Dirda On Books Michael Dirda Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 21, 1999

Michael Dirda The Washington Post

Michael Dirda's name appears weekly in The Post's Book World section: – If he's not reviewing a fat literary biography or an ambitious new novel, he's likely to be writing a lighthearted essay about the joys and burdens of living in a house filled with way too many books. Though holding a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell, Dirda is still smart enough to be an unabashed fan of "The Simpsons," noting that "the show's genius derives from its details." He also loves P.G. Wodehouse, intellectual history, children's books and locked room mysteries – just the sort of range you'd expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner for distinguished criticism.

These days, Dirda says he spends inordinate amounts of time mourning his lost youth and daydreaming ("my only real pastime"). Otherwise he just reads books and writes about them, with occasional visits to secondhand bookstores in search of treasures. He claims that the happiest hours of his week are spent sitting in front of a computer working on his reviews and Readings columns. Never afraid of self-criticism and in fact pretty good at it, Dirda once noted: "Do not imagine that I regard my taste for literary artifacts as anything but shameless and vulgar. I have sunk so low as to covet Edward Gorey coffee mugs. I yearn for a bust of Dante to place on a bookcase."

Winston-Salem, NC: Do you like Robert Penn Warren's poetry and will the new collected volume of his work published by LSU Press be reviewed in the paper?

Michael Dirda: Hello, all. Welcome to another session of Dirda on Books. This week people have been encouraged to send in poetry questions--this being poetry month--but we will probably also touch on other matters. Digression is my middle name (actually Damian is my middle name, but that's another story, he said digressively.)
Yes, I do like Robert Penn Warren's poetry, and I had hoped to review this new collected volume myself. My guess is that we'll try to do something on Warren this summer when the press of completely new books slows down somewhat. When Book World changed over from a broadsheet to a tabloid some 20 years ago, I called up "Red" Warren and persuaded him to give us a poem for the front of the first issue. Just talking to the author of All the King's Men was a thrill. I'm also a fan of his wife Eleanor Clark's books, especially one half forgotten now called Dr. Heart. It's about a graduate student in Southern France, and is set during the very year I spent as a student in France. I remember reading about the fire in the nightclub that forms a climax of the book. Their daughter Roseanna is a wonderful poet too.

Bethesda, MD: I am glad to see somewhat with serious literary credentials also enjoys a good mystery. However, I have noted two trends lately--one is good stories that never seem to come to closure, they just end and leave the reader unsatisfied. The other is that an author will write a good mystery or two, and then his-her books will get longer and looser. It seems that with fame comes higher prices for books and therefore the need for more pages. Do financially "successful" writers get edited as stringently as new ones?

Michael Dirda: In journalism the rule is "everybody needs an editor." But this doesn't seem to apply to publishing where some of the bloated fiction of our more popular writers is simply funneled through the editorial office with hardly a thought about copy-editing. It's a strange business. A real artist doesn't willingly submit to editing--it's his or her vision and it oughtn't be tampered with--but a popular novelist should in fact strive to be as crisp and entertaining as possible.

Fairfax, VA: Hi! Could you please tell us the titles of the books from which these two quotes were cited in last week's chat: "Reader, I married him", and "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past".

Michael Dirda: The first is Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre; the second is Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. If you visit Fitzgerald's grave in Rockville, you will see the same words etched on his tombstone. The first thing I did when I came to DC, lo these many years, was to make a pilgrimage to that gravesite and I treasure a picture of me standing there in the rain. All serious readers should offer homage to the writers they love.

Ashton, Maryland: Do you know of a biography of John Mc Crae, who wrote "In Flanders Fields." I read somewhere that he was a Canadian physician serving with the Allied Armies and died of an infection during the war. I enjoy your writing tremendously; thanks for attention to this request.

Michael Dirda: Don't know of a biography off hand: Have you tried the library? One of the few poems my steelworker father used to recite was "In Flanders Fields" where the poppies grow. Glad you like my writing. You might also look in books like Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory.

Arlington, VA: You mentioned bloated fiction. What do you think is the ideal length of a novel? I remember taking a week to read Atlas Shrugged and a similar time to make it through about a quarter of The Source and decided I wouldn't read anything longer than 400 pages unless it has extra large print.

Michael Dirda: I myself love short novels and very long novels--on the one hand, a book like Diderot's Rameau's Nephew or Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground or Beckett's How it is or Cather's A Lost Lady--and on the other Proust, Joyce, Pynchon, DeLillo. The shorter works tend toward the classical perfection I admire, while the longer ones try to embrace the entire scope of life. Fiction needs both.

Seoul, Korea: You've said in past chats that you think writers should get out and see the world, experience life before they try to write about it. I would agree. What about critics, however? Shouldn't they be held to the same standard?

Also, Part II, if you like: What do you think about negative reviews? What about simply not reviewing the book if it didn't come up to a paper's standards? -I know some would say that there could be constructive criticism, but if that's the case couldn't the reviewer simply send the writer a note? Is it all about business -- they've been hired to read this book and so now they have to review it, like it or not?-

Some reasons I like your columns, by the way: your lack of negativity, and your enthusiam for good writing.

