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Dirda on Books
Hosted by Michael Dirda
Washington Post Book World Senior Editor
Thursday, April 17, 2003; 2 p.m. ET
Washington Post Book World Senior Editor Michael Dirda took your questions and comments Thursday, April 17 at 2 p.m. concerning literature, books and the joys of reading.
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! It's finally spring here in D.C., though yesterday was warmer (in the eighties) than today (high fifties, I'd say). But the sunshine helps--Dawn's early and later light. I've been busy looking at the proposed dust jacket of my forthcoming portrait of the reader as a young man: AN OPEN BOOK (Norton, october), and awaiting the final proofs for a quick read through. In between I've been assigning books for review and answering a long message from an old friend in Florida. How do misunderstandings get started? How do they get resolved?
But enough of my maundering. Let's turn to this week's questions about books, reading and the like. Though somenone could ask me about my recent trip to New York.
Alexandria, Va.:
Mr. Dirda,
Recent postings about Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian sparked my interest, so I picked it up over the weekend and just finished it yesterday. I've never read anything so harrowing; it reminded me at times of Bergman's movie The Seventh Seal, Bosch's paintings, and, for reasons I haven't quite figured out yet, Brecht's Mother Courage.
My question: what do I read next? I don't want to break the spell McCarthy has cast, but how do you chase a drink this stiff?
Michael Dirda: Well, BM is McCarthy's darkest masterpiece, but his earlier novels--such as The Orchard Keeper and Suttree--aren't exactly happy strolls in the park. You should look for those earlier books--all were reissued in trade paperback. Then you might try All the Pretty Horses, which is gentler but very fine. The other two novels in the so called Border Trilogy both have problems, but are well worth reading.
If you want othre harrowing authors, you might try the American noir writers Jim Thompson, David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich. Or, of course, you could go back to McCarthy's master, Faulkner, and look at Sanctuary, or Absalom, Absalom!
Have, uh, fun.
Albany, N.Y.:
"Novels are...a young person's genre...Middle aged and older folks prefer nonfiction because they're trying to make sense of the world and their lives." I can't believe you are serious! A lot of what I understand about life and people has come through fiction which, it seems to me, gives meaning and texture and depth to the stark frame of reality. The "youth plus" years are just when we need fiction more than ever! If you want to make sense of life, reading "The Three Junes" (for example) is at least as helpful as Freud.
Michael Dirda: My points in this chat are, if nothing else, glib and spontaneous, rather than deeply considered and utterly unassailable. This, I suppose, is one of the charms of online discussion. My point, though, remains: Novels give us a glimpse of life and show us how we might live; they also emphasize aspects of love. Nonfiction--and by this I mean history, biography and philosophy--appeals to more settled hearts and souls, who are trying to make sense of things and understand the world they already inhabit (rather than dream of inhabiting). Novels are romantic, nonfiction is classical. Novels are for dreamers; nonfiction for realists. All these remarks may seem so general as to be fatuous, but I do maintain there is some truth here. I know for a fact that I now have less interest in contemporary fiction, at least by new writers, than I did at 24 or 34. These books speak too much of a world I will never see or see again. Right now, I've lived 54 years and seem to be as ignorant as ever--hence I turn to history, etc. and back to the great classics of, yes, fiction. But I don't find myself gravitating to new poetry and new novels. Which, of course, troubles me, considering my job.
Baltimore, Md.:
On an impulse, I bought a children's series that I had read when I was probably 10 years old. Being considerably older, this brought back pleasant memories of those carefree days of youth. What I'm feeling guilty about is that I find the urge to reread these books as an adult. Would you feel any guilt about this, or should I just let those whimsical days of yore take over, if only for fleeting moments.
Michael Dirda: Never feel guilty about your tastes--they are you. When Noel Coward--and who could be more worldly or sophisticated than he--was dying, he only wanted to read the children's fantasies of E. Nesbit. There's nothing wrong with nostalgia, but it should be pointed out too that children's literature is literature, and can be appreciated in just the same way. The Wind in the Willows is as much a masterpiece as The Great Gatsby.
Alexandria, Va.:
Mssr Dirda,
I'm interested in reading more about the Fisher King figure from the grail legends -- he plays a greater or lesser role depending upon what version you read. Could you direct to me to more of the 'greater' versions, as well as any discussion of his mythological origins?
