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

Each week Michael Dirda's name appears -- in attractively large type -- in The Post's Book World section, where he writes about new novels, neglected classics, fat biographies, European literature, fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, poetry, works of scholarship, the occasional children's book, almost anything under the rubric of "arts and letters." Although he earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell, Dirda has somehow managed to retain, well into middle age, a myopic 12-year-old's exuberant passion for reading.

As he has for the past 40 years, Dirda says he still spends inordinate amounts of time mourning his lost youth, listening to music (classical, jazz, oldies, country and western), and daydreaming ("my only real hobby"). He claims that the happiest hours of his week are spent sitting in front of a computer, writing. His most recent books include "Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments" (Indiana hardcover, 2000; Norton paperback, 2003), his self-portrait of the reader as a young man, "An Open Book" (Norton, 2003) and a collection of his essays and reviews titled "Bound to Please" (Norton, 2005) Last year he brought out "Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life" (Henry Holt, 2006) and this fall Harcourt will publish "Classics for Pleasure."

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." Dirda is a member of several literary associations, including the Baker Street Irregulars and The Ghost Story Society. Despite a penchant for quiet and solitude, he enjoys giving talks, teaching, and traveling. People tell him that he can be pretty funny for a guy who usually has his nose in a book.

(He also thinks he can be pretty funny at times...)

An archive of his reviews is available here.

An archive of his discussions is available here.

Dirda was online Wednesday, Sept. 19, at 2 p.m.

A transcript follows.

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Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! It's a bright, sunny day here in DC, though I myself am not quite feeling in quite so chipper a mood. So let's go right into this week's questions, and see how matters roll along.

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Reston, Va.: Good afternoon, Michael--

Any thoughts on some readable, reliable histories of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, both separately and together? How about mythologies for those same countries?

Thanks, as always...

Michael Dirda: There are obviously modern histories of all these countries, though I first think of Macaulay's history of England. Though Whiggish, it is beautifully written and a classic of history. But of course, it stops more than 200 years ago. Peter Ackroyd has been writing a lot about England's history, and so you might try his book Albion. There are plenty of more specific histories too, some by A.N. Wilson on the Victorians.

As for Anglo-Saxon mythologies--I'm not sure what you mean. Katherine Briggs has written about English folktales, and long before her, Joseph Jacob did some good versions of these. In general, the big book is Teutonic Mythology by Jacob Grimm.

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Lenexa, Kan.: SOME FALL/WINTER READING/VIEWING PLANS: J.G. Farrell's "The Siege of Krishnapur," "Troubles," and "The Singapore Grip"; John Williams's "Stoner"; D'Aulaires' "Book of Animals"; Jean Renoir's "Renoir My Father" (all new from the NYRB--with exciting selections for doing the intros); The Teaching Company's Robert Greenberg's "Fundamentals of Music," "The Concerto," and "The Symphony."

FAVORITE NAMES IN FICTION: For me, no one at least since Dickens had such a perfect ear for naming than Jean Shepherd: Flick ("Flick hollered: 'Zodnycki canned another one! Look at that bastard hit them hook shots.'"); Schwartz ("Schwartz wisecracked in the back seat and Clara giggled."); Scot Farcus and his little toady Grover Dill; Daphne Bigelow ("Some guys--Budge 'Hi ya, fella' Cameron of Princeton--are born to dance with the Daphne Bigelows on shining ballroom floors under endless starry skies. Others, well, they do the best they can."); Ludlow Kissel (Hohman, Ind. sot): It ends sadly: "We never saw Junior Kissel again."

Michael Dirda: As usual, Lenexa, an ambitious reading list--and a good comment. Many thanks.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Wanted (if that is the right word) to note that Bonifant Books has a going out of business sale ad running in Book World.

I was just in Greenville, S.C., and was sad to see that Bentley's, a very good used bookstore there, had shut down.

Buying specific titles out of someone's basement via the Internet can be convenient, but where are we going to browse for books that aren't hot off the presses?

