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Each week 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.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! Been busy this past week, what with crises of one sort and another. Normally I would detail each and everyone of these, but instead let's turn directly to our questions about reading, reviewing and books.

Lancaster, Pa.: Last week someone asked whether Donna Tartt had a new book out anytime soon. Yes, her new novel, The Little Friend, is scheduled for an October release from Knopf. It's about a young girl haunted by the murder of her brother, and her attempts -- she's only twelve when she sets off to do this -- to find his murderer. Supposed to be "breathtaking in its ambition and power, rich in moral paradox..."

Michael, what do you think of F.R. Leavis' -- many would say overblown -- claim that "Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad are the greatest English novelists, to stop at that comparatively safe point in history?" Cantankerous? On target? Good way to build a reading list?
Thanks

Michael Dirda: Thanks for the news about Tarrt. Certainly sounds promising.
As for Leavis: Like everyone I have mixed feelings about him. He could be incredibly authoritative and earnest, not to say pompous and overbearing, but he did make people look closely at novels and poems. I think his best work is in his earliest criticism, largely that of poetry in the Donne and Eliot tradition. His list of the four great ENglish novelists is certainly intelligent, as are all these novelists, but I don't see how one can levae out Dickens, EMily Bronte, Trollope and Ford Madox Ford, among others.

Washington, D.C.: Hi Michael,

After a trip to Ireland a year ago, I decided to start reading more Irish literature. Aside from Joyce, though, I'm a little lost on where to start. I did just read a memoir by Irish Times columnist Nuala O'Failain that was wonderful, and prompted me to buy her novel "My Dream of You." Any other suggestions for me?

Michael Dirda: There's so much to choose from. I'd read Synge's Riders to the Sea (play) and Playboy of the Western World, the poems of Yeats, Beckett's early novel Murphy, Flann O'Brien's journalism The Best of Myles, SEan O'Casey's first volume of memoirs, Frank O'Connor's short stories, and the poetry of Seamus Heaney.

Kensington, Md.: Hi Mr. Dirda,

Can I get your opinion on two authors, Doris Lessing and George Garrett, please? Thanks

Michael Dirda: I've--gulp--never read Doris Lessing. Garrett is a remarkably multi-talented writer, author of fine historical fiction (Death of the Fox), appealing essays and memoirs, and contemporary novels and short stories. He is also a powerful figure in modern day American literature, as a teacher, mentor and friend.

Silver spring, Md.: You've talked before about re-reading; I've just noticed an interesting looking book by Wendy Lesser on her re-reading adventures. Any comments?

Michael Dirda: I admire Wendy Lesser a great deal, in part for her eidting of Threepenny Review, but a book like this one doesn't really appeal to me: It feels too much like criticism. But perhaps I say thisbecause I'm working on a book about myh own reading.

Washington, D.C.: Michael,

I've never read any Terry Pratchett, but I see "Soul Music" sitting on the shelves of the paperback exchange at work. Would that be a good place to start? If not, what would?

Michael Dirda: You can start anywhere, though it helps to have some sense of Discworld history. It's the swing of the prose that counts.

Gullsgate, Minn.: Michael Dirda: Even though Nancy Drew never wore a ring in her navel or had purple hair, is no reason for The author of the original Carolyn Keene series, Millie Benson to receive no visible coverage; at least here at the Post ,where the untimely death of Chandra Levy repetively haunts the headlines. At least check out the powerful life force in one writer who at 96 was still a working journalist at the Toledo Blade -- with a trail of other 'firsts' to her credit. Nancy Drew was only a small portion of her writing career. She was a brilliant and many-faceted woman. To know more of her read toledoblade.com -- headline story and her archived columns. It is worth the read. I think she does deserve a little recognition for her long record of national influence on adventure fiction.
Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson. That's her name, yes. Thanks.

Michael Dirda: Thank you for your passionate plea.I'm sure others have said this but I had no idea Benson was still alive, let alone active as a journalist. Your points are well taken, though I never read any Carolyn Keene. Boys didn't do that sort of thing.

