Dirda on Books

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, Feb. 13, at 2 p.m.

A transcript follows.

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Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! Well, we woke up this morning--we, being much of Montgomery County--to discover that the ice storm that started yesterday had downed power lines all everywhere. So, shivering, I dressed, drove my youngest to school (two hours delay), then made my way up Colesville Road to the first open Starbucks for coffee. I wondered what I'd do about this chat, but happily power was restored around noon. So it's warm at Dirda Regis again, though sporting a T-shirt, flannel shirt and cotton sweater have obviously helped.

Still, this feels a day of slightly loose ends, where nothing started the way it was supposed to and so nothing still seems quite right.

No matter: Let's look at this week's questions and see what provocative, amusing or lackluster answers I can come up with.

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Alexandria, Va.: Have you read any Cornell Woolrich? I've seen a few movies based on his work and liked them, but haven't read any of his novels. I remember reading something in a Post article about how he dedicated some of his works to his typewriter.

Michael Dirda: Woolrich is a terrific writer of suspense and dark psychological twists. I didn't much like Francis Nevins' biography--extremely long, gives away the plots, etc etc--but it did encourage me to spend some time reading his work. I recommend his "Black" novels, especially The Bride Wore Black; Night Has a Thousand Eyes, written under the pen name George Hopley; and a good selection of his stories (there are several floating around). The Bride Wore Black is, as you may know, the inspiration for a great French film with, I think, Jeanne Moreau, and the obvious model for Tarantino's Kill Bill.

Woolrich could be a sloppy writer, but he possesses such intensity that he sweeps you along. He's to dark suspense rather what Philip K. Dick is to science fiction.

For more about Woolrich, you might look up my essay, included in Bound to Please.

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Lenexa, Kan.: Coppola's new movie "Youth without Youth"--getting mixed reviews--is from a novelette by the multi-talented Romanian scholar and writer, Mircea Eliade (lived many years in exile in France and America). I loved what Coppola did with the movie. It's a fascinating tale of ideas -- linguistic, philosophical, and other. John Clute (et al.) in his two (SF and Fantasy) encyclopedias has insightful coverage of Eliade. Do you know him well? Had a chance to read him? Thanks as always.

Michael Dirda: Eliade's anthropological studies of myth--The Myth of the Eternal Return and others--are key texts. He was, moreover, the colleague and something of a mentor of the great Ioan Culiescu, who much influenced John Crowley's Aegypt sequence. (Culiescu was murdered by Romanian assassins in a Chicago men's room.)

In the basement I also have a copy of Eliade's journals, which I haven't read.

All this said, there is a cloud hanging over the man. In his youth he belonged to some sort of Romanian right-wing group of quite reprehensible character.

I belong to the All-Hallows discussion group--part of The Ghost Story Society--and one of its members is a huge Eliade fan and expert. He's been trying to have more of the man's fiction translated into English.

I wonder how Coppola ever discovered it?

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Michigan City, IN: Michael, I just saw "There Will Be Blood" which is "inspired by" Sinclair's "Oil." I can't say that the stories are even close, but I can also see the places where dialog was taken from the book.

Do you know if there are 'rules' for the use of phrases like "inspired by," "based on," or other such allusions to a published work when movies are made? And do the same 'rules' (if there are any) apply to books bases on other books (like Rhett's People), or the continuing S. Holmes?

Michael Dirda: Well, I think that movie people do have to purchase the rights to a book, or even a title--but once they've done so, the contract probably allows them to do pretty much whatever they want. In cases like Rhett's People, I believe the Margaret Mitchell estate had to approve the sequel. Holmes, too, has certain copyright restrictions even now, but these are basically in the process of expiring.

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New Lenox, Ill.: I read "The Symposium" by Plato, which is one of his greatest dialogues, wherein each guest at a banquet speaks on the nature of love. Jowett said Plato "is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the world are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be regarded as a spiritualized form of them."

I also read "On Love" by Stendhal (in a Peter Pauper Press edition), which he thought was his best work. He writes that there are four kinds of love: passion love, gallant love, physical love, and vanity love, and that "a man's crystallization of his mistress, or her beauty, is no other thing than the collection of all the satisfactions of all the desires, which he can have felt successively at her instance."

Thanks to your review here, I'm currently reading My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. I'm about half way through the book and so far my favorites are "The Dead" by James Joyce and "The Lady with the Dog" by Chekhov. Harold Bloom commented that "Chekhov's greatest power is to give us the impression, as we read, that here at last is the truth about human existence's constant blend of banal misery and tragic joy."

