Dirda on Books

Michael Dirda (The Washington Post)

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

Submit your questions and comments before or during today's discussion.

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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Arlington, Va.: I'm halfway through my first Trollope novel, "Ralph the Heir," and it's delightful. His use of language is so rolling and musical that it's like waves breaking on the shore. His characters' inner lives are deftly drawn; I feel as though I know them. I can understnad his great popularity during his time.

One question, if you know: Would the proper English pronunciation of "Ralph" in this book be "Rafe"?

Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! Once more, our program comes to you from beautiful downtown Burbank, California--oops, no, that was another program, in another era--as I was saying, our program comes to you from beautiful, albeit cold and snowy, Westminster, Maryland, home of beautiful McDaniel College. Last week a women's group here put on The Vagina Monologues and sold out its tee shirt supply. But the chair of the English Department has ordered one for me: It's soft pink and say "McDaniel loves vaginas." I suppose I can get away wearing it once here at the college, but after that, I'm not sure. One of my students sported last year's version, which reads "I love my vagina."
There are times I have mixed feelings about the advances made by the women's movement in tghe 70s. I rather like the old courtly model of lady and chivalric servitor.

I suppose it's time to turn to questions. None too soon, I can a few of you murmuring.

Yes, Trollope is delicious and addictive. But I'm really not sure on the pronunciation of Ralph. The composer Vaughan Williams is always called Rafe, but I'm not sure it that is general English usage. Perhaps others out there in radioland--cyberland?--might know?-

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Lenexa, Kan.: Mr. Dirda: Gore Vidal had a recent NYTBR essay on James Purdy -- another of those writers getting up in age that one dreads someday seeing a notice. I've always found fascinating Purdy and his Gothic oeuvre of grotesque cruelty and personal alienation (people with faces "covered with little white moles," e.g.). I spent years lending "Malcolm" to people where I worked.

Novels like "Mourners Below" and "On Glory's Course" have great "Purdyean" dialogue, e.g., "Diamonds, Mr. Morgan," she corrected, "I loathe pearls, and wouldn't be caught in my coffin wearing an opal."/"Elaine and Rita smoked like harlots waiting for a customer."/"How I loathe that old slinking sneak...I would rather lie down with spiders and bats." How big are you on Purdy? Ever try to contact him to review or anything? Thanks much.

Michael Dirda: I own a first of Malcolm and an omnibus volume of Purdy novels, but I confess to only having read a few pages of his work. But I will say that I liked them quite a bit and don't know why I had to stop. Campy humor has always appealed to me, and I'm sure I'd enjoy Purdy. I recall that Fran Leibowitz is a great fan of his too.
Alas, I never asked Purdy to review anything for Book World.

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New York, N.Y.: Dear Mr. Dirda,

I noticed you're a member of the Ghost Story Society. Wondering, then, whether you could recommend a few novels that involve ghost stories but that also include either or both a comedic and a romantic thread (i.e. where a romance develops between the ghost and a member of the living). In other words, I'm not interested in the macabre so much as, ideally, high humor served up with kooky romance. The only example of even merely the witty ghost-story novelist that pops to my mind is Thorne Smith.

Thanks a million!

Michael Dirda: Perhaps my posters from Ashcroft can help on this. But the only comic ghost stories I know are The Canterville Ghost, by Wilde, and perhaps the play "Bell, Book and Candle." I think it's by John Van Druten. Most of these sorts of human/ghost relations are, if not terrifying, then wistful: E.g. Jack Finney's stories and novels (e.g. The Woodrow Wilson Dime). Or those tales of travelers picking up pretty hithchikers and being attracted to them, only to discover that the next day that they have been dead for 20 years.
O(f course, the Topper novels are, as you say, the models but I can't think of any real successors.
Any further help on this?