Madison, Wis.: I see in a news report that in a Norwegian-sponsored poll, about 100 world authors recently voted Don Quixote the world's best book, giving it 50 percent more votes than any other contender. Your thoughts?

Michael Dirda: I'm presuming the Bible was left out of the competition. It's certainly been an influential book, and much loved, and the don and Sancho have passed into archetype, but much of it is tedious and dated. My vote would go to The Odyssey or the Divine Comedy.

Venus: Hello Michael. I'm looking for the title of one of the last books you reviewed before taking your current sabbatical. It was a supernatural thriller about a college professor who's engaging in some hanky-panky with a younger woman, among other things, and you hinted things start to go very wrong in this guy's life. You confessed in your review that this book had made you succumb at last to the "unputdownable" cliche. What is its title? I tried searching online but came up with nothing.

Thank you.

washingtonpost.com: Dirda's review of 'The Horned Man' by James Lasdun (Post, April 21, 2002)

Michael Dirda: SEe below. The book has problems at the end, but the telling is compelling, if you'll pardon the rhyme.

Arlington, Va.: Hi Michael;
I saw an interesting forum on C-Span last week on book notes. The participants and audience debated the question, "Is the literary community (publishers, reviewers, editors) elitist?" Basically, is that a reason that so many Americans are turning away from books. I know it's not a quick answer question, but what do you think? Thanks.

Michael Dirda: Are people turning away from books? That seems debatable, but if they are it's more likely because of all the other media competing for their interest, the Internet high among them. Publishing, though, is a business and editors are always looking to make money for their companies. Just look at the best seller lists. But the people who go into the book business usually do love literature and hope to contribute to the literature of their time--this means they want to publish Good Books wheneveve possible. I think one should regard publishing as a kind of County Fair, where one can find every kind of reading experience.

Woodbridge, Va.: Just a comment, and a puzzlement.

I’m an older person and don’t remember things as well as I used to.

One day recently, a long-buried blurry memory hovered on the edge of my mind, and I realized that I didn’t know whether it was something fictional that I had read, or something true that I had read, or something true that I had been told about a real person in my acquaintance. And I realized that, so far as the way I experience my memories, the true ones and the fictional ones are exactly the same. If I lose the mental filing label that tells me the source of the memory, fiction and fact become indistinguishable parts of the background to who I am, what I think and decide.

This example, from a couple days ago: I was reading an article on “A Beautiful Mind”, in which the risk of suicide for schizophrenic patients was mentioned. A memory came into my mind of a man’s voice telling a teenager “if you’re going to be like that you might as well kill yourself”. I wondered who in my acquaintance could possibly have said that and then realized that the memory came from an Iris Murdoch novel that I am currently reading, and that my mind had somehow changed the experience of print on the page to the sound of a male voice saying the words before recording the memory.

Michael, with your wonderful memory, this may never happen to you, but I am sure that many other people, especially older people who have memories from long ago, have had the experience. Certainly the same thing must happen to people who like watching movies, the news, and so forth.

While I am not about to give up fiction, I can understand why some earlier religious traditions regarded reading novels as sinful. Almost like a computer virus, little bits of fiction take up their slots in the memory programming of the brain, disguised as part of your life experience.

Your thoughts?

Michael Dirda: Wow! I've had precisely the same thoughts. In fact, I once wrote a column about memory. It struck me that the things that happen to us, the things we imagine and the things we read about are mentally much the same, that the only difference lies in the intensity of the memory. Certain powerful books can so infect us that the expereinces of say, Proust's narrator, almost become ours. This could lead to madness, I suppose, but it might also become a source of deep solace. But this is a wonderfully difficult and interesting question you raise, one for brain scientists and philsophers.

Arlington, Va.: Hi Michael:

On the strength of your glowing review of Sandor Marai's book "Embers", I checked it out of the library and am almost finished reading it. It truly is a wonderful book. I would love to reread your review and am wondering if you remember about when it was published. Better yet, could your producer set it up so I could access the review from your on-line discussion page? Thank you.

