Dirda on Books – Transcript Michael Dirda Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 18, 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. Although he holds 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. "Do not imagine that I regard my taste for literary artifacts as anything but shameless and vulgar," Dirda says, "I have sunk so low as to covet Edward Gorey coffee mugs. I yearn for a bust of Dante to place on a bookcase."

Olney, Maryland: I took your recent advice to another reader suggesting Stendhal's "The Red and The Black" and to my surprise I am thoroughly enjoying his writing. His observations and commentary on human behavior and motivations are very fresh and I have laughed out loud several times. Although it's been many years, I don't recall the writing of American authors of the same period to be as fresh or interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.

Michael Dirda: Well, Stendhal is a writer hard not to like. Andre Gide was once asked to name the greatest French novel and he chose Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma. I actually am what is called a Beyliste--that is, I prefer Stendhal's more autobiographical writing, the stuff he generally wrote under his real name Henri Beyle, or under one of several other pseudonyms. You might try his wonderful treatise, On Love, or his childhood autobiography, The Life of Henry Brulard. I'm also fond of his diaries and travel journals and a hodge-podgey biography of Rossini.

Farmville, Virginia: I don't want your coffee mugs, but I AM an unabashed lover of Michael Dirda -the print version-. God knows, we need more people who love civilization and live their lives civilizing love. I also marvel at the art you have made of self-effacement. Your glee at your guilt calls mine out of darkness. What is the place of self-effacement in Western literature? And is it different in Eastern literature?

Michael Dirda: I couldn't resist trying to answer your question--thanks for the compliments--but I'm not quite sure what you mean about living my life civilizing love. It sounds tantalizing, though I'm not sure my wife would approve. I'm not precisely self-effacing; in fact, my colleagues tend to find me all too autobiographical. But I believe what Jean Cocteau once said: "Whatever people criticize you for, cultivate. It is you."
Self-effacement tends to be a spiritual quality, though one can be proud of one's humility, I suppose. At various periods artists and craftsmen might work anonymously, assuming that the poem or cathedral were what mattered, rather than the individual creator. This is a large, and interesting topic. Do you have thoughts?

Alexandria, VA: I recently purchased a copy of "The New Lifetime Reading Plan." It seems a bit daunting. as I am already in my late 30's. I have read 5 - 10 of the listed book. How do you recommend tackling the rest?

Michael Dirda: Well, Fadiman's book is fun to read straight through, and I would recommend doing this. Or at least doing some heavy browsing. When one of his mini-essays strikes a responsive chord, you might then try the book described. But reading isn't a race. It should simply be a part of one's life, a good habit, like brushing your teeth. If you read a good book slowly and deliberately, it hardly matters whether you get through 10 in your lifetime or a thousand. The real question is How many get through you? Randall Jarrell always recommended that we Read at whim! Read at whim!

Arcanum,Oh: Mr. Dirda,
Do you have an opinion as to the greatest movie ever adapted from a GREAT book?

Michael Dirda: The Maltese Falcon is extremely faithful to Hammett's classic detective novel. Of course, it uses much of hammett's dialogue. Of course, what do you mean by a great book? Merchant/Ivory have adopted Henry james novels to the screen--or at least they've taken the plots and lushly imagined the settings. But the master's lucubrations and hesitations, the tortuous syntax and oblique wit--none of this will ever work in a movie. The best movies, the saying goes, are made from second or third rate books.

Rockville, Maryland: Any suggestions for beach reading? I prefer funny writing.

Michael Dirda: This might well be a FAQ. Try P.G. Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe, Terry Pratchett, David Lodge, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Holt, Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Crispin. All are funny, in different genres.

Washington, D.C. : I apologize for not remembering the name of the author or the second book. A while back I read "She's come undone." The same other has a new book out that is very, very long. Do you know anything about it? Would you recommend it?

Michael Dirda: The author is, I believe, Wally Lamb, but I don't recall the title of the book. A good bookshop should be able to help you in a jiffy.