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Los Angeles, Calif.: Dear MD,

Two recommendations and a question: just read two foreign novels, very different, both delightful. Bartelby&Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas, a meditation not on writing, but on the refusal to write -- procrastination, blockage and 'bartelby-ism.' Very erudite, very light. Also, "The Athenian Murdersby Jose Carlos Somoza, also very erudite, set in Athens, full of philosophy and murder -- great combo.
Finally, have gotten interested in the Balkans. Do you have any lit. recommendations to flesh out the history?
Thanks!

Michael Dirda: These both sound good--Bartleby is such a classic story: "I prefer not to."
Alas, I'm batting below par--even starting to mix my metaphors--but I don't know much about the Balkans, except as a place of intrigue (e.g. Eric Ambler) and bloodshed (today). Any help?

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Washington, D.C.: Good afternoon Mr. Dirda--

I've recently been working my way through (and very much enjoying!) those of Jean Giono's works available in English. My questions are in regard to the "Horseman" cycle. First, I'm having trouble finding 2 of the volumes ("Mort d'un personnage" and "Le Bonheur fou") and was wondering if you knew if they have even been translated? Second, it is my impression (from reading "The Horseman on the Roof" and "Angelo") that although some of the same characters appear in each of these works, these volumes do not follow a linear plot nor comprise any sort of "canon". Rather, each work seems to be an independent sketch of the characters at a certain point in time and place. Was this his intention--to explore various permutations of his characters? Thanks for any insight you can provide.

Michael Dirda: Giono was popular as far back as the 1930s, but Horsmean is just about the only novel of his I can recall in English. When I went to Marseille many years ago, my Fulbiright project--never completed--was a study of the novels of the Provencal writers Henri Bosco and Giono. Instead, I read a lot of magazines and novels and drank pastis and wandered le Vieux Port and visited Italy and Spain and went skiing in Grenoble and had a pretty good time.

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Long time lurker: Michael,
I belong to a book group which just read/discussed a book entitled "Dorian" by Will Self. It's basically a contemporary updating of Oscar Wilde's original "The Picture of Dorian Gray," that is set in England in the 1980's-1990's. While I had some reservations about how well the adaptation worked, it raised an interesting question about why writers feel it necessary to retell or remake classic novels. Can you think of any examples of this where the newer version actually was as good, if not better than the original? I've been scratching my head and can't think of any.
Thanks.

Michael Dirda: Hmmm. Shakespeare probably revised Kyd's "Hamlet." Certainly Chaucer improved Boccacio's Troilus story in his masterpiece, "Troilus and Criseyde." Imitation in the 18tgh century led to poems by Johnson and Pope nearly as good as the originals in Latin.
But after the augustansthe desrie to update, to imitate, or expand upon the work of an earlier writer is generally a bad sign. The true genius does his own thing. Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels have a charm of their own, but they're not Trollope.

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Arlington, Va.: I started reading Flashman recently, expecting a romp involving a lovable rogue. Instead, the story is violent and relentlessly mean-spirited. Flashman is presented as lacking any aptitude, charm, or moral sense, other than an oily talent for connivance; he is by turns a bully and a sycophant. Most surprisingly, I've found it devoid of humor. Is it supposed to be amusing, for instance, when Flashman beats up his father's mistress when she refuses to dally with Flashman any longer? I suppose there is a breath of dark satire that such a thug should be so successful in life, but that's hardly enough to sustain this narrative through an entire brutal book, much less several volumes. What is the source of these books' appeal? What am I missing?

Michael Dirda: Interestingly, your reactions parallel my own when I first read Flashman--and was put off Fraser as a result. But so many friends love the books that I've been meaning to go back and see if they would be more appealing to me now.
I do love one Fraser novel: The Pyrates--a send up of every pirate movie and novel ever, and very, very funny.

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Villa of the Papyri: Are you planning on attending the upcoming W. A. book fair? If so, what's on your shopping list?

Michael Dirda: WA means Washington Antiquarian Book Fair.
I'd like to stop by in the afternoon if I can, but I also have to attend a play that my son is in that evening, so I'm note entirely sure. I never have a shopping list; I just saunter about, with my hands in my pockets, and wait to see what the gods have to show me.