On another note, I recently read Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" and was surprised to find it so amateurish (in my humble opinion!). I could see him winning a prize for best first novel or something but a Pulitzer? Are Pulitzers awarded for a particular book or an author's body of work? What was your opinion of "The Hours?"

washingtonpost.com: Dirda's review of 'Embers' by Sandor Marai (Post, Sept. 30, 2001)

Michael Dirda: Never read the Hours. Pulitzers go to books that feel like Pulitzer winning books. Usually they cover large themes, take on something that seems highly American, and occasionally are rewards to a good writer slighted in the past.

San Diego, Calif.: Hi Michael, any recommendations of offbeat books about WWI? I just finished "Goodbye to All That" and I'd like to see what else is out there, beyond "All Quiet."

Michael Dirda: Look for the book length poems of David Jones: In Parenthesis and The Anathemata but both these are difficult. Your best bet would be to pick up a copy of Paul Fussell's highly readable study The Great War and Modern Memory.

RE: Carolyn Keene: I too didn't know she was still alive. Yet, when I read her Obit on the Post just before the chat started, I was saddened much as I was when I heard Jim Henson had died. One of the creators of joy in my childhood was no longer with us.

Michael Dirda: Yes. A writer's death is like the loss of a whole archipelago of experience.

Bethesda, Md.: Hi Michael,

What's your opinion of Tristram Shandy? I'm contemplating whether or not to pick it up.

Michael Dirda: ONe of the greatest and strangest and funniest and most influential books in the world. And maddening too, if you're reading it strictly for plot: There basically isn't any.

The Ardent:
Michael,

Last week I asked about The Iliad vs. The Odyssey, and you chose the Odyssey. What tips the scales in favor of The Odyssey?

I'm also toying with the idea of plowing into Don Quixote, though the reading stack is pretty tall already. Any suggestions?

Thanks for sticking with the weekly chats -- I look forward to (among other things) the subtle wit, and give and take, during the hour! And, of course, our generous host.

Michael Dirda: Thanks for compliments, though this week I don't feel particularly witty or subtle. Tough morning.
The Iliad one admires; the Odyssey one loves. The first is an epic; the other is a romance. The Iliad's theme is war and death; the Odyssey's is love. Achilles is a hero, and Odysseus is a survivor. The first is heroic; the second is human.

Takoma Park, Md.: Pratchett:

Soul music is a good place to start; it is one of the better ones and draws a lot of its humor from parallels and comments on modern rock, pop and soul music so you'll be able to draw on an external frame of reference.

They're all good, but some are outstanding and Soul Music is one.

Music with Rocks In!

Michael Dirda: Yes. I like Mort as a starting point too. Mort is Death's apprentice.

Courthouse, Arlington, Va.: Hi Michael,

I've just undertaken Melville's Moby Dick and revel in its primary interest in raw human (male) personality. Otherwise, I understand that Harold Bloom holds the piece to be America's central, seminal work of literature. Any comments on this assessment?

Michael Dirda: Well, America is a big place, but if I had to choose one book to represent it, Moby-Dick is it. But one hates to forgo The Scarlet Letter, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby and a handful of others.

Alexandria, Va.: Michael,

I have been interested in historical fiction (military history in particular) lately and I crave more. Some of my more recent selections are James Carlos Blake, Patrick O'Brian, and Owen Parry (the Parry books are really mysteries, but they're set during the Civil War). Do you have any suggestions along the same lines? Oh, and by the way, you rule! Thanks!

Michael Dirda: You might try Kenneth Roberts novels about the American Revolution: Rabble in Arms, Arundel, Northwest Pasage. Also, C.S. Forester's Hornblower naval adventures; Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, set during the Napoleonoinc wars; Georgette Heyer's splendid REgency romances (Devil's Cub) and George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Papers. All are fun, well written and easily found in used bookstores.

Woodbridge, Va.: Re: WWI books -- in response to prior poster -- I haven't yet read but have been intrigued by reviews of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy -- think one of the books got the Booker prize.

Michael Dirda: Yes, good reminder.

