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Dirda on Books
Hosted by Michael Dirda
Washington Post Book World Senior Editor
Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001; 2 p.m. EST
Washington Post Book World Senior Editor Michael Dirda takes your questions and comments concerning literature, books and the joys of reading.
Each week Michael Dirda's name appears -- in unmistakably big letters -- on page 15 of The Post's Book World section. If he's not reviewing a hefty literary biography or an ambitious new novel, he's likely to be turning out one of his idiosyncratic essays or describing his travels to, say, a P.G. Wodehouse Convention. Although he earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell, Dirda has somehow managed to retain a myopic 12-year-old's passion for reading. He particularly enjoys comic novels, intellectual history, locked-room mysteries, innovative fiction of all sorts -- just the sort of range you'd expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner in criticism (1993).
These days, Dirda says he still spends inordinate amounts of time mourning his lost youth, listening to music (Glenn Gould, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall, The Tallis Scholars), and daydreaming ("my only real hobby"). He claims that the happiest hours of his week are spent sitting in front of a computer, working. In the fall of 2000 Indiana University Press published "Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments," a selection from Dirda's Book World columns. He hopes to bring out a companion volume soon.
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, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Nabokov, John Dickson Carr, Joseph Mitchell and Jack Vance. He thinks the greatest novel of all time is either Murasaki Shikubu's "The Tale of Genji" or Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu." In a just world he would own Watteau's painting "The Embarkation for Cythera." He'd also like to spend six months in Florida writing a book that would become a runaway best seller, a critical success, and the hottest cinematic property of the year. A guy can daydream, right?
The transcript follows.
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Michael Dirda: Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.... Oops, wrong persona. Life has been hectic here at Book World, what with the holiday issue, the holidays in general, and your Discussion Leader's usual traumas. But it's nice to settle back here, on a somewhat dreary day in DC, and sip some orange juice and talk about books. I was recently thrilled to discover that one of my essays--about reason and obsession--was reprinted in the newsletter of The Illustrioius Clients of Indianapolis, a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars (why, you ask? because I discuss Sherlock HOlmes at some length). I love these sorts of periodicals, filled with local gossip, reviews, notes and queries. I suppose Web sites have pretty much started to replace these paper ephemera, which is a pity. Always nice to be able to hold your reading material in your hand.
Well, enough chit-chat, it's time for what Gore Vidal used to call book-chat. Let's see what's on the roster for this week.
Washington, D.C.:
What constitutes a writer in some elitist journalist eyes? I mean compare J.K. Rowling to Vanessa Leggett. Leggett seems stigmatized by journalists because she holds evidence she collected concerning a murder case. She's imprisoned in Texas for it as we speak but she claims she's a writer even though she's unpublished. Could Rowling be considered a writer before the first Harry Potter was published or until her books started making colossal money? Is Rowling a better writer than let's say Agatha Christie. Most would say heck no. But Christie after writing just half of her lifetime could only dream of making the kind of money Rowling makes after only a few years of writing what's basically the same ongoing story. It's confusing but I'd like to know your opinion. Thanks.
Michael Dirda: Am I the elitist journalist? That sounds so harsh. I think of myself as a harried middle-aged newspaperman who likes to read; either that, or the finest critical mind since Sainte-Beuve, depending on when you catch me. You actually raise some subtle questions here, but I will give bald and crude answers. Anyone can be a writer, what counts is to be a published author. Somehow readers (or auditors or spectators) are needed to bring a work of art to life. Your waking dream has to become mine.
Has Rowling earned more than Christie? I'd be surprised since Agatha is supposedly the world's single best selling author. Of fiction anyway. And Christie may have been a whiz with plots, but her style was flat and efficient, and one could say that she uses the same stereotypical characters again and again. So I"m not sure this is a good comparison. But what does money have to do with literary greatness? Very little. A writer needs to get his stuff in print, and he or she needs at least a small coterie to keep people aware of it; but after that history, the academy and readers evaluate the works ultimate merits. Rowling is a fun novelist, but Roald Dahl and Joan Aiken were the real pioneers here, while Philip Pullman is our great living children's fantasy master.
Arlington, Va.:
Good afternoon. Since graduating college a year-and-a-half ago, the books I have read for enjoyment have been of the Oprah bookclub variety (not that this is a necessarily bad thing). I would love to get back to the books I read as an English major in college. Any thoughts on where I should begin. Any good reads out there?
Michael Dirda: Such a large question. Read Book World's reviews and Ithink you'll find some good leads to current literature. Otherwise, read the classics.
A Fellow Luddite:
Re: "Always nice to be able to hold your reading material in your hand."
In other words, you can't take a computer into the bathroom with you, right? Well, maybe you could balance a laptop on your knees or rig up a floatation device for it in the tub. Still you'd have to worry about your iBook tumbling into the water. I'll stick with print.
Michael Dirda: For a while. But sooner or later the e-books will be water-immersible. And then what? I'm not really a Luddite; more of an aesthete. I like the sheer variousness of books--size, texture, etc.--against the uniformity imposed by a monitor.
Winston-Salem, N.C.:
A news story about JD Salinger's daughter auctioning off letters from her father prompts the question about how much you think it's necessary for a reader to concern him(her)self with an author's life, instead of concentrating on the work? I guess with authors like Joyce the two are perhaps inseparable for understanding, but for many others their lives seem to detract rather then to add to the enjoyment of their work.