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Falls Church, Va.: Are you very familiar with the work of Nicholson Baker? I am reading The Mezzanine and while it is somewhat clever in parts, I'm mostly finding it pretty tedious. Is this typical of his stuff? Are there other books of his that are less so?

Thanks.

Michael Dirda: The Mezzanine is certainly his best book, and if you don't like it, you won't like Baker--though Vox is a about phone sex. I thought the Mezzanine was brilliant, but you have to surrender to the relentless petitesse of the narrator's darting mind. But I have a mind like that myself--it never lets up alas, and I can find myself wandering down some very strange corridors of thought.

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Scarsdale, N.Y.: Here's your ONE THING for today....

...just finished reading An Open Book, it was terrific, thank you for writing it.

Michael Dirda: Thanks.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Hi Michael. You've recommended Madame Bovary, most recently last week in response to the person looking for books with beautifully constructed sentences. Alas my tourist French precludes me from reading it as Flaubert wrote it. Is there a particular translation that's superior? Do you have an opinion about the Paul de Man translation in the Norton Critical Edition? Thanks!

Michael Dirda: De Man revised the translation by Eleanor Aveling (Marx's daughter) and it is fairly close to being a standard. I wrote about Margaret Mauldon's recent Oxford translation, which is very good. Francis Steegmuller also has a version--though his best work on Flaubert is in his translations of the Master's wonderful letters.

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Lenexa, Kan.: Some of Alan Furst's excellent spy novels are set in various places in the Balkans (Ruthenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, et al.).

Michael Dirda: Thanks

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Bethesda Md.: Hi, I enjoyed reading the description of your interests at the beginning of this discussion. Have you ever tried reading by candle light? The room is darker, seems quieter, and unlike elelctric light the candle flickers... a highly atmospheric experience, and much more enjoyable.

Michael Dirda: I suppose that, way back when, in college I might have read poems by candelight under romantic circumstances. But I'm not sure even of that. Nowadays, my eyes want the best possible light, and rather than flickering beeswax I'd want one of those lamps they advertise in magazine designed for old folks and needleworkers.

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Lexington, Ky.: Michael, There have been some classic pithy reviews, and I read one this morning regarding Ari Fleisher's book: "I'm not going to finish this book because I might harm someone when I hurl it across the room." Do you have a favorite?

Michael Dirda: I'll cite my own lede to a review of a Judith Krantz novel:
"I read Judith Krant'z Dazzle in one sitting. I had to. I was afraid I couldn't face picking it up again."

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Crofton, Md.: Have you read the sequel to Gene Wolfe's The Knight called the wizard? Also what is your opinion of the young Turkish write Orhan PAmuk I just read My Name is Red and found it fascinating.

Michael Dirda: I reviewed The Knight, but haven't yet read The Wizard. I recall that Wolfe claimed, inpublicity material with the earlier novel, that the Wizard would be even better. And I liked The Knight quite a bit.

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Washington, D.C.: My brother just loaned me a copy of the Book of Allusions by Paul Auster. I really like it and his writing style. First, are you a fan of Auster? Also, do you have any other of his books you'd recommend?

Michael Dirda: I'm a fan of early Auster. I liked the New York Trilogy--a series of riffs on the detective novel, from an experimental/existential viewpoint. And I liked Moon Palace, which had a wonderfully swashbuckling character--a bit like Thomas Berger's magnificnet Little Big Man. But Auster's last novel sounded to me like self-parody.
That said, Auster does have an exceptionally ingratiating narrative voice, and I'd recommend trying the above books. You may like them even more than I do and want to go to his other work, of which there is now a fair amount.

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Takoma Park, Md.: I'd like to second the Bartleby book -- profound and amusing, without being ponderously amusing as so many literary conceits tend to be.

I did not want my six hours back after I finished reading it, which is fairly high praise.