Vienna, Va: Now that "Don Quixote" and "Tristram Shandy" have both come up, let me ask your opinion involving these two novels: are there any narrative innovations by so-called "post-modernist" writers of fiction that weren't already explored in these two great novels?

Michael Dirda: Probably not. WHich is why the Russian Formalists, for example, use them as the main examples in discussing narration.

Venus: Is publishing an elitist world? I don't think it's any more elitist than it was in prior decades or centuries. If anything it's less so due to advances in printing technology. Once in a while people bemoan the perceived dumbing down of literature etc.; or they whinge and wail about authors having to pander to the lowest common denominator because of the need to make sales. But let's not forget that in its infancy book publishing was a much more elitist affair because fewer people could afford to purchase books, and because authors had to rely on the kindness of patrons to enable a work to be published at all. In modern books I miss the -- sometimes amusing -- "dedication page" that was almost obligatory during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Michael Dirda: Yes, thanks.

Washington, D.C.: I'm not a regular on this chat, so forgive me if you've covered this ground before. I recently read "Empire Falls" and enjoyed it immensely. Did you enjoy it? Do you think I might enjoy Richard Russo's earlier work, or does he always cover the same themes? I've looked at blurbs on his other books, and that raised this concern. Thanks!

Michael Dirda: Try his very funny comic novel"STraight Man"--it ranges outside his usual field.

Bethesda, Md.: Hi,

I was just wondering if you've heard of www.BookCrossings.com? It's a Web site where you can register your favorite books, then leave them in public places for others to find. You're supposed to put a label in the book asking that anyone who finds it post their opinion of the book on the Web site and pass the book on. It seems like a fascinating way to share books. Any thoughts? I've already left a copy of Myla Goldberg's "Bee Season" in a coffee shop.

Michael Dirda: INteresting idea. Hadn't heard of it. I've long had the idea of making up cartons of favorite books and leaving them in thrift shops and salvation army stores across northern Ohio--reseeding the places where I bought my first books long, long ago.

Rockville, Md.: Have you read the Bible? What did you get out of it? Is there any reason for a nonreligious person to read it?

Michael Dirda: Yes, I've read the Bible, and I am not myself a believer (though raised Catholic). Leaving aside the question of religion, the Bible is the great patterning work of western literature, art and culture, and not to know its stories and beauties is to deny yourself an understanding of much of the past. Pace Auden, one needs to read it for its prose, its catchphrases and myths.
One should, in my view, be equally acquainted with Greek and Norse mythology, world folklore, Grimm's fairytales, and the medieval epics and romances. For the same reasons.

Alexandria, Va.: I am reading the Icelandic sagas which are Norse legends and accounts of the Viking era. Are you familiar with these works? Do you consider them to be the world's first novels?

Michael Dirda: They are early novels, of sorts, but they are roughly contemporary with medieval epics and romances, which also might be called early novels. As could The Odyssey or Daphnis and Chloe or THe Satyricon. What matters is that Njal's Saga and Laxdaela Saga and a half dozen others are tremendously exciting to read. Spaghetti westerns on ice.

Re: Pratchett: Gosh, I think Soul Music is one of the weakest ones. I've had very good luck starting people on Small Gods.

Michael Dirda: Thanks. A favorite of my friend John Clute's.

Ballston, Va.: WWI readings -- the poetry of Wilfred Owens.

"Dolce et Decorum est" may be over exposed, but I don't think the emotions suffer. His is poetry I read when I want to cry.

Michael Dirda: Yes, the old lie. As Larkin wrote: never such innocence again.

Princeton, N.J.: The question about Ireland reminded me of something I read recently during the course of my job. In Daibhi O'Croinin's history of early medieval Ireland, there is a timeline of history with this entry:
739 AD: "Fergus Glutt, King of Cuib, dies from the venomous spittles of wicked people."
I showed this to my Irish boss, who complained "Hey, it could happen anywhere!"

Michael Dirda: You're making this up, aren't you? Either way, it's a great line.

Takoma Park, Md.: Iliad vs Odyssey...

The Iliad is NOT about Achilles! It's about the whole panoply of fighting, about Patroclus, about Priam and his terrors.

