood read in a small bookshop in Paris. Although she was above me on the mezzanine, and I couldn't see her, good God I could hear her. How her slow, husky voice went right through me. (One can only hope this voice is not a by-product of smoking.)

Do you enjoy reading aloud, and being read to?

Michael Dirda: I've spent a lot of time over the years reading to my children, and yes I do enjoy it quite a bit. No one reads to me yet--no doubt the time will come. But I do enjoy audio books on trips. I find certain voices absolutely enthralling and even spine-tingling, if you will permit a venerable but accurate cliche.

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Columbia, Md.: Currently listening to W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz on CD. As the narrative progresses, unfolding what is hidden, I'm often grateful for my short commute which provides the novel in 15 minute partitions of listening, which I then can mull over, perambulating toward the blank facade of my place of employment. Sometimes though I can't break away from the long sweeps of prose and events, and sit listening in my vehicle long after I should have arrived. But seriously, this is an amazing book...as recommended on this chat....but, I understand it is quite different from the author's earlier books. Are there any other of his books that you would recommend for someone who loves this one?

Michael Dirda: No, in fact it's not that much different from Sebald's earlier books. Try The Emigrants, in particular, the first of his to be translated into English.

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Washington, D.C.: Hope it's not too late for this-- the Virginia reader should check out the University of Virginia library's website; there is a lot going on there in the fields of bibliography, early texts, and the like.

Michael Dirda: Oh, yes, indeed. I once wrote a story about U.VA and textual studies and its vast holdings online.

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Mill Creek, Wash.: How or where can I find a copy of your review of John Gardner's book, In the Suicide Mountains, that was mentioned in the introduction to your new work Bound to Please which has stirred my curiosity, enlightened and entertained me. Why do you -- a good, sympathetic, decent and modest man -- not translate the few French sentences in your reviews?

Michael Dirda: I usually do translate them, don't I? In parentheses? Or I try to make the sentences explain the quotes. Or I figure the phrases are well known.
Of course, I may in fact be an arrogant, supercilious pedant.

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Oxford, U.K.: Mr Drida,
I'm hoping you can answer another question today. I currently hold a Reader's Card to the Bodleian Library (which, ironically, has few open stacks for the number of volumes it suposedly holds) and would like to take full advantage of this opportunity to read hard-to-find/out-of-print books. Any suggestions? Preferably something short, as the books have to stay in the reading rooms? I already have some of the books you mentioned on this chat ("The Five Jars" and "A Game of Dark") on my list and am enjoying "The Box of Delights." Thanks!;

Michael Dirda: Gee, I don't know. The books you are reading can be had thee days without too much trouble. The Five Jars, for instance, was included in the recent Ash-Tree Press edition of the complete supernatural writings of M.R. James.
Usually, though, it's best just to figure out a project and then let the reading you need to do for it guide your book selection.

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Washington, D.C.: Have you read Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog"? If so I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also, could you recommend anything in the same vein?

Michael Dirda: I"ve been looking for a copy for some little while now. I have read the book it derives from: Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. My friend, the novelist Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters) loves that book, which is why I"m looking for it. I"ve read Willis' short fiction--much of it dark--with great admiration.

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Iowa City, Iowa: Yesterday I received the Writer's Thesaurus in the mail from a book club purchase. I was excited and began browsing through it. It was a bit disappointing to find an ugly typo (a dropped 'l' in ‘pulchritude' from of David Foster Wallace's list of word notes) before I had finished the preface/introductory portion. I know you have mentioned this before about the over-reliance on computers in editing resulting in more typos in recent years. I was wondering if the one in my book is the result of it being a book club (The Readers' Subscription) book instead of one purchased in a book store. I am still enjoying the thesaurus despite the missing letter. I am submitting this in advance as I might be away from my computer at the appointed hour. Thanks.

Michael Dirda: FYI: This is the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, by the way, to which I'm one of the ten contributors.
The Reader's Subscription edition should be the same as that from Oxford. I'm sure the editors are appalled, but imagine all the words in such a book and you can guess how easy it might be to overlook something. There are even typos in books of mine. Sigh.

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Atlanta, Ga.: I picked up a copy of Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett yesterday at a used bookstore and am really enjoying it. However, a clerk told me that he thought it owed more to Gaiman than Pratchett. I haven't read anything else by Gaiman, but I really see a lot of Terry Pratchett in it. What is your take on it?

Michael Dirda: I've spoken to both Terry and Neil, and they are both cagey about who wrote what. There was a lot of back and forth, and no doubt everything was looked at, polished and revised by both of them.

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Re: Underlining: I couldn't read Lawrence Durrell's Justine without underlining a beautifully written and moving (sometimes depressing) sentence every page or two. My favorite, which is a perfect summation of the bitter and jealous romantic games people tend to play: "We use each other like axes to cut down the ones we really love."

Michael Dirda: Yes, Durrell could write luscious sentences--and aphoristic ones too, such as the one you quote.

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Wilmington, Del.: Re: William Trevor

I read your review of his latest collection. It seems that you had never read anything by him before. If so, may I recommend the Collected Stories. It's huge and rich. I recommend "In Ifsahan" and "Torridge", in particular.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks. I have the book, and have read more Trevor since that review. I'll try Isfahan and Torridge.

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Washington, D.C.: In another chat, someone asked about the works of Bill Bryson. Have you read anything by Bryson (walk in the woods, etc) and if so, what is your opinion of his work?

Michael Dirda: Never read a word. Have I missed out? On the surface, he seems like the British idea of an American, and rather trades on this, as so many British journalists do on their English accents and manners over here.

Ach, the sun is streaming in the window and blinding me and I see it's past time to stop. So until next Wednesday at 2--keep reading!

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