Michael Dirda: Ah, I used the phrase Fisher King recently in a review. You could start with Eliot's note in The Waste Land, and go on to Jesse L. Weston's From Ritual to Romance. But basically, the Fisher King is a figure in the stories about Parzival (or Perceval), and the great texts here is Wolfram von Eschenbach's Middle High German "Parzival." There's also a French Perceval--not positive it's by Chretien de Troyes. But the image is taken up in anthropology and folklore studies too--I'd look in J.G. Frazer's Golden Bough and, I think but am not sure, Robert Graves's White Goddess. Certainly both these texts illuminate the ethos of the legend.
Cleveland, Ohio:
I'm reading McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and very much enjoyed the stories by Carol Emshwiller and Michael Moorcock. Do you know them, and if so, what's their best work?
Michael Dirda: They are both science fiction masters, associated with the New Wave. Moorcock is incredibly prolific--many series, of which the best known is probably that about Jerry Cornelius (collected as The Cornelius Chronicles) and set in swinging London, sort of; the Elric fantasy novels about an albino warrior and his vampiric sword Stormbringer; and the dancers at the end of time sequence, written in ornate fin de siecle style: the first is An Alien Heat. Among his singleton novels are Behold the Man (about CHrist, sort of) and Gloriana (kind of Mervyn Peakeish about a Virgin Queen). To explore Moorcock's work fully would take half a lifetime. But that's a start.
Emshwiller has several collections of short stories out, mostly published by small presses. She's much revered in sf circles and used to be married to the illustrator Ed Emschwiller.
Venus:
Michael, please tell us about your recent trip to New York. I had planned to go there this past weekend, but canceled so I could stay home and study. Now I'm kicking myself because surely I'd have run into you if I'd kept to my original plan.
Michael Dirda: Well, if you had been at John Berendt's for cocktails after William Dalrymple's lecture at the Met, or been in the village having brunch with Stephen Silverman (online Hollywood columnist for People) and Alice Turner (former fiction editor of Playboy), or at the Harvard Club for dinner with Al Rosenblat, judge of the Court of Appeals, or at Norton's sales conference, or at a couple of used book stores--why then, you certainly would have run into me. I went up to address the Norton sales reps, but ended up seeing a number of friends. Now don't I sound just too precious and hoity-toity for words? Much more happened, but it's even more precious. Not bad for a kid who used to work in underground pits in a steel mill, dressed in asbestos clothing and respirator.
Children's literature:
I agree. I found an old Nancy Drew at a used book store and immediately bought it. AND read it. I then bought a couple new Nancy Drew books -- new, in the sense of newly issued, not newly written. It was wonderful. The level of writing didn't matter, but what did matter and what did surprise me in its intensity was how real the memories of setting became. I read most of those books in the summers when I was a little girl, and reading them again brought back the smell of dry summer grass, the sound of crickets, the feel of sweat that accompanied those hours spent in the backyard under a tree reading. It was as close to virtual reality as I've ever been -- I wasn't really back in the summer of 1965, but I might as well have been. Truly wonderful.
Michael Dirda: Yes, indeed. I have a friend--works for the Pentagon and I'm sorry or proud to say he helped plan the war in Iraq--who likes to read old Rick Brant "Electronics Adventures" for much the same reasons. He owns them all.
La Mesa, Calif.:
I think the fiction vs. nonfiction and younger vs. older can't be generalized about. I am 62 and still read almost exclusively contemporary (literary) fiction, unless, like now, I want to learn more about for example the Arab world. Incidentally, Michael Kelly's book about the last Gulf war is very nuanced and informative. I thought of A. J. Liebling while reading it.
Michael Dirda: Thank you. I'm sure Kelly would have been delighted to be compared to Liebling. I just wish someone would compare me to Joseph Mitchell.
Winston-Salem, N.C.:
Maundering on Maundy Thursday, like that (though apparently no relation between the similarly spelled words). Are you intending to join the latest book reviewer tiff? Apparently a writer in a McSweeny's related mag (Believe?) laments the passing of the great reviewers of the past Wilson, Trilling etc., and sees only snide whippersnappers more interested in flinging poison tipped asides and logrolling for their friends rather than taking ideas seriously. Personally I enjoy the battles like the one you alluded to in your recent review of the Gould book, although I guess that battle was enjoyable because of the 50's/60's era charges of "facist" and "marxist".