And there's no better writing than The Catalog of Ships.

Odysseus may be an archetype, but he's hardly even as human as Agamemmnon.

As you see, opinions differ.

- Illiad Lover

Michael Dirda: Homer tells us in the opening lines that the poem is about the anger of Achilles. Of course, it's about a lot of othre things too. But I think more people prefer the Odyssey, but I speak as one who doesn't know Greek.

Washington, D.C.: RE: reading the Bible. One might also find belief in it. After all, it happened to smarter, better read people than I. Like Auden.

Michael Dirda: Tolle, lege--as the angel said to the vacillating Augustine.

Fairfax, Va.: Michael,

What is your opinion of Will Durant's "Story of Civilization" series?

Thanks!

Michael Dirda: I read it as a teenaged boy and found it engrossing. Nowadays Durant is dismissed as a popularizer, but I wish there were more popularizers as readable and intelligent as he (and Ariel of course). Our Oriental Heritage helped me to lose my religious faith. If one can call that a help.

Re: Memory and Fiction: I once had a discussion with a friend who maintained that fiction with characters who are, or were, real people, was immoral because it put the notion into the mind of the reader that someone or something was not as it actually was, and that alternative scenario could, wittingly or not, take the place of the truth in the reader's mind. I maintained, on the other hand, that the truth always had to be sought, and that it was the responsibility of the reader (or anyone, for that matter) to separate fact from fiction in all aspects of his or her life. But this qualitative confusion between types of memories (experienced, imagined, read or heard) certainly can be pernicious if unchecked. Eternal vigilance is the price of imagination, I guess.

Michael Dirda: Interesting reflections. Generally, historical fiction using real people works best when they are minor, almost offstage figures. In fact-based writing there is usually a pact, implicit or stated, that what we are being told is true, or as true as memory allows. We feel violated--witness Bruce Chatwin's Songlines, which turned out to be fictioin--when we are deceived.

Yey! Tristram Shandy!: I would like to heartily second your opinion on Tristram! It's a marvelous book! I had to read it for college -- thank God for that because I don't think I would have picked it up otherwise (it's not 'modern' per se, but more modern than some modern novels! -- postmodern even!). Definitely go read it! I laughed all the way through.

Michael Dirda: thanks

Alexandria, Va.: Why has The Washington Post refused to review Michael Moore's best selling book, "Stupid White Men?" It has been at the top of the best-seller list in the United States, Canada and Great Britan for several months, yet The Post pretends that the book (and it's readers) simply don't exist. Thanks for allowing me to ask the question, although I'm sure that you will ignore it, just as you ignore Michael Moore's best seller.

washingtonpost.com: Proof of existence: Michael Moore on "Stupid White Men, (Live Online, Feb. 25)

Michael Dirda: See below. Book World often makes mistakes--there are 500 books a week published and we can review perhaps 30. THere's no malice involved. Some of us also have a bias against books that land on the best seller list.

Takoma Park, Md.: So what if Homer says that! First, the author is notorious for not knowing what he is up to, even if he is a collection of ancient bards working together.

Second, there are jillions of reasons besides plain truth to SAY that the work is about the wrath of Achilles.

Said Wrath may be the spring of the plot, but it is hardly what the work is about.

Shame on you to pretend to believe what an author says about the work.

Next you'll believe that Julius Caesar is about Julius Caesar instead of about Brutus!

Michael Dirda: Really, it's quite unexpected to discover such passions about an ancient epic. Sing through me, O Muse, of the anger of Takoma Park.
The Iliad is a great and eternal masterpiece. Ok? I just happen to like the Odyssey more. You get the vanilla ice cream, I'll take the chocolate.

Baltimore, Md.: Where does "Emma" rank in the catalog of Jane Austen novels? I read it and wasn't overwhelmed. What do you consider as her best?

Michael Dirda: It's very high, but her work is all of pretty high merit. My favorite is still Pride and Prejudice--I love Elizbeth BEnnett--but Persuasion is probably her masterpiece.

And that's our time for tihs week. Till next WEndesday at 2, keep reading!

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