Michael Dirda: Very nice posting. As it happens I've taught both Symposium and On Love (I recommend a better version than that from Peter Pauper--Penguin, perhaps). They are certainly classic statements on our favorite passion. In the Plato he offers two of our favorite theories of love: Aristophanes' tells the myth that people were once round balls that have been separated into halves; we are impelled by love to seek our other half. Socrates develops the idea of a "ladder of love"--that is, one may begin with the senses but should then gradually move up the ladder to a more spiritualized love.

Stendhal is full of good stories. In one a woman at court is teased that her lover doesn't really care that much for her. Shortly thereafter, he is discovered to have gone completely mute, incapable of speech. He remains this way for months and months, and the others at court now tease the woman that she should remain with this handicapped lover. At which point, the woman turns to the man and says "speak." And he spoke.

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Herndon, Va.: Dear Mr. Dirda,

What influence do you think W.G. Sebald has had on other writers, especially English-language writers? Do you think he is a one-of-a-kind genius? I am currently enjoying his masterpiece, "Austerlitz," having read a couple of his other works already.

Michael Dirda: Influence is hard to gauge. I suspect that Sebald might inspire experiments in genre-bending, that is the mixing of fiction and essay and reminiscence. This seems to be his great stylistic achievement, just as his wistful, autumnal voice is his great tonal one.

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Minnetonka, Minn.: Michael,

I have been listening to John le Carre read his novels. He gives a dramatic reading with all the different voices and accents. As the author he obviously gets it right. Do you know of any other authors who read their own books so well?

Michael Dirda: Le Carre really is something special. I don't think I've ever heard an author read his work so well--Le Carre could readily be a professional at this.

In general, I don't think authors are the best readers for novels. But this isn't so true for poets. Somehow it does add an extra dimension to hear Eliot's precise and pontifical voice reciting The Waste Land, or Dylan Thomas performing his or other people's poems. That said, Alec Guinness does a wonderful job of reading Eliot--as does Ted Hughes (whose performance of Four Quartets I find addicting).

On the other hand, Yeats's sing-song chanting is good to hear once, but that's about it.

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Freising, Germany: I once read a Harlequin-like book set in Kiev and Sebastopol, where the main character, Tanya, bribes a gypsy fortuneteller to tell a fable to the man that she wants to marry, that will convince him to marry her. The ploy actually works, but as in many a romance story, tragedy ensues as the husband in assassinated. Meanwhile, the former spurned love interest becomes the "Red Admiral" and sides with the rebels trying to overthrow the Ukrainian aristocracy. Tanya is thrown into poverty and is forced to marry a detestable man.

In fiction, isn't it the usually men who contrive to use superstition to sway the minds of people? I'm thinking of Svengali in "Trilby" and Oliver Haddo in "The Magician", but perhaps women have the upper hand in this regard when it comes to romance.

Michael Dirda: Gee, I don't know. There are plenty of Svengali like characters in literature--but also plenty of witches and sirens and lying femmes fatales and two-timing dames who'll say anything to get what they want.

Fortune tellers are nearly always women, though. I wonder why this is.

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Bride Wore Black: Moreau was in "The Bride Wore Black," and I hadn't thought about it before, but you're right, that must be the inspiration for Tarantino's "Kill Bill." Which is interesting, since "The Bride Wore Black" was Truffaut's homage to Hitchcock. I still think the best book on film I've ever read was Truffaut's book length interview with Hitchcock.

Michael Dirda: Yes, I've read that too, and enjoyed it a great deal. In truth, I've never seen Kill Bill, but the reviews described the plot and I said to myself "The Bride Wore Black"--but very few of the notices seemed to pick up on this. Curious, since I assume movie people have seen everything.

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DuPont Circle: Michael,

Thanks as always for hosting this chat. Compliments as well on "Classics for Pleasure," Santa was kind enough to bring me a copy and I've been making my way through it slowly since the 25th. It's an excellent book to unwind with before I go to bed each evening.

Question for you: I'm curious to read a good modern history of ancient Egypt. Do you have any suggestions?

Michael Dirda: Yes, Barbara Mertz's Tombs, Temples and Hieroglyphs--it even came out in a revised edition last year. Under the name Elizabeth Peters, Mertz writes the Amelia Peabody mysteries set in Egypt at the turn of the 19th-20th century.

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Michigan City, Ind.: Did you see the review in the New Yorker of "The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien"? I don't believe it was put out by Dalkey Archive, but it did at least mention Dalkey Archive Press's role in keeping Flann in circulation.

Michael Dirda: No. I saw the piece by Tom DePietro at the Barnes and Noble Review site. I don't read the New Yorker with any regularity.