Michael Dirda: An interesting scale of values. I've never been quite sure what I'd do with my six hours even if the book I'd spent them on was less than satisfying. I mean: What can one do? Watch tv--no. Movies--no. Sproting events--mainly no (the occasional baseball game). Travel--yes, but takes planning and time.
I'll look out for the Bartleby book.

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Annapolis, Md.: Hello my dear Mr. Dirda,

I just thought to drop a little comment about an author and a book that I just recently "discovered." Of course both the author and the book have been around for years, but I had not noticed them until now. The author is Connie Willis, whom I discovered at the National Book Festival this past fall. I had never read anything by her, but after hearing her speak I was absolutely enchanted and began to read everything I could get my hands on that happened to have her name on it.

Just recently I finished her novel, "Passage." I must say, I was completely floored by how fantastic it was. I wanted to rush to the bookstore and buy dozens of copies and hand them out to everyone I saw and tell them, "READ THIS!" Since my budget won't allow it, I settled for sending a laudatory email to all my friends and family and loaning my personal copy around. That copy is already on its second reader.

So, I just wanted to tell as many people as possible (and your forum seemed perfect for this) about this wonderful author and her books.

Michael Dirda: Connie is wonderful. You may recall that I was the moderator of the fantasy and sf pavilion at the National Book Festival and Connie was the last speaker--after such hot authors--in all senses--as Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson, as well as a living legend like Fred Pohl. After her brilliant talk--a kind of paean to reaing--I said "See, we've saved the best for last." I even told her that I thought we were the same kind of readers.
That said, Connie Willis is much honored over the past 20 years: Firewatch is an award-winning classic. I myself have been looking around for her sequel to Jerome J. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, "And to say Nothing of the Dog." But I can't seem to find it. Not that I've looked online, mind you.

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Braddock Road Worker Bee: Do you have any recommendations (or does anyone) for non-thrillers about computer programmers or similar workers? I've already read Richard Powers' various relevant works, and Ellen whatshername's The Bug, and even the David Lodge cognitive science novel.

Any others? I'm not looking for cyberthrillers.

Michael Dirda: Gosh. I read a good one about a year ago, and I can't remember its title. Oh, wait: yes I can: "Transmission" by Hari Kunzru . It's about an Indian programmer who to prove his love creates a world-wide virus based on an Indian Bollywood star. But it's got great scenes of computer life in California and Washington.
Any further help?

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Lakewood, Ohio: I'm reading and enjoying Mary Doria Russell's World War II-set "A Thread of Grace." What do you consider to be the best novels about that war?

Michael Dirda: Many years ago Book World ran a list of the 25 best novels about World War II, compiled by the late, lamented Noel Perrin. He included--I think--James Gould Cozzens's Guard of Honor, Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, James Jones's From Here to Eternity, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I wish I could remember the others.
In my own youth I loved to read pop histories about the war: Things like Rommel: The Desert Fox, or Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day, or William Shirer's brick-like paperback, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

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Re: Updating classic works: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote "Inferno," which is a very sharp and engaging update of Dante's work. Certainly, it's not the classic that the original was, but it's well worth reading.

Michael Dirda: Well worth reading is a very slithery term. I confess to feeling that Niven and Pournelle tend to be good on ideas but rather weak on style and artistry. But this may be pure prejudice. Even Ringworld, by Niven alone, I thought was only so-so.

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Braddock Road Worker Bee: Ah yes, I forgot about Transmission, which was utterly terrific and accurate in its portrayal of the industry and the computer mind.

As for the Connie Willis book you are looking for, just amble down the street to the Silver Spring library and you will find a copy that is sometimes even not checked out.