Michael Dirda: Oh dear: I am sorry to hear this about Bonifant. A real pity. Yes, browsing is so much of a reader's way of life that it's hard to imagine a world without bookshops to wander into.

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Maitland and Dumas: About 2 years ago I listened to the "Count of Monte Cristo" and loved it. I've now been listening to "The Three Musketeers" for about a week and love it so I was excited to see your review on Sunday and have ordered the new one as well. Can't wait. In the meantime, realizing that I don't have a proper grasp of his career, I've also ordered two biographies of Cardinal Richelieu. As with so many (indeed all!) books -- one leads to another and a Dumas adventure can lead one to serious historical works. Just follow the path.

I was, however, waiting to read in your review about the Dumas boast that if he were locked in a room with five beautiful women and had to write a five act play (or something close to this) .....

tell all how it ends, please, like a "good-night" story you've heard before I love to hear this one again.

Michael Dirda: This Dumas story sounds familiar, and I may recognize the punchline, but I certainly can't call it to mind just now.

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Chapel Hill, N.C.: Mr. Dirda,

If you have read Ed Yoder's recent book, "Lions at Lamb House," may I have your opinion?

I have ordered it and am awaiting arrival.

If the WP reviewed it please direct me to this review -- maybe one by Jon Yardley, his old friend. Many thanks for the chats. They are a highlight of the week.

Chapel Hill

washingtonpost.com: You're in luck, it ran today: When Henry Met Sigmund

Michael Dirda: Ed Yoder is a fine writer and he knows Henry James as well as any non-professional, so I expect that Lions will be a good and insightful read. Its premise is that William James calls in Sigmund Freud, who is visiting England, to talk to his brother about the latter's depression.

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Chicago: Have you read anything by Mark Helprin, and do you have thoughts on him? I'm reading "Memoir From Antproof Case" and finding it very funny. After this I think I'll read "Freddy and Fredericka."

Michael Dirda: I read a number of the early short stories with considerable pleasure, and always meant to read his longer work, and then time went by and I didn't. As he's deeply conservative politically, I don't know that I ever will.

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Anbar Province: Watteau? Really? Ugh!

Michael Dirda: De gustibus non est disputandum. I wonder what painters you like.

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Toronto, Canada:" There he unexpectedly encounters a fellow prisoner, the Abbe Faria, who instructs him in languages, manners, swordsmanship and all that a gentleman needs to know."

This scenario from "Count of Monte Cristo," taken from your review of Alexandre Dumas's unearthed novel, takes place in quite a few classic novels. For instance, Merlin tutors Arthur to become a worthy king.

What other good examples of this tutor-pupil relationship exist in classic literature and also more modern stories?

Michael Dirda: Don't I mention the movie The Mask of Zorro?

Perhaps other posters would like to suggest books with classic tutor-pupil relationships?

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Bethesda, Md.: Hi, Mr. Dirda:

Can you recommend a good anthology of Elizabethan poetry?

Thanks!

Michael Dirda: The Oxford Book of 16th Century Verse, the most recent edition ranges more widely, and includes women poets more seriously, than earlier ones.

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Annapolis, Md.: Last week you mentioned marking up your books. This seems to signify some deep character trait. Anne Fadiman wrote about this in her wonderful book "Ex Libris," where she compared non-markers to courtly lovers and markers to carnal lovers. As for me, a non-marker, I am more interested in what I think about a book in rereading it than in rereading what I thought about it the last time. I've never met anyone who wasn't passionately attached to one side or the other of this divide.

Michael Dirda: I mark up books because I have to have something to say about them in a review and need to quote, refresh my memory, etc. But now it's a habit, and I could hardly read anything without a pencil in my hand.

I tend to ignore my previous comments when I reread a book years later.

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Anbar Province: Caravaggio, Paul Klee, Rackstraw Downes.