Michael Dirda: Oh, people make this argument about the demise of reviewing or literary critics every few years. There are plenty of fine reviewers, he said, coyly (being one of the best himself): Clive James in England, for instance, or John Simon, Cynthia Ozick or Jon Yardley here. But they don't have the audience or clout of Wilson. But then who else did? Trilling was really a scholar who wrote for quarterlies, and I doubt he had much influence outside the academy. I can't imagine reading Trilling for fun. Or Irving Howe. Yes, they engaged with ideas, but they were so earnest. Critics don't matter really, good books do. But I haven't seen the article you allude to , so there may be more to it. Still, I suspect some young whippersnapper wrote it, in the hope of making a name for him or herself.
Atlanta, Ga.:
I've been in quite the Southern Gothic mood with my reading selections lately and an acquaintance mentioned Carson McCullers. I recall reading Member of the Wedding years ago, but that's been the extent of my McCullers exposure. He suggested Clock Without Hands, but I'm curious to know your thoughts.
Michael Dirda: Sure. McCullers would be fine. But have you already covered Flannery O'Connor? Or Faulkner? Or C. McCarthy? Or Charles Willeford?
Arlington, Va.:
Thanks for saying that we shouldn't feel guilty about the books we read. I think the problem is that most Americans who have the ability and time to read don't read ANYTHING. That says more about a person than the type of books the read. What ever makes you happy.
Michael Dirda: As Randall Jarrell used to say: Read at whim! Read at whim!
Omaha, Neb.:
Is the Strand still thriving in New York?
Michael Dirda: Yep.
U Street, Washington, D.C.:
Please tell me if I am a total sap for asking this question -- are there no novels that have happy endings anymore? I am a college educated, relatively well-read person, but I am so sick of everything I read having depressingly sad conclusions, or conlusions where everyone dies but you arent supposed to feel bad because people come to peace with it/have some deep thought about it. I am not a total sap but I feel every novel I read has this same kind of tone. What am I reading wrong?
Michael Dirda: Stop reading so much contemporary fiction. Try the following: E.F. Benson's Lucia novels; Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm, anything by P.G. Wodehouse or golden age mystery writers (Christie, Sayers, Carr), comic novels like David Lodge's Small World. In my book Readings there's a chapter on 100 terrific comic novels, with annotations. But I know what you mean. I have to steel myself for such books-and may be yet another reason why I hesitate to pick up so much contemporary fiction.
Silver Spring, Md.:
While rereading Orwell's "Down and Out...," I noticed the book calls itself a novel. I wondered why since it's straight journalism. Does the appelation "novel" portend bigger sales? Was Orwell being scrupulous because he might have made up a couple of conversations? Any thoughts?
Michael Dirda: I think that Orwell embroidered a bit and didn't want people to think that the book was an absolutely straight record of what he saw and did.
Dayton, Ohio:
Do you have any thought's on Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair or his more recent book (the name escapes me at the moment)? I attended one of his readings/discussions earlier this week and was quite entertained by his train/web of thought. And his concepts of book police and an alternate literary world is fascinating.
Michael Dirda: I reviewed The Eyre Affair and my distinguished former colleage Lloyd Rose reviewed the recent Lost in a Good Book. These are wonderful fantasies for bookish people, as in this alternate Britain--the Crimean War has been going on for a hundred years--people can enter into books and affect their contentes. Much mayhem and hilarity and suspense ensues. Fast and imaginative and very entertaining. The heroine is a kind of detective named Thursday Next.
Woodbridge, Va.:
Re: Eothen
As I read your review of Eothen, I recalled that I had recently bought a remaindered copy from Daedalus books. I'm about half way through and enjoying it. I wanted to let your readers know that this hardback edition, published by Konemann in their travel classics series, is still available at Daedalus (according to their Web site) at a remaindered price of $4.98 (plus shipping fee of $4.98 for however many books you buy). It's a nice edition, hardback, small format, nice paper.
Michael Dirda: Thanks. I don't put in publishers on the books in First Encounters because either the books or out of print or have multiple editions. Glad to know Eothen is available at a reasonable price. Hope you liked the essay.