As for Flann--I still love him, but I read those books and wrote about them a dozen years ago. Secretly, too, I prefer the Myles journalism to the fiction (and disagree with Charles Baxter that The Third Policeman is the funniest book of all time--I can think of a dozen that are funnier).

But it's wonderful that people don't have to track down the novels in England or Irish bookstores, as I did. And I'm sorry if this Modern Library volume takes away from the Dalkey Archive sales. I mean, the publishing house is named after a Flann novel. It's in The Dalkey Archive, you may recall, that we learn that James Joyce didn't die, but moved back to Ireland to live in obscurity while writing tracts for the Catholic Truth Society.

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Glencoe, Ill.: Michael,

I've been reading "The Night of the Wolf" by Paul Halter. It's a collection of impossible crime stories, in the style of John Dickson Carr. Halter is French. The stories are good -- filled with lots of atmosphere. Are there other writers since Carr who are good at this type of story?

Thanks,

Michael Dirda: Gee, I don't know this guy Halter--I love impossible-crime stories. Besides Carr's classics, you should look for Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians; Hoke Talbot's Rim of the Pit; and John Sladek's Invisible Green, and Clayton Rawson's The Footprints on the Ceiling. There are a handful of anthologies of locked room mystery stories too. Also, don't forget Ellery Queen--not exactly impossible crimes, but wonderfully mysterious ones. In The Chinese Orange Mystery, a man is found dead with all his clothes on backwards? Why?

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Fortune tellers are nearly always women: Well, don't forget old Tiresias.

Michael Dirda: Who?

(Just teasing.) Oh, and there's that guy in Julius Caesar too--Beware the Ides of March--and . . . hmmm, maybe fortunetellers aren't always women.

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K Street: Hi Michael, love the chats! Just wanted to say I finished two wonderful books recently: People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks) and Proust was a Neuroscientist (Jonah Lehrer). I highly recommend both!

Michael Dirda: Many thanks!

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Lonely Planet: This is Robert McCrum's Top 10 Books of 20th Century. He is The Observer's literary editor.

1. "A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu" by Marcel Proust

2. "Ulysses" by James Joyce

3. "The Man Without Qualities" by Robert Musil

4. "The Trial" by Franz Kafka

5. "Murphy" by Samuel Beckett

6. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

7. "The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford

8. "The Tin Drum" by Gunter Grass

9. "A Bend In The River" by VS Naipaul

10. "Nostromo" by Josef Conrad

Do you agree with him? Any comments?

Michael Dirda: These are all good books, but I'd include only half his books:

the Proust, Joyce, and Ford, for sure. I prefer Lord Jim to Nostromo, which drags. I'd probably include Lolita. Murphy is funny, but Beckett's trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable) is more important. Faulkner should be on the list, probably with Sound and Fury of Absalom, Absalom. And The Great Gatsby is as perfect as The Good Soldier. I also think highly of Lampedusa's The Leopard and Svevo's Confessions of Zeno.

Oh, and what about comic novels?

Lists can be fun, but I think it stupid to label something like this the top 10 books. These are just ten wonderful books. Literature isn't a horse race. The top ten books for you will be different from the top 10 for me. And for most people, we secretly love and are most influenced by smaller, less obvious titles.

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Colorado: Speaking of author's reading their work... I just listened to a CD-book of Neil Gaiman reading Neverwhere. I thought he did a great job. If you're a Gaiman fan, it's worth looking for.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks.

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Burke, Va.: Has a date been set for the release of Volume IV of Robert Caro's LBJ biography? If not a specific date, is there any sense of when a potential or tentative drop date?

Michael Dirda: I'm not aware of any, but then I'm not as much in the loop as I once was.

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Speaking of politics: Have you read Joseph Addison's "Cato"? I understand it was Washington's favorite play and he had it performed for his men at Valley Forge.

Michael Dirda: Nope, I've only read Addison's essays. But Cato was one of those noble Romans whose heroic life and death would doubtless inspire soldiers on the eve of battle.

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Washington, D.C.: Are there U.S. authors who are significantly more popular overseas than in the U.S.?

Michael Dirda: In the past, Jack London used to be immensely popular in the Soviet Union. I believe that he was one of Stalin's favorite writers. The English authors A.J. Cronin and Charles Morgan were taken far more seriously in France than in their native countries. Today, a writer like Paul Auster is a demi-god in France, probably even more so than in the States. For many years the American hard-boiled writers were taken more seriously there than here.

I used to wonder about these national disparities. I suppose that they result, at least in part, because some editor has a passion for a certain writer and makes sure that his or her work gets translated and published in France, Italy or wherever.