Michael Dirda: thanks

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Columbia MD -- Balkans: For requester, there's always Black Lamb, Gray Falcon by Rebecca West (really about Yugoslovia area as it then was) and The Black Mountain by Rex Stout. Both are probably out of date but v. good nonetheless

Michael Dirda: The Black Mountain! How I looked forward to that one. It's the novel in which Nero Wolfe not only leaves his brownstore but goes back to Montenegro. Alas, the book was rather disappointing. The novellas of the 1940s and early 50s were the best Stouts--though I retain a fondness for The League of Frightened Men, overlong though it be.

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Anonymous: Updike's recent novel "Villages" had an excellent early history of computing and a very plausible account of the vicissitudes of a young software company in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Michael Dirda: thanks

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Takoma Park, Md.: Trying to remember the name of a book I read last year. Set in northern England just after WWII, featured a boy who was passed around among the sisters of his somewhat fey mother.

He spent lots of time with his friend The Man Behind the Glass, who ultimately turned out to be the corpse of a wrecked aviator.

ID please?

Michael Dirda: ????

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Venus: Hello Michael --

Have you or any of the chatters read the mysteries of J. Robert Janes?

The visual image of you wearing one of those V-shirts is rather alarming. Please, don't go there.

Michael Dirda: Well, I find it alarming too. But what about peer pressure? ANd will my female students regard me as an unregenerate MCP, if I don't?
Know nothing of J. Robert Janes.

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Nani, Tex.: I don't know if the 1940s film, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, is based on a book, but it is a delightful tale of a young widow (Gene Tierney) who moves into a castle by the sea. She's fascinated with a portrait of a sea captain that hangs in her parlor and eventually is visited by and falls in love with his ghost (Rex Harrison).

Michael Dirda: I was going to mention that, but kept remembering the TV series only. I"d forgotten that it had been a movie. I suspect there was a play or novel behind that too.

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Takoma Park, Md.: How to spend the six refunded hours:

Spend the first half hour finding a better book, and the next 5.5 reading it.

Michael Dirda: thanks.

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Washington, D.C.: I just read Cloud Atlas and was very impressed.
Have you read other David Mitchell books; if so do you like them.

Michael Dirda: Haven't read Cloud Atlas. Everyone says it's very good. But you're talking to a guy who's finally just read Madame de La Fayette's brilliant La Princesse de Cleves. Now there's a novel.

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Manhattan, N.Y.: Any recommendations among the works of Anthony Burgess? I really enjoyed A Clockwork Orange a while back and always meant to look into more of him, but am just now getting serious about it.

Michael Dirda: Try Enderby--there are four books in the sequence and the first two are best. Also, Nothing Like the Sun, about the young Shakespeare. Earthly Powers is long and a very good read,in a kind of leisurely Somerset Maugham way--and has a famous opening sentence, something like : "I was in bed with my catamite when the archbishop came to call." Also, don't neglect Burgess's two volumes of autobiography--lots of gusto, if not totally reliable.
I've always held mixed feelings about Burgess as a writer--he wrote, in my view, a lot of shlock--and all his books are uneven (to my mind), but he possessed flair, and vitality and glorious excess.

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Chamblee, Ga.: Besides Flaubert's letters, and perhaps Chekhov's, whose would be among the best, in your opinion?

Michael Dirda: Horace Walpole is reputed to be the greatest English letter writer, but I've only dipped into his voluminous correspondence. There are lots of selections, though--and Yale has a fabulous multi-volume edition edited by W.S. Lewis.
I'm very fond of the Rupert Hart-Davis/George Lyttelton letters--the correspondence between a London publisher and his Eton tutor--very gossippy, Tory, literary.
But probably the most fun among famous letter writers is Lord Byron. These are as close as we'll ever get to the memoirs that his publisher John Murray burnt. They're in 12 volumes edited by Leslie Marchand.
Shaw's letters are also very good, as are Henry James'. Oh, and then there are those of Keats.

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Cubesville Md.: For anyone looking for a chilling ghost novel, I'd have to recommend Richard Adams The Girl on the Swing... set in modern England/Denmark.

Michael Dirda: Yes.