Berkeley, Calif.:
Hello, Michael Dirda. After a recent, enchanted trip (not quite as glamorous as yours) to New York City, I indulged the fantasy of living there. When I got home, I enjoyed Lynne Tillman's nonfiction 'Bookstore,' about now-defunct Books & Co. Did you ever visit the store? Do you have any favorite books having to do with New York City?
Michael Dirda: Never went there that I know of. My favorite book about New York is Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel, an omnibus of his New Yorker journalism about the low lifes, wackos, geniuses, and ordinary people of Manhattan and environs during the 1930s-50s.
Fisher King:
A very interesting pop culture treatment of the Fisher King is in Tim Power's brilliant "Last Call," which sets it against the history of Las Vegas.
(I'm aware this isn't what the prior poster was after, but it's -such- a good book I couldn't resist.)
Michael Dirda: Oh yes. Good recommendation. Powers likes to play with such notions. See too The Anubis Gates.
A topic for future chats:
What was the last book you read where you were sorry reached the end, missed the characters, etc? Lately I have several good books but none where I felt almost a loss when finishing it.
Michael Dirda: That's a good topic. Shall we use it next week as the basis of the chat? Not that we need to keep to it.
Richmond, Va.:
I am a great admirer (as I know you are) of Joseph Mitchell. I got turned on to him by reading some of the New Yorker memoirs. the other figure mentioned in hushed tones (if a wriiten passage can even do that) is AJ Liebling. But I can't seem to find his stuff, even anthologized.
Are you an admirer of his? Do you know if he remanins in print or should I gear up for a round of the used bookstores (which is fine with me -- my favorite way to spend a lazy summer). Any particular recommendation where he is concerned?
Michael Dirda: You can pick up The Best of A.J. Liebling pretty easily--as well as used copies of Liebling Abroad (an omnibus). Countepoint did a handsome edition of Between Meals--about Paris and eating--with an intro by James Salter. That turns up pretty often. But I think you'll still be forced to the used bookstores. Liebling's briefer pieces are found in The Telephone Booth Indian and one or two other books; his book-length masterpieces is probably The Earl of Louisiana, about Earl Long, Huey's brother (played by Paul Newman in that movie about his affair with, I think, stripper Belle Starr.)
Germantown, Md.:
To the Alexandria reader trying to chase the stiff drink that is Blood Meridian:
Blindness by Jose Saramago or
The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas
Michael Dirda: Good ones.
New York, N.Y.:
Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" is a gritty novel, but it still has some dark humour as well. But for Gothic Southern writing, it can't be beat.
Michael Dirda: Thanks
Lenexa, Kan.:
Mr. Dirda: As a critic, how would you rank the four "last avant-gardists" of David Lehman's New York School? Thanks.
Michael Dirda: Pretty high, actually, even though I'm rather a classicist. John Ashbery makes me laugh with his incongruities--like Wallace Stevens after a few drinks; Kenneth Koch was just dazzlingly original; James Schuyler, at least in The Morning of the Poem, was wonderfully tender and touching. . . But as I say, I tend more toward the neoclassical in my tastes: Bishop, Hecht, Larkin.
Germantown, Md.:
Have you read anything by Denis Johnson, if so what are your thoughts? I read "Fiskadoro" and was less then moved; I'm now wondering if I should have read "Angels".
Michael Dirda: I tried to read Fiskadoro and couldn't get into it. My fault I suspect, as many smart readers admire his books immensely.
Washington, D.C.:
Mr. Dirda,
Based on the rave reviews in the Post,New York Times and the fact that I enjoyed her previous book, I recently plunked down $30 for Donna Tartts recent novel. However, the few people I know who have read it said it was boring and pretentious -- would you have read it, by any chance?
Michael Dirda: Nope. I was going to review it, but found it a little . . . boring, and so assigned it to someone else. This isn't a fair test, of course. But at the time I needed to be sucked into whatever I was going to review and something about her sentences didn't work for me.
Washington, D.C.:
Just finished reading three Raymond Chandler short stories and just started reading another 1930s "mystery classic" called "A Coffin for Dimitrios." Every read it? Impressions? And what other mystery writers of that era would you recommend?
Michael Dirda: I love early Ambler and The Coffin for D (aka The Mask of D) is one of his best, as well as a terrific movie with Joseph Cotten. There's a good omnibus that turns up of Ambler's 1930s thrillers, and includes his other classic Journey into Fear.
