Dirda on Books
Michael Dirda
Washington Post Book World Senior Editor
Wednesday, August 11, 2004; 2:00 p.m. ET
Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda takes your questions and comments 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 rediscovering some minor Victorian classic. 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.
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. His most recent books include "Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments" (Indiana hardcover, 2000; Norton paperback, 2003) and his self-portrait of the reader as a young man, "An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland" (Norton, 2003). In the fall of 2004 Norton will bring out a new collection of his essays and reviews. He is currently working on several other book projects, all shrouded in the
most complete secrecy.
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, Montaigne, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Nabokov, John Dickson Carr, Joseph Mitchell, P.G. Wodehouse 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 is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, The Ghost Story Society, and The Wodehouse Society. He enjoys teaching and was once a visiting professor in the Honors College at the University of Central Florida, which he misses to this day.
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 a hot, sunny day here in Washington, with possible thunderstorms promised for evening. Either way, it's a day to be outside by a pool, under an umbrella with a book and a cool drink, or inside in an easy chair with a book, listening to the cooling rain.
In the meantime, let's look at this week's questions about books, reviewing, publishing, the literary life, and the state of my soul. Well, no. We'll leave that out that last one this week.
_______________________
Kensington, Md.:
I have two nieces coming to Washington to polish their English. They're 18 and 22 years old. What work of literary merit could they tackle that would not be too complex for someone struggling with the language?
Michael Dirda: Hmmm. Two nieces, 18 and 22, will probably polish their English best by hanging around Georgetown or whatever passes for a youth hangout these days.
But, for literary works of merit, that are not too difficult to read: The Great Gatsby would be a good choice. You could even take them out to Rockville to see Scott Fitzgerald's tomb.
_______________________
Lenexa, Kan.:
Mr. Dirda: Movies were mentioned last week. Richard Russo's "Empire Falls" is being filmed--to be released in 2005. Russo's superb novel is brimful of fascinating characters. Readers who haven't read it might want to do so before the movie arrives.
I've always felt that one should read the literature--a complete art form that should be experienced unencumbered--and then see the movie (assuming it's worth seeing and one exists). Also, contrary to the off-cited cliche, some films are actually better than the book that spawned them. Of course, many are inferior just as some seem equal (Capote's "In Cold Blood" and the Richard Brooks film as one example). What's your opinion? Thanks much.
Michael Dirda: They are two different media. I'm rather resentful of movies, mainly because they have grown so central to our culture, replacing books as the main artistic genre. Most, I find, are pretty much just spectacle: action, pretty faces, fast quips. It's am emotional medium, rather than a thoughtful one.
In general, good books can make great movies, but great books can't.
_______________________
College Park, MD:
We can argue until the cows come home to roost who is the greater writer, the man who wrote Absalom Absalom, Light In August, and The Town or the man who wrote Ada, Pale Fire, and Lolita. What I want to know is when is the man who wrote Legs, Quinn’s Book, and Ironweed going to get his due? I think the Great Gatsby is one of the best American novels, but better than Ironweed? I’m not sure. As a writer, is William Kennedy like Pnin, a man out of time and place? If his stories were set in Albany, Georgia, would he be on Oprah’s book list?
Go ahead, argue amongst yourselves.
I’m sorry, but I should add (to head off any attack), that it is true that Kennedy wrote The Flaming Corsage, but Morrison wrote Tar Baby (a laughable premise held up by quality writing), Paradise (ugh), and Love (which I admit to not reading, but I heard was not so good). Coetzee wrote Age of Iron (is same man who wrote Waiting For the Barbarians?). How about Steinbeck? Compare his Noble Address with Faulkner’s and you’ll notice some extremely embarrassing similarities. Silone’s Bread and Wine is what For Whom the Bell Tolls (yawn) and The Moon Is Down (triple yawn) wanted to be.
In his novel Edisto, Padgett Powell’s narrator suggests that one of the North’s problems is that it never learned what it is like to lose. Though I like his book, he’s wrong. Like the people who get the South all wrong, Powell and others (e.g., Derek Walcott) overlook our losses. I say this having watched Upstate New York’s economy tank (with the jobs going south). I grew up watching the Yankees lose throughout the 80s and early 90s (I know that’ll get me a lot of sympathy). And now there’s Kennedy, nothing but a two-bit loser. He can’t even get by a fellow Yankee whose best showing (that I’ve read) is Mr. Vertigo (ho-hum).
Michael Dirda: What a terrific posting! I can't argue with any of it, except to say that Kennedy does tend to repeat himself a bit.
But so much depends on how one defines literature: Faulkner embraces humanity, Nabokov merely embraces art. I tend to prefer the artful and artificial to the sloppy, mythic and powerful, but that's me.
Anyone else want to respond to College Park?
_______________________
College Park, Md.:
I recently read part 2, chapter 7, Among Friends, of Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed. Through such characters as Shigalov and his notion of ‘unrestricted despotism’, one finds a rough outline of Orwell’s 1984. Do you think this might be source material for Orwell, or simply a coincidence that they were both writing about totalitarianism? By the way, the chapter is hilarious.