Michael Dirda: I've met Rackstraw Downes. Handsome guy 25 years ago. And what a cool name. Wrote a good book on Fairfield Porter.

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Boston: I was wondering if you could suggest a few adventure-filled books. I loved the "Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo" and thought you might have a few favorites along these lines that you could suggest. Thanks.

Michael Dirda: Did you see my review Sunday of the recently discovered, and published, Dumas novel, The Last Cavalier?

I'd also suggest: Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and She; Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerrard stories and The Lost World; R L Stevenson's Treasure Island; John Mead Falkner's Moonfleet.

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Dumas pere: Anyone hear the one about Dumas, at the height of his fame, having a stable of ghostwriters at hand for his serials, and meeting his son at a party? "Son, have you read my latest novel?" "No, dad, have you?"

Michael Dirda: Cute. Dumas pere did employ assistants, some of whom provided the basic plots, though scholars agree that he somehow made them all work.

That son, by the way, was the author of La dame aux camellias, the novel that became the basis of La Traviata.

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washingtonpost.com: Dirda: The Last Cavalier

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Edgewood: I'm halfway through "Little, Big," which has a complementary blurb by one Michael Dirda placed quite prominently. I love the mood and the language, but it's not making me want to pick it up in every spare moment and I have this sinking feeling that I'm missing something. Any words of encouragement or enlightenment?

Favorite names: Daily Alice Drinkwater is obviously at the tip of my tongue right now, but you can't beat Wodehouse: Bertie Wooster and Psmith have just the right amount of silliness.

Michael Dirda: Yes, Wodehouse names are always good.

All I can say about Little Big is persist if you like it, and don't if you don't. Unless you're being tested on a book or need to read it for extraneous reasons, there's no need to bother with those that don't work for you.

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Chapel Hill, NC (Audio Book Girl): I'm looking forward to the reissue by FSG of the fiction of

Leonard Michaels. He was (he died in 2003) an interesting

talent. I just finished the collected stories, & especially loved

the seven about a mathematician named Nachman.

Michael Dirda: Michaels is somewhat forgotten today, though much admired in the past. I wonder if the reissue will bring him new readers.

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washingtonpost.com: Does "Fight Club" qualify as a novel about a mentor-tutor relationship?

Michael Dirda: Maybe. But I think a greater difference in years is usually needed for a true teacher-pupil relationship.

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Colorado: I'm finding myself in a less than chipper mood myself lately. Thanks to Amazon's bestseller list I discovered "Wednesday Letters" by Jason F Wright, a Northern Virginian, which led me to "Christmas Jars." I ordered both but look forward to reading "Christmas Jars" mostly, hoping it's an uplifting feel good book. Have you read any of Wright's work?

Michael Dirda: Sigh. No, I haven't.

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Monterey, Va.: Hi, Michael

Please excuse me if you've gotten this message twice. It all comes of not believing that your computer heard you the first time. I have a little bit of trivia for you--I find trivia very soul-soothing. A couple of weeks ago, you mentioned Paul Horgan's "Lamy of Santa Fe." Lamy was the for Archbishop Latour in one of my favorite books of all time -- Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop." Latour's lifelong friend, Joseph Vaillant, is drawn from Archbishop Macheboeuf of Denver.

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" is followed closely by "O Pioneers," which edges out "My Antonia," which is trailed by "Song of the Lark." The only other longer work of Cather's I'm familiar with is a glum little ouvre called "Sephira and the Slave." Cather became more and more dark, as Bertie Wooster would say, 'stern and earnest and full of bumps.' I like some light and hope in my fiction -- I want to see a change for the better. I really enjoy your discussions and am tuned in to my computer from 2-4 every Wednesday. I feel as if I'm back in senior seminar again -- it makes a person feel connected.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks. I too admire Death Comes for the Archbishop and write about it in Classics for Pleasure.