Michael Dirda: Obviously, the more we know--of books, people, life, work, the world--the better writers or critics we will be. (There are exceptions, however: Think of Hopkins, Tolkien.) But anybody who lives or falls in love or has a job is bound to be rich in experience: You can hardly avoid it. I myself have enjoyed a misspent youth and middle age reading lots of books, but I've also done all those things you used to see in biographical notes next to the name of the author: Michael Dirda has worked on a farm, sold Fuller brushes, spent six summers installing aluminum windows, storm doors and siding, paid for college while working in a laundry, etc. etc. (All true, by the way.)
As for negative reviews: If it's a first book, we try to make the negative review as brief as possible. For well known writers, it's sometimes salutary for them and the public to have their mistakes pointed out. Since I work at Book World I get to preview the books I write about and naturally choose those I think I'll like. Hence, the predominance of positive notices in my own critical work.

Arlington, VA: How do you stand on publishing the works of long-dead authors? I'm thinking of the "new" Hemmingway novel that will be released this year. For example, The Love of The Last Tycoon was Fitzgerald's most mature work, but it wasn't really in readable form. What are your expectations for Papa's safari novel?

Michael Dirda: We expect to have a very good piece about this issue this summer, pegged to the new Hemingway. My own feeling is that such material should be available to scholars in whatever form it exists, but ought not to have somebody else's vision imposed on it. I suspect that money--greed even--lies behind such posthumous publication. On the other hand, I'm fond enough of Hemingway to want to read anything he wrote: But I want to be sure he wrote it and not his son or his editor.

Dickerson, MD: A comment-request rather than a question, concerning Book World's focus: Too few of the reviews inspire me to search out and read the materials being reviewed. I was particularly struck by a review of three poetry collections several months ago. An entire page was devoted to trashing the three poets. I was left not wanting to read that, or any other, poetry. Please select books worthy of generally good reviews; then tells us why they're wonderful. You, Mr. Dirda, allow that to happen in your columns; others seem more interested in showing off their superiority.

Michael Dirda: See my previous message about my positive reviews. Sometimes you send out the books, expecting favorable notices, and matters turn out otherwise. It would be wrong to kill the reviews, which leaves an editor little choice but to run the reviews as they stand. Otherwise you start sending the implicit message that your book section only runs positive reviews and so reviewers start writing nothing but positive reviews, regardless of how they really feel about the books in question.

Washington, D.C. : The Louis Sachar you recommended for my 8-year-old was a hit! Thanks. A new dilemma: What do you think of the "adaptations" of classics for young children? Are they harmful?

Michael Dirda: I'm leery of all adaptations and abridgements, but I think you're thinking of books for very young kids, in which case anything that tells them the story of Robinson Crusoe or Gulliver is OK in my book. Just so long as they eventually go on to the real thing.

Washington, D.C.: Have you come across any contemporary poems that you thought were worth committing to memory -something people don't seem to do much anymore-?

Michael Dirda: How contemporary is contemporary? Randall Jarrell, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop--I know some of their poems by heart. I think Jane Kenyon's Otherwise is an eminently memorable, and wonderfully touching, poem (it's also the title of her posthumous collection). But I don't think people do much "learning by heart" these days. Alas.

Elk Lake, NY: What are your views on Wallace Stevens' poetry? Can you recommend the best one or two books of critical analysis of his work?

Michael Dirda: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens divide American poetry between (among?) them. That is, they are the models for half the poetry written in this country. I am extremely fond of Stevens and keep his collected poems by my bedside. I knew he was my kind of poet when I noticed that one of his poems was titled "The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade." "Just as my fingers on these keys make music. . ." I think the best criticism of Stevens is probably a little book by Frank Kermode and a big book by Harold Bloom. But before either I'd read the poems, the letters and the lectures collected as The Necessary Angel.

New York, NY: In your own opinion, what do you think of Jeannette Winterson's fiction? Do you think her writing gets better or worse? Have you ever liked her books?

Michael Dirda: Loved Oranges are not the only Fruit--a hoot (pardon the rhyme). The Passion and Sexing the Cherry are also beautifully written ( I reviewed SExing). My impression of her latest work is that she is either repeating herself a bit or growing a little too eccentric and self-indulgent. But this view is based largely on mere skimmings of the books. But she possesses great gifts--a fact which, I've read, she announces to everyone.

Washington, D.C.: Can you recommend a few poems so excellent they will help to sway a poetry cynic?

Michael Dirda: Look for a good anthology: There's one of the 500 best poems in English. Here are five personal high spots, all obvious classics: Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress; Shelley, Ozymandias; Tennyson Ulysses; T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; almost anything by Emily Dickinson.

Washington, DC: How do you feel about popular musicians -like Jewel or Patti Smith- who demand to be taken seriously by publishing books of poetry?