Michael Dirda: I don't know if Orwell knew The Possessed (aka Demons), though you're right: The book is alternately deeply humorous and utterly harrowing (the suicide of, was it Kirilov?)
_______________________
Fairfax, Va.:
Etes-vous celibataire, par hasard? Vous etes exceptionnel.
Michael Dirda: Quelle question! Bien sur, je suis exceptionnel--mais en quel sens?
En effet, je suis marie--mais je ne suis pas mort.
_______________________
Columbia, Md.:
Hi Michael, and happy Wednesday. Thinking of your comment last week that movies seem like so much bread and circuses to you, I'm wondering if you think books can be bread and circuses as well. That is, is it the content of big movies or the medium itself that is b&c-like? And what makes any experience a b&c? Is it the fact that it is purely entertaining, or the fact that it is entertaining us at a very low level? Can't books do that?
Michael Dirda: Books do entertain at the level of shock and spectacle. There's nothing wrong with this, though it palls after a while and one hungers for something a bit more adult and seirous.
I do think the essence of movies has to be spectacle--it's a visual medium and it moves relentlessly along. For the same reason, plays have never quite been accepted as totally literary--they're also mass produced products. Of course, that's a generalization and one need only point to Hamlet and The Importance of Being Earnest.
_______________________
Ashcroft, B.C.:
For many of us, reading a book in a language other than our own is probably something we'd rather not contemplate. Unquestionably a translation changes things from the original; but do you think we actually lose something by not being able, for example, to read Pagnol in French, or Marias in Spanish?
Should we really think that we haven't read Anna Karenina because we haven't read the original Russian text?
Michael Dirda: It's a hard call. Stendhal, for instance, is a brilliant writer in French; but he seems to lose most of his magic in English. When a writer makes the sound of his sentences and his diction paramount--think Flaubert--a lot has to be lost when the prose is transmuted into another language. Novels, especially those based on character and action, seem to translate better than those where subtle nuance and stylistic touches lie at the heart of the artistry. In English Pushkin's Eugene Onegin doesn't sound like much but imitation Byron, yet Russians would die for this poem.
All this said, it's impossible for any of us to learn more than a few languages at most, and so we're going to have to read books in translation. But better to have read The Leopard and The Tale of Genji and Borges and Colette in English than not to have read them at all. Something survives, and that something is worth experiencing.
_______________________
oHIo:
You mentioned the Antioch Writers Workshop. What's your thought on writer's workshops. Seems as Stephen King has nixed their importance in his book On Writing.
Michael Dirda: I take all my literary judgments from Stephen King. Don't you?
In truth, writers workshops occasionally throw up good writers--Flannery O'Connor went to Iowa, for instance, and many other well known authors did too. But more often than not, workshops tend to falsely encourage the hopes of good-hearted, hard-working people who probably will not get published. But is it so bad to have spent time thinking about sentences and how they are made? At the very least, writing workshops create more sensitive and insightful readers, and that's something great novelists and poets need.
_______________________
Gaithersburg, Md.:
So, where in Rockville IS F. Scott Fitzgerald's tomb?
Michael Dirda: CAtholic cemetery where the Rockville Pike gets all tricky. Just as you enter the city.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.:
I thought I recalled you saying that your review of Iron Council would be in Book World several weeks ago. Did I somehow miss it?
Michael Dirda: No, I rearranged my schedule. I'm writing the review now. Actually, I'm writing this message now, but I will be writing the review when I'm not writing this message and those that follow in the next 30 minutes. In other words, the piece on Iron Council will be out a week from this Sunday. THis Sunday I moved up Donald Justice's collected poems because Justice died about 10 days ago.
_______________________
Boston, Mass.:
I know you have answered this question (or a slight variation on it) before, but how does a person interested in the genre of pulp fiction get a good grounding on the topic? From what I gather, “Tarzan” serves as the nucleus for 20th century pulp fiction with hard-boiled stuff and high adventure spinning off of Burroughs’ tale of the jungle aristocrat. Am I way off base here? And where do I go for more information. Thanks.
Michael Dirda: Well, Tarzan is a seminal text, of course. But what you really want to do is start with the great 19th century romances--The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, possibly some Scott, then touch on Gothic fiction and sensation novels, Conan Doyle and the detective story, and Robert Louis Stevenson, Rider Haggard, Jules Verne.
There are some good books about the pulps--Frank Gruber's The Pulp Jungle is a good history by one who was part of the genre, so too is Joseph T. Shaw's introduction to The Hard-Boiled Omnibus (Shaw edited Black Mask). Academic studies like Adventure, Mystery and Romance are also helpful. But I suspect that you need to check out fictionmags.com--an online chat that focuses on popular fiction between, roughly, 1880 and 1960.
_______________________
Takoma Park, Md.:
I'm not so sure that the failure of Stendhal and Eugene Onegin to move English speakers is a style/translation problem. Couldn't it also be a place-in-the-culture problem? Or some other species of culture problem?
After all, British humor is often tagged as not translating well, but it's in English already,forsooth.
Michael Dirda: I've never had any trouble with English humor. I laugh at Shaw and Wilde and Frayn.
But your point is probably valid. A lot of people would find Byron himself a little strange nowadays. Sometimes I think we've