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Elmwood Park, Ill.: I hate to bring politics into this, but do you really believe GWB has read 87 books so far this year? There's just no way. He would have to be somebody with the free time of a prisoner, or somebody on an unending vacation. I know he spends a lot of time at the "ranch," but that's just ridiculous. I always have a book with me and I can only finish 30 or so a year.

Michael Dirda: No, but then I don't believe much that GBW says.

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Beltsville, Md.: I'm looking forward to two books coming later this year. To be published on Armistice Day is Brian Linn's "The Echo of Battle." One of our leading military historians updates and revises the late Russell Weigley's classic work, "The American Way of War." I once saw the two of them at a conference discuss the topic with grace, wit, and mutual respect.

Due on Christmas Day, Howard Waldrop's "The Moone World." Uncle Sam and John Bull race for the moon...in the nineteenth century. Did you know that Howard blogs now? Well, he "blogs"---typing up his posts, then mailing them to his publisher who translates them from paper to electrons.

Michael Dirda: Yes, Howard told me he was doing this strange form of blogging. I must check all this out some day.

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Lexington: Michael, I'm not quite so jaded yet that I don't still look forward to what's forthcoming in the fall ( even if some writers take years to produce their book ).

But some worthwhile ones include:

Exit Ghost by Philip Roth ( the end of Zuckerman? )

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz ( over ten years since his short story collection, Drown )

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson ( the ultimate Vietnam novel? )

The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam

( his history of the Korean War )

Thames by Peter Ackroyd ( another of his unusual histories )

the last Rebus novel by Ian Rankin

Reavers by George MacDonald Fraser

( an Elizabethan romp )

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke ( the title alone is winning! )

Peter Gay's history of Modernism,

and, I look to your reviews to keep us up on intellectual history.

Favorite character name: Tyrone Slothrup

Michael Dirda: What a great list! I've just read the Zuckerman book.

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Galveston, Tex.: I'm beginning to suspect that writers must get some special satisfaction from excoriating academics. I've read three novels recently,all of which are quite good, which have badly behaved PhDs in common, "The Corrections" (Franzen), "A Mother and Two Daughters" (Godwin), and "On Beauty" (Smith). Are sports writers the only ones with something good to say about their liberal arts professors? In my experience the academics I've known have had more qualities worth emulating than eviscerating. Will I have to turn to Harry Potter to get a more balanced perspective on the academic community, or do you have some recommendation for me?

Michael Dirda: Just as happy families and happy marriages don't make for exciting fiction, so admirable academics don't deliver much, novel-wise. Most novels about academia are satires, in some way or another. Randall Jarrell's Pictures from an Institution, Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, Francine Prose's Blue Angel, and so many others.

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Maryland: Do you watch Masterpiece Theatre?

Michael Dirda: Now and again. I do like a number of British imports: Brideshead Revisited, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the Brett Sherlock Holmes and Suchard Poirots, the Laurie-Fry Jeeves and Wooster, etc etc.

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Arlington, Va.: Maybe GWB is a secret Gossip Girl fan. I bet I could get through 87 of those in a year.

Michael Dirda: What is Gossip Girl?

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Alexandria, Va.: Re works with tutor-pupil relationships: What springs to mind is "The Corn Is Green" by Emlyn Williams, twice adapted for film, with Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn playing Miss Moffat, the teacher.

Michael Dirda: Yes.

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Is it just me? : I love nineteenth century authors, Dickens, Twain, Melville,

Balzac, Thackeray, Trollope, Stendhal.... and I find Dumas

unreadable.

I seem to be in the minority.

Michael Dirda: Well, these other writers are most interested in probing character and the nature of society. Dumas was interested in swashbuckling adventure and making the past come alive. He's the 19th century's answer to the movies.

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Bellevue, Wash.: I recall an interview Dick Cavett did with Shelby Foote when Foote had finished writing The Civil War. Cavett asked him what he was going to do next. He said, I'm going to treat myself to Proust again. What would you put such a list of rereading "treats"?