Frederick Md: What do you think of Robert Penn Warren as a novelist. "All the King's Men" won a Pulitzer -about 1947- and was made into an Oscar winning movie. But he has written a number of other novels based on historical events -"The Cave," "World Enough and Time," "Wilderness," "Band of Angels," and others- that I think are first-rate novels. Most of his novels are out of print but are still available in used book stores.

Michael Dirda: I'm ashamed to say that All the King's Men is the only Warren novel I've read--though I have enjoyed his poetry and learned from his essays and criticism. Generally, people seem to think his early novels are his best; besides King's Men, Night Rider has a lot of fans. I do think King's Men is one of the century's great American works of fiction--beautifully written, powerful, heartbreaking, suspenseful, redemptive, everything a novel should be. I'm lucky enough to own a first edition, mint in dj, a rare book worth $2000 or more.

Oakland, CA: I'm going to England next week, and am in search of some good books to get myself in the mood of the country and of London. I know that there are endless British books, but I'm looking for books that would give me a good feel for the city.

Michael Dirda: Christopher Hibbert--a prolific popular historian--has an excellent book on London--a long, heavily illustrated history, written in an engaging style. V.S. Pritchett once wrote a very long essay, originally published with photographs by Evelyn Hofer, called London Observed or London Proclaimed or something (he did three of these, the other cities being Dublin and new York). That should be in the library. Robin Winks, an historian at yale, did an excellent guide book to England in general, called An American's Guide to Britain. Also, W.S. Lewis did a book called Three Walks in London, describing London at three different periods of its history. Edward Rutherfurd wrote a long, and to me not very appealing, historical novel called London--a kind of British Michener epic. There's also a fairly recent book called London: The Encyclopedia.

washington, D.C.: Do you know of any books that talk about a religion-philosophy called, I believe, kabala? I believe it's of jewish origin.

Michael Dirda: Yes, the kabbalah--there are various spellings, including cabala--is a branch of jewish theological thinking. Much of it involves the mystical interpretation of letters and numbers taken from scripture. The great expert is Gershom Scholem, who revived its study in our time. He was a close friend to the great German critic Walter Benjamin, and has had some influence on the literary critic harold Bloom. Borges was also fascinated by kabbalah and its symbolism.

Alexandria VA: A good friend of mine doesn't like to read fiction of any kind; he only reads aviation magazines if anything at all. I've suggested Crichton's AIRFRAME, and other aviation-related literature, with no interest on his part. I find this so sad and wonder how this could have happened. When you met your wife, did you have a common love of reading?

Michael Dirda: My closest boyhood friend--now an aviation engineer--had no interest in reading either. But this isn't particularly unusual--books must seem to many people an irrelevant aspect of contemporary culture, a dying medium. My wife marian is a great reader, a polymath with interests in art, science and history. She always has been the most multi-talented and intellectual person I know. (In life, she is an art conservator, now at the National Gallery and National Archives--if you spill wine on the Declaration of Independence, she's the person they'd call to treat it.) Her favorite writes are an eclectic lot: Tolstoy, Dick Francis, Jane Austen, Dorothy Sayers.

Washington, DC: I am reading Anthony Burgess for the first time: his A Clockwork Orange. And I am loving it, in fact, totally blow away. This is not the type of fiction that I am otherwise drawn to. I want to read all of him now. I read somewhere that Burgess started to write late in life. Is he still alive? And what do you think of him?

Michael Dirda: Oh you are one lucky reader! Burgess didn't start publishing till he was 40 or so, but managed to produce 40 or 50 books in his career: biographies of Shakespeare and Hemingway, several books of essays, studies of language and music, a wonderful book on james Joyce called Re: Joyce, and a two-volume autobiography that is one of the best of the century: Little Wilson and Big God is vol 1, and the second, about his life as a writer, You've Had Your Time. He is, alas, dead now--he died in his early 70s a half dozen years ago. As a novelist, he is wonderfully varied and imaginative, with a flair and gusto for language very rare. My favorite novels of his include Nothing Like the Sun (about Shakespeare's love life); Earthly Powers (a big, fat novel focusing on a writer rather like Somerset Maugham, but that tells much of the history of our century), Enderby (about a failed poet and his misadventures) and several others. He is periodically reissued in paperback and you can find many of his works in used bookshops. His criticism is also highly personal--the man had a great voice on the page--and I recommend Homage to Qwertyuiop and the earlier Urgent Copy.