Michael Dirda: I feel fairly cynical--but publishing is a cynical business. But then I wouldn't read a novel by George Lucas, who is credited as the author of a Star Wars novel trilogy.

Nantucket: Mr. Dirda - what's your take on limericks?

Michael Dirda: Long, long ago, in what seems like a galaxy far, far away, I courted my wife by composing limericks--funny and dirty--about the various parts of her body. To be good a limerick needs to be obscene, the kind that goes. . . Oops. Better not recite one here. But the last line is "ANd on Mondays he meddled with mice.".

washington, dc: As a worn-out parent of a small child, I find that I can usually stay up long enough at night for a single short story. "The Best American Short Stories of the Century" is delightful, and I'm a fan of Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, and William Trevor. Any other recommendations for contemporary short story writers?

Michael Dirda: Chekhov. Always Chekhov. Oh, you said contemporary: Hmm. on second though,just go back to CHekhov.

Columbia MD: You have been recommending Crowley's "Little, Big" as a best read for fantasy. It is out of print and I've searched online and in used book stores to no avail. Any ideas where it can be found?

Michael Dirda: I'm surprised you haven't found it in used bookstores. Just keep trying. It's a masterpiece. All the best things require a little patience.

Fairfax, Virginia:
Do you think there's much chance of poetry becoming a popular art again? Where do you think most of the fault lies for the average person's dislike of poetry -High School? Poets themselves?-

Michael Dirda: Strange to say, there are zillions of people who WRITE poetry and only thousands who seem to READ it. I think the problem here is best expressed by Sturgeon's law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. There's so much poetry published that most of it is bound to be so-so--I mean even the greatest poets only have a handful of poems, often from quite voluminous oeuvres (see Tennyson, Browning, etc), that we actively care about. We should be grateful to David Lehman and his various guest editors for offering a useful threshing in each year's edition of The Best American Poety.

washington dc: Among current book reviewers, who do you most like or respect -same thing?- ?

Michael Dirda: On publishing and 19th-century fiction--John Sutherland. On oddball fiction and Arabic history--Robert Irwin. For almost anything--Gore Vidal and John Updike. My favorite reviewers--the people I most admired when I started in this business--are now dead: Anthony Burgess, V.S. Pritchett, Angela Carter. My favorite reviewers of all time are Cyril Connolly, Randall Jarrell, Edmund Wilson, Virgil Thomson, James Agee, Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf.

Cincinnati, OH: Of course it's pure speculation, but what poets publishing today do you think will be read 100 years from now? Who would you like to see read in 100 years?

Michael Dirda: ANswers to both parts: Anthony Hecht, Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur.

Washington, DC: In recent years, there have been a few allegations of high profile authors committing plagiarism. Last year's brief furor over Joseph Heller's Catch-22 seems to have died away. Another example a few years ago involved Joe McGinnis and William Manchester's Death of a President. Do you know whether there has been any final resolution of these issues?

Michael Dirda: Nope. My favorite plagiarism story is the one about William Gass, who early in his career had a story stolen by a colleague at a university who published it as his own. It was a nightmare, as these things always are. I tend to believe that most plagiarism cases are exaggerated, that the borrowings were unconscious or were so general as to be part of the currency of the time. I always suspect money as the secret engine of plagiarism cases.

Washington, DC: Do you consider rap or hip hop poetry? Have you read any of Lauren Hill's lyrics? I would consider her one of American's best selling young poets, would you?

What young poets would you recommend?

Michael Dirda: My kids listen to rap, but I can't stand it. It's just too sing-song, obvious and gross for my taste. But sometimes the rhymes and language is original and arresting: There are undoubtedly poets out there. But I tend to prefer poetry that is classical in character, witty, dense, organized: How's the Frost phrase go? It's no fun playing tennis without a net.

Vienna, VA: I am a big fan of ISLANDIA by Austin Tappan Wright. Can you recommend any other Utopian novels that might be as satisfying?

Michael Dirda: A good many science fiction and fantasy novels posit ideal civilizations. You might enjoy the novels of Jack Vance, one of the genre's most imaginative world-builders. Try Emphyrio, or The Languages of Pao or any of the five books in the Demon Princes series, especially The Star King.

Washington, DC: For some reason, I recently have noticed several bookstores putting large piles of Powys' novel, Wolf Solent, in quite prominent displays. Is he "in" now? Since the novel isn't new, I can't figure out why it has been singled out in this way.

Michael Dirda: Hmmm. Wolf Solent is one of those books I have always meant to read: If you saw my January REadings essay about going down to Florida, you may remember that it was one of the books I didn't get around to reading during that memorable visit. Iris Murdoch, George Steiner and Robertson Davies have all named him one of their very favorite novelists, and Wolf Solent is one of his three masterpieces (along with A Glastonbury Romance and Porius). I hope the public is buying the book in droves.
Well, that's about it for this week. I'm sorry if I didn't get to your question--I can only type so fast. Please try me again next week at this time. Until then, keep reading!