Michael Dirda: Hard to say. Proust, certainly. The Tale of Genji. But so far in my life I've not been much of a rereader, unless there was a particular purpose for it. I do find that when I reread favorite books I always find them as fresh as ever.

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Pittsburgh: Whose English translations of Camoes' "Lusiads" do you consider the best?

Also, do you know of any online "Lusiads" (English or Portuguese) that are searchable, which would make my research a whole lot easier?

Michael Dirda: Not sure, off hand. In a pinch, I always turn to Penguin or Oxford World Classics, sure of getting at the very least something reliable and readable.

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excoriating academics: Richard Russo's "Straightman".

I read it in grad school and could pretty much put a face to

every character.

Michael Dirda: Yes.

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Toronto, Canada: This is more a comment than a question, but I thought that Solzhenitsyn was dead on when he contended that art and literature are the only spiritual ambassadors between countries.

If there were an underrated language in literature, which do you think it would be?

Michael Dirda: The "big" national literatures are those written in English, French, Russian, Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese, Italian. Anything else tends to be underread. Offhand, I'd guess that Polish was underread.

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Arlington, Va.: Gossip Girl is a series of breathless, bloggy missives on the adventures of affluent teenagers on the Upper West Side. It was recently transformed into a series for the CW network.

They run between 200 and 300 pages, but the type is quite large and the prose is quite shallow.

Michael Dirda: Thanks.

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Lansdale, Pa.: Concerning names in fiction, Dickens is the acknowledged master here. I have not read any Harry Potter books, but I when I see the character names Rowling has come up with such as Hagrid and Dumbledore, I am quite impressed. My favorite is Mervyn Peake in Gormenghast with, off the top of my head, Steerpike, Swelter, Flay, Barquentine, Fuschia, and Dr. Prunesquallor. Is there something about names like these that relate to caricature? Peake himself was a creator of memorable character illustrations and I cannot help but feel that Phiz would have produced more banal features for characters named Robert Smith and Jonathan Jones.

Michael Dirda: Yes, I too am a Peake fan, and love his thick, baroque sentences, matching his dark vision and illustrations. Such names are all so unusual, and feel like descriptive sobriquets, so it's natural that they would be evocative of larger than life size characters.

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Falls Church, Va.: For the Cather reader, I'd highly recommend "A Lost Lady." More bittersweet than dark, I'd say. As I read it, anyhow, it's not so much about how the woman changes, as about how the boy's perceptions and knowledge of her change as he grows.

Michael Dirda: Yes, it's my second favorite and I write about it, too, in Classics for Pleasure.

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Cleveland: Regarding Helprin, do you think his politics intrude on the writing, or do you on principle prefer not to read authors whose politics you dislike?

Michael Dirda: In general, the politics doesn't matter a whole lot to me--I can read Evelyn Waugh and Celine with pleasure (of a sort). But Helprin's views haven't encouraged me to go on to his work.

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burke, Va.: Michael: This is probably a little too soon to raise this question, but, has Robert Jordan's estate mentioned any plans to find someone to finish The Wheel of Time saga?

Michael Dirda: Not that I'm aware--and when did Jordan die? I remember that he was very ill, but missed his passing. Sigh. He wasn't that old.

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Fairfax, Va.: I'm about half-way through "The World Without Us" and, frankly, I'm not that intrigued. Normally this type of subject is right up my alley, but I just feel like the book, so far, is a collection of either fragmented sentences or run-ons. Have you read this, what did you think?

Michael Dirda: Can't comment on the book, since I don't know it.

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Omaha, NE: Any plans to review Alexander Theroux's new novel?

Michael Dirda: I did have plans when it was coming out in the summer, but don't know if I still do. My schedule has grown more hectic.

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Houston: What did you think of the new Roth? The few reviews I've seen so far have been mixed, at best, including a rather snide piece by Christopher Hitchens.

Michael Dirda: You'll need to read the review itself in a week from Sunday.