Michael Dirda: Ah, you should have been living in the 1950s, you retrograde New Critic, you! For 40 years ENglish teachers taught "the poem itself" and told students to eschew "the biographical fallacy" (i.e. interpreting works in light of their author's life). I think this is basically the correct approach to a work of art--the ding an sich--but it's hard not to agree with Addison, who wrote at the beginning of The Spectator essays that readers by instinct, by nature, want to know what an author looks like, "whether he be a fair man or a black man," etc. Human curiosity. Also writer's often live such messy, crazed lives that it's fun to read about their travails. And, of course, sometimes a writer's biography does help us deepen our understanding of a work: The Waste Land became a different poem when people began to learn about the tangles and torments of Eliot's married life.
Takoma Park, Md.:
Any opinions on Ursula Hegi's new collection of short stories? She is a serious literary writer who was an early Oprah selection (so much for Franzen). Is the new one up to standard?
Michael Dirda: Don't know; we have a review forthcoming, though. I like Hegi, for what it's worth.
Pentagon, Arlington, Va.:
Michael, every December my book club is asked to bring books to donate to Toys for Tots or some charity. It has been suggested that we bring books that these children can "relate" to meaning books about children of color, poor children, etc. I have always read for exactly the opposite reason. To discover worlds and places and people that I would not encounter in real life. Therefore, I usually bring the classics -- Nancy Drew, Secret Garden, Wind in the Door, Where the Red Fern Grows, etc. Do you or others have an opinion on this subject?
Michael Dirda: I'm with you. Kids read for escape as much as to understand their lot.
Frankly, this approach continues in my own adult reading. Having grown up in a poor, workingclass, urban steel town, I find it hard to generate enthusiasm for novels about the poor, working class life, or the steel industry (though I did like the section in Atlas Shrugged where John Galt and his two buddies work in a steel mill in Ohio--I've always thought it was based on National Tube, since Ayn Rand married a guy from Lorain).
Vienna, Va.:
Michael,
Your Bio says you started at Bookworld in 1978, so here's a question. What is the best book you reviewed:
in the 1970s?
1980s?
1990s?
Since 2000?
Michael Dirda: Interesting question, and without a list it's hard to know precisely when certain things came out. But I will list in roughly chronological order a half dozen of the books I most admired in print and still think highly of:
Gilbert Sorrentino, Mulligan Stew
Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
Anthony Hecht, The Venetian Vespers
Richard Howard, translation of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal
Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes
John Hale's The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance
Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower
Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel
Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass
OH, and a dozen others I"m probably forgetting. But what I've really liked are the more retrospective pieces, sometimes pegged to biographies or collections of letters,on Nabokov, Henry Green, Flaubert, etc.
Bethesda, Md.:
I saw a review recently of a mystery that involved some revelations about "Q," the Biblical source material. Now I'm wracking my brain for the title -- does it ring a bell with you?
Michael Dirda: this does sound vagiuely familiar but only that. Not a mystery, but do you know Harold Bloom's book on Q, in which he determines that she's a woman?
Boston, Mass.:
Again with the Rowling bashing. Who exactly has this woman injured with her writing? It's as if her sales somehow indicate that she's not actually a writer.
Michael Dirda: I'm not bashing Rowling. She gets kids to read--or at least to read her books. And they're fun. I reviewed and praised (the second with some reservations) the first two Harry Potters.
Nani, Tex.:
I've never seen John Steinbeck's works mentioned in your chat, but then I've only been a reader of the chat for the last six months or so. My mother was a great fan of his, had a complete collection of everything he'd written when she passed away in 1960. At that time I began to read all his books;it brought me much comfort to read the words that she had read and to experience what she must have felt. On impulse I wrote him and sent the letter to his publisher. Much to my surprise and joy, he wrote back, a handwritten letter which I've framed and kept in my treasure box. I still have Mother's collection of his books and my granddaughters are reading them now.
Michael Dirda: What a lovely note! Few readers understand how hungry even famous writers are for praise. As for us lesser literary folk, why we're positively ravenous. I treasure letters from V.S. Pritchett, Thomas Berger, and a fair number of other writers. One day I would like to frame some of them, along with various programs, posters, pictures and the like related to literary events at which I participated. Something to occupy me in my sunset yhears when I'm not pottering around in the garden.
Boston, Mass.:
Just recently discovered your chat and have been enjoying the wide-ranging discussion. I'm hoping you can help me find a few good books to read as the weather turns cold (slowly, up here in New England). I'm particularly interested in older authors that might not make the front of book stores that provide satisfying reads that make me think without making my depressed! How's that for a nebulous request.
Michael Dirda: Pretty nebulous, you're right. For sheer coziness, it's hard to beat the Sherlock Holmes stories, P.G. Wodehouse comedies, and Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr whodunits. As for more literary works? Trollope is always good.
washingtonpost.com:
Mr. Dirda is having some technical difficulties on his end and is attempting to fix them now. If possible, he will rejoin the discussion as soon as he can. Thank you for your patience.
washingtonpost.com:
Unfortunately due to a widespread computer problem Michael Dried is not able to come back online. He has asked me to apologies on his behalf and let you know that he will be discussing JRR Tolkiens book "The Two Towers" tomorrow at 2 p.m. Until then, happy reading.
washingtonpost.com:
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