Washington, D.C.: I picked up a book called "Island Madness" in London recently and just finished it. It is about life on the island of Guernsey during WWII, when it was occupied by the Germans. A really fascinating combination of novel-murder mystery exploring the theme of what really would you have done if you were under occupation. Don't miss this when it is published here or get it at Hatchards.

Michael Dirda: Thanks for the lead--I'll look out for it. Tell us the author's name, if you can.

Washington DC: That Wally Lamb book: I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE.

And now on to the question: I belong to a bookgroup. We're a varied lot: punk rock band members, museum workers, lawyers and artists. It's my turn to pick a book. Make me look cool, Michael! What book should I choose?

Thanks--you're a real pal!

Michael Dirda: Hmmm. Wish I knew more about your tastes. But let's see. I'll assume you want a novel or memoir. I'll further guess it should be contemporary, not too long, and appealing to people with varied backgrounds. Ok, here are a couple of suggestions: 1)George V. Higgins' classic novel about Boston crooks, The Friends of Eddie Coyle--amazing language. 2) Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia--the most influential and engaging travel book of our time. 3)Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus--magic realism, cockney style, and Carter's best book (except for Wise Children). I could go on, but if you have a chance e-mail me more info on the group.

Manassas, Virginia: What did you think of Salman Rushdie's "The Ground Beneath Her Feet?"

Michael Dirda: Didn't read it yet, though I thought The Moor's Last Sigh was terrific--arguably his best book till then (and probably still).

Silver Spring, MD: I recently rented the movie The Thin Red Line and liked it a lot. I'm thinking about picking up the book by James Jones. Would you recommend it?

Oh, as for good movie adaptions, I think two good ones are To Kill a Mockingbird and Paths of Glory.

Michael Dirda: Yes, those are both excellent movies, from good books. I haven't read The Thin Red Line, but I suspect it's a pretty good novel, of a slightly old-fashioned sort. On m first trip abroad, when I was 19, I sat next to James Jones's secretary on a plane going to France. At the time, it was as close as I ever thought I'd get to a literary celebrity. There was a movie based on his life, derived from a book by his daughter Kaylie, but I don't recall the title, not being much of a movie-going guy.

Washington, D.C.: Have you read "Under the Tuscan Sun"? I have been to Italy and would love read a novel which will help take me back to that beautiful country.

Michael Dirda: No on Tuscan Sun. My favorite Italian novels are Lampedusa's The Leopard--set in Sicily, about the decline of an aristocratic family as the modern world impinges on its ways (and a lot more too); Italo Svevo's great account of a love affair, As a Man Grows Older, though most people prefer his more famous Confessions of Zeno; and Cesare Pavese's Among Women Only--rather like an Antonioni film. I've always meant to read natalia ginzburg and leonardo Sciasca. Two writers I like a lot, Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, seem more universal than particularly Italian. You might, of course, also read the wonderful books foreigners have written about Italy: Goethe's Italian Journey,
E.m. fORSTER'S A room with a view, and some of Henry James novels. Oh yes, and William Dean Howells's Indian Summer.

Arlington, VA: I have recently become intrigued with older sci-fi and horror movies like the orig. "Haunting." Could you recommend some classic books that evoke dread, fear yada-yada-yada without all the conventional gore?

Michael Dirda: You might want to start with a good anthology such as The oxford book of ghost stories, or Dorothy Sayers's three omnibus of crime (half are mysteries, half supernatural stories). The classic authors, though, are Sheridan Le Fanu, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, and Robert Aickman. Many women also wrote extremely powerful ghost fiction: Vernon Lee (one of my favorite stories is Amour Dure); May Sinclair (Where There fire is not quenched), Edith Wharton (Afterward), and Daphne Du Maurier (she wrote the original story The Birds, as well as Rebecca).