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New Haven: Best name of a place in recent fiction:

The Cacatrophic Stain, a nasty place in China Mieville's work.

Michael Dirda: Mieville, who much admires Peake and literary fantasy, does have a flair for evocative names. Perdido Street Station just sounds neat.

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Ashcroft, BC (BR): The trouble with reading so many writers from the past is that you don't get the thrill of anticipation as you wait for their next book to be published. About the only title by a contemporary author to which I'm looking forward this fall is George MacDonald Fraser's "The Reavers", which promises to be a saucy, swashbuckling romp along the lines of "The Pyrates".

Having said that, I recently read a book of essays by Fraser in which he comes across as slightly more right-wing than Reagan and Thatcher put together; something which I shall try to forget as I read his fiction.

Mentor-pupil relationships: I immediately thought of Magwitch and Pip in "Great Expectations", although it might be more accurate to say that Jaggers and Wemmick between them mentor Pip. Dickens must surely still be the gold standard in character names, by the way: the ones I mention above, and Gabriel Grub, Ebenezer Scrooge, Sairey Gamp, Noddy Boffin, Quilp, Pickwick: the list is endless.

Michael Dirda: Indeed it is endless. Quilp is an especial favorite.

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GWB's books: Maybe he listens to books on tape while exercising.

Michael Dirda: Hmm. That's a good possibility. I do rather admire his devotion to exercise and have, against my will, thought him a relatively handsome man. Laura too is quite attractive.

Posters may be shocked to know that I've had my wife and I have had our picture taken with George and Laura at a celebration for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I"m glad I went--if only to go to a White House soiree--but churlishly would have preferred another president.

Well, I think I've somehow exhausted this week's questions, no doubt by writing relatively short. Perhaps next week I'll be more expansive. Till then, keep reading!

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New Haven: A favorite name from Dickens: The lovely Smallweed family, one of whom utters an unforgettable insult to the effect of: "You dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll-parrot!"

Michael Dirda: Oh a few more.

Yes, indeed.

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Alexandria, Va.: For those feeling a little blue at the moment and would like a literary pick-me-up: I am thoroughly enjoying the lively home-and-garden memoirs of Beverley Nichols ("Down the Garden Path," "Merry Hall," "Laughter on the Stairs," "Sunlight on the Lawn," etc.), which have recently been reprinted by Timber Press. I think all of us bookworms would like Nichols's "revolving Empire bookshelf," that "shoots books out like bullets."

I'll next move on to Nichols's gardening mysteries (eg, "Murder by Request").

Michael Dirda: Thanks for the lead--I know of Nichols and his gardening interests but have never read any of his books.

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Bellevue, Wash.: Regarding Cather, I think "The Professor's House" is quite good too, but everything of hers that I've read has been good -- "A Lost Lady," "My Antonia," "Death Comes for the Archbishop" -- and I'd have difficulty choosing a favorite. Perhaps the word underrated is thrown around too much, but I think she ought to be higher in the American canon than she seems to be.

Michael Dirda: Yes: I call her the lost lady of American fiction.

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Arlington, Va.: C.S. Lewis, for every single name in The Screwtape Letters.

That is all.

Michael Dirda: Yes.

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Annapolis: Michael - As a raging liberal, I urge you to read Helprin's longer works. In particular, "A Soldier of the Great War" is wonderful, as is "A Winter's Tale". And I didn't detect any secret (or not-so-secret) political agenda.

Michael Dirda: Thanks.

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Wodehouse names from Moterey: How can you beat 'Madelaine Bassett" and 'Gussie Finknottle'? Fits in the category of 'Wish I'd said that.' And he nails the characters so well. One of my favorite scenes in literature is the one where Gussie Finknottle is distributing the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School. Watteau's fine, by the way. Love the pastels and curliques. Amazing detail. Soothing, full of light. Klee's good too.

Michael Dirda: No arguments from me.

And now again farewell, till Wednesday next.

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