Chandler, of course, is the great maker of hard-boiled similes--easily open to parody--but when he's on, there's nothing finer.
Other writers: Gosh, read GReene's The Third Man. All of Hammett. James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice. Some of the noir writers mentioned earlier.
Love clean books:
Just finished Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. Wonderful. But after being carried in my purse for weeks, my one-volume edition looks awful. I even caught part of the cover on a zipper. Any advice on carrying books around but keeping them in good shape? Thought you might have some good suggestions, as I know you've written a book on caring for books. Thanks so much.
Michael Dirda: Two points: 1) The one-volume recension of Sword of Honour is slightly less satisfying, though more streamlined in some ways, than the three individual novels. 2) What looks so awful? The dust jacket? I always take the dj off when I read a book. One can also buy mylar protectors for the jacket. Beyond that, you just need to be careful how you open and stash the book. You can also pre read the volume to preserve the spine's flatness by folding back 2o or so pages atg the beginning, then 20 or so from the end, and working your way to the center of the volume.
Woodbridge, Va.:
Re old folk's lit -- I'm about to turn sixty, and I definately am not interested in reading fiction by young writers. My reaction is: What do they know about life; they can't understand people like me; they haven't gone through enough time and change yet.
On the other hand, I don't care at all about the age of a writer of nonfiction, and might find descriptions of the younger generation in memoirs or essays to be enjoyable. Just don't try to describe "life" to me if you're under thirty-five.
Michael Dirda: I know what you mean.
Fairfax, Va.:
Hi. The person looking for Southern Gothic might like Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer" (is that the title?). He/she could also read some of Tennessee William's scripts. Egad.
I just finished reading Dorothy Sayer's "The Nine Tailors" -- an enjoyable mystery, but especially good because of the explanation of English change ringing. Something I knew little about, but found fascinating.
Michael Dirda: Williams, of course. Percy isn't really very Gothicky, not at least in the Moviegoer. But it's nice to visit New Orleans in it.
Washington, D.C.:
Hi Michael,
speaking of David Lodge, have you read "Thinks?" What did you, er... think?
As an aside, if you are 54 how old is that photo on the chat page (where you don't look a day over 38)?
Michael Dirda: I reviewed THinks--like it with reservations. You can probably look up the review. More serious than Small World, CHaningn Places etc.
I am, alas, 54, and do look anywhere from 10 to 20 years younger than I am, depending on the light. That picture is from a few years ago--and I actually look younger now. Rest assured: there is no portrait deliquescing in my attic. The men in my family stay young looking, but unfortunately die at a very early age. None has lived beyond his early 70s, if that--so there are trade offs.
Trollope:
I am about to start reading Anthony Trollope for the first time. What book should I start with?
Michael Dirda: Barchester Towers (or The Warden, which is short and comes just before it). If you want a singleton, try the somewhat untrollopian but terrific The Way We Live Now, or his tremendous writer's autobiography.
Damaged books:
Thanks for the response. Didn't know the one-volume was different than the three individually. No dust jacket, it's a paperback. Cover rather beat up.
Michael Dirda: Buy hardbacks. You might also place the paperback in a mailer and then stuff that in yhour purse.
Woodbridge, Va.:
To Love Clean Books -- try putting your book in a zip lock bag when you carry it around. I do this when it rains.
Michael Dirda: thanks
Oxford, UK:
Mr. Dirda,
A Czech friend here has recently turned me on to his homeland's literature, and I was hoping you could provide some suggestions. I've loved Kundera ("Unbearable Lightness" and "The Book of Laughter & Forgetting"); enjoyed to a lesser extent Hrabal ("I Served the King of England" was a delight!); and -- despite his teeming hordes of fans -- haven't particularly enjoyed any Kafka (after four novels).
So where should I venture now from this starting point? Thanks for any tips you can pass along.
Michael Dirda: Search out, at the library or elsewhere: Martin Seymour-Smith's Guide to Modern World Literature (the latest edition). He has a chapter on Czech literature (and on every other literature too) that will guide you. He's also quirky and fun to read.
And that's all the time for htis week, folks. Must run off to the bathroom anyway. So till next THursday at 2, keep reading!
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