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(Spare apartment for you in) Paris, France: I don't have a spare apartment here but your welcome to stay in my little studio as long as you want while I either stay with friends or go traveling.

The catch?

As a poor struggling painter and writer, the place is small. I can't really give you its dimensions as it's shaped like a top lopped-off triangle. It's six stories up - but that's not so bad as in Europe as that's only five stories up! You can see Sacre Coeur from my little window but just the very tip of the top.

The floor is not level so make sure that you don't place your pen the wrong way so that it rolls onto the floor. The toilet is down the hall and stays reasonably clean. The tiny shower suddenly turns from scolding hot to freezing cold in a few seconds but you can minimize that keeping the water running in the sink. There is an Internet connection here if you have your own computer.

Everyone on the floor is very nice - though my English neighbor next door constantly brings young women to his apartment and most nights you can hear him talking to them very animatedly usually well after midnight until 3 or 4 in the morning. Though during the night and day, it is pretty quiet and you can get a lot of work done. Most of the people on my floor speak English as does the guy who maintains the rooms on this floor.

There are once a week (generally open mic) readings in English at the Shakespeare and Company book shop and (generally) bi-weekly open mic readings at a couple of dark basements in funky - now smoke-free! - bars (spokenwordparis.blogspot.com) and of course, all the other places that you already know about. Plus, I can keep you socially busy with my friends who are very literature and literary minded.

Gotta run and show a friend some of my paintings hanging up at an exhibition. None of which sold. Life here is a such a roller coaster ride....

Michael Dirda: Ah, I knew this chat would be good for something.

Well, this sounds, if not ideal, then at least fun--I'm ready. Let me know when you'll be travelling.

But, really, lucky you to live in Paris in such a place.

And now that I've got Paris squared away, how about London, Rome, and Vienna?

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Washington, D.C.: Any suggestions for funny (relatively) recent novels?

Michael Dirda: Terry Pratchett, Tom Holt, Joe Keenan, Christopher Moore--all very funny, in different ways and all still actively writing. For comic writers in the past, see my list in Readings.

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Ashcroft, BC (BR): Books into films: in most cases, I think once a film studio has purchased rights to a book they can do with it what they want, unless the original author is so famous or powerful that he or she can insist on putting safeguards into place, or can write the screenplay. For the most part, though, I think it's a case of the author, or the author's estate, cashing the cheque and hoping for the best. Of course, in the case of an out of copyright work anything is fair game, and you're free to do what you want; you don't even have to credit the original author, hence Shakespeare not getting a writing credit for "Kiss Me Kate".

I, too, am surprised that "The Third Policeman" is esteemed by some as the funniest novel ever written; I'd rank O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds" and even "The Poor Mouth" as funnier, and can think of novels by other authors I'd rate as funnier than "Policeman". Still, I suppose humour, as well as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Am almost halfway through G. B. Edwards's "The Book of Ebenezer Le Page"; what a wonderful, beautiful book. And what a shame the author never completed the proposed second and third parts of his intended trilogy. Still, we must be thankful for what we do have.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks. Glad you're enjoying Ebenezer Le Page.

Funny books--I'd probably point to Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies; a half dozen Wodehouses; The Good Soldier Svejk; Cold Comfort Farm, oh, and I don't who or what else.

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Alexandria, Va.: If you could write a Sherlock Holmes story where he teams up with a contemporary, who would it be? An aged Rhett Butler?

Michael Dirda: That's actually a very cool idea.

Young Sherlock and Flashman?

I suspect I'd write one in which he teams up with Langdale Pike (see The Three Gables).

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Top 10: Top 10 books that should be movies but aren't (yet).

Michael Dirda: Movies--who cares about movies! Seen one, you seen 'em all. As Pauline Kael once said, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang.

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Lexington: Michael, What is your take on graphic novels as lit? They're certainly not the comics we grew up with. With "Maus" and "Persepolis," they do appear to be a genre of literature. Posy Simmonds wrote a terrific take off of Madame Bovary with "Gemma Bovary," and now a Hardyesque novel, "Tamara Drewe." Her books are closer to illustrated novels than so-called "graphic novels." And, even a recent serial comic, "Y: The Last Man"' comes very close to serious lit work. And, many novelists are now writing for the comics.

Michael Dirda: Graphic novels certainly do seem to be the latest development in fiction. I'm actually a little surprised that the Zeitgeist didn't just skip over the form and go directly to some kind of computer-generated storytelling. Certainly I do think they are transitional and that we'll end up with some kind of graphic storytelling online.

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Michael Dirda: And that's it for this week's session of Dirda on Books! Till next Wednesday at 2--keep reading!

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