Manassas, Virginia: Do you read much poetry or do you stick mainly to novels?

If you do read the former, who are your favorites?

Michael Dirda: I read a lot of poetry, even more history and biography and essays, and not really all that much fiction.My favorite poets are pretty standard: In the 20th century, Housman, Auden, Stevens, Eliot, Larkin, Bishop, Hecht. In earlier times, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, Donne, Herbert, Hopkins and Chaucer. As a kid I carried around Immortal Poems from the English Language and memorized a lot of it. Best use of time I ever discovered.

Annandale, VA, : Michael, a- I like your work; and B- don't you think Paul Theroux's comments on London in kingdom By the Sea might be of interest to someone going to London? c- Know a great travel book? Thanks!

Michael Dirda: a--thanks; b--probably (don't recall those comments); c--I know several: Just mentioned Chatwin's In Patagonia. To that I'd add Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana, Sybille Bedford's A Sudden View (about Mexico), Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, and Alan Moorehead's wonderful books about the exploration of Africa, The White Nile and The Blue Nile.

Kensington, MD: I have noticed that your columns are starting to reflect a certain religious questioning, if only vaguely. Is your normal playful irreverence giving way to a more serious personal search?

Michael Dirda: I don't think so. I did write, at Easter, about my religious questionings, and have periodically reviewed books about the Bible or the history of Christianity. Oh yes, and I did write about turning 50 last January, and more recently about my physical fitness fit, but otherwise don't think I've become a pilgrim searching for the way. Alas, several of the books I review next month don't allow for as much irreverence as I'd like, so I'd better try to find a good Readings topic to lighten the general spirit of things.

DC: I--on the suggestion of my new book group--just read "Flatland" by William Abbott Abbott -sic-. I'd like to know more about the author and the book's place in English literature, but can't find anything about either he or it in the standard reference books. Have you read it? Has it been influential on more recent science fiction writers? I'd really like to know how it was received when it was published over a hundred years ago, but I think that might be too much to ask....

Michael Dirda: I have read it, found it delightful. Somebody wrote some kind of sequel--Sphereland, or something--and it is a highly regarded book in sf circles. The only writer I can think of who might have been influenced by it is Rudy Rucker, a crazed sf author and a professor of mathematics and computer science. You might look for three books about math and fiction: Rucker's anthology The mathenauts and Clifton Fadiman's much older Fantasis mathematica and The mathematical Magpie. In particular, you might seek out the famous story, A Subway named Moebius, for an approach to math somewhat similar to Abbott's. To find out more about the man, look him up in the Clute/Nicholls/Grant Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, one ot he world's best reference books. Or in E.F. Bleiler's guides to sf.

Bethesda, Maryland: Seeing your mention of owning a mint copy of a book brings to mind John Dunning's novels -only two, unfortunately- featuring Cliff Janeway, cop-turned-rare-book-dealer.

If you have read him, did you find the novels accurate in terms of the book trade?

Michael Dirda: For the most part yes. Dunning has been a bookdealer. I found it too easy to guess the denouement of the first novel--it seemed obvious, given that one house was full of book club editions and the other of true firsts.

Washington, DC: Recently a friend recommended a series of books from the 1920s by an English writer named Benson about a woman named Queen Lucia. I can't seem to find them anywhere. Are you familiar with them, and if so, are they worth reading?

Michael Dirda: I wrote about the Lucia books last summer, in my August and September Readings columns. not everyone likes them, but if you do, they are just about the most amusing books in the world. The first two have recently been reissued, and the others--there are six in the Lucia series--are easily findable in used bookstores. I like them a lot, though Wodehouse remains my main man, comic fictionwise..

Arlington,VA: I think the English Patient was a first rate movie. What did you think of the book?

Michael Dirda: Loved the book, reviewed it for the Toronto Globe and Mail, Ondaatje's hometown, which pleased me. Never saw the movie--I don't really go to the movies. One has to choose in this life. Someday I'll write my essay about the movies.
But I see it's long past 3, so I'd better stop. Thanks for writing in, sorry if I didn't get to your question. Till next time Wednesday at 2--Keep Reading!