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Princeton, N.J.: Flashman is a highly unreliable narrator, but you have to read all the books to find out to what degree; he's a self- admitted bad man, and constantly being outsmarted by the women he thinks he's seduced, but as an observer of history he is peerless. See especially the portrait of Flashman in extreme old age in Fraser's 'Mr. American.'

Michael Dirda: Many thanks.

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Ralph: Yes, it is a pretty general English convention. The actor Ralph Fiennes is also pronounced "Rafe."

Michael Dirda: Thanks.

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Washington, D.C.: Hello Michael -- For the reader looking for literature set in the Balkans, there's "The Balkan Trilogy" by Olivia Manning. The trilogy is set during WWII and focuses on a just-married British couple in the Balkans -- he's involved in war work, and she's trying to figure out what exactly she should be doing in this new life she's chosen. The trilogy was made into a British series maybe a dozen years ago, and there's a second trilogy that follows the characters through the war.

Michael Dirda: Oh, yes--another set of books I once meant to read.

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DC: OK, tell me about Princesse de Cleves.

Michael Dirda: Another day.

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Baltimore, Md.: Re Flashman and the Balkans: I think Fraser is one of those authors you either get or you don't. Flashy's appeal is that he is entirely without any self-deception. His motivations (liquor, women, gambling, staying alive) are bald and he makes no apologies for them. I do think Fraser means to set him up as the only truly honest man in a world of Victorian humbug. As for the Balkans, Lawrence Durrell wrote a series of very funny, ctional stories about working as a diplomatic press office in post-war Yugoslavia. They are called Esprit de Corps, Stiff Upper Lip and Sauve Qui Peut.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks. I'd heard those Durrell books were funny.

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Santiago, Chile: Mr. Dirda,

My wife is reading Michael Malone's Justin and Cuddy detective novels and she's head over heels in love with his writing. One night she looked over the top of her book and said, "He should be famous. Why isn't he famous?" I've always thought the same thing, since I also especially loved his novel "Foolscap" as well as his detective novels. Why do you suppose he's not more well-known or appreciated? I feel the same way about Alan Judd, too, since I find his novel "Short of Glory" to be a small masterpiece. Do you have any thoughts on either of these authors?

Michael Dirda: Malone may have lost literary credibility because he abandoned novels to write the scripts for a soap opera. I'm not sure which one, and he may still be doing that. At the very least, though, this shows the man's versatility.
Judd is British; hence not known in America. I reviewed his spooky little thriller about a writer--name escapes me--a half dozen years back. Plus he's also a biographer (Ford Madox Ford) and a former diplomat. He just isn't quite focused enough.
All that said, fame is fickle. Every writer--present one included--feels that he should be far more celebrated than he or she is. But luck, timing, being in New York, the right friends--all these are important. It's the way of the world.

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Programmer books: Microserfs?

Michael Dirda: Douglas Coupland.

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Lansdale, Pa.: For a non-thriler about computer programmers, try John Sladek's 'Bugs' if you can find a copy.

Michael Dirda: Oh, of course. I revere John Sladek. Truly. Roderick and Tik-Tok are brilliant, brilliant books. Now, there--as I've said before--is a writer who should have been famous.

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Wilmington, Del.: What is your favorite Hawthorne short story?

Michael Dirda: Young Goodman Brown.

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Jerzy Kozinski...: I just finished reading The Painted Bird, and I'm wondering where it rates on the scales of literature. It's the only book that's ever given me nightmares. I thought it was brilliant, but I wonder what the critics think.

Thanks, Michael!;

Michael Dirda: Kosinski's star fell when it was discovered that he borrowed from other writers, or had other writers work on his books to a suspciious degree. That said, Painted Bird is nightmarish and Being There a wonderful cool satire of, to say it again, the way we live now. Or rather lived then.

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Michael Dirda: Okay. I've run out of steam. I"m sorry if I didn't get to your question. Please try again. Until next Wednesday at 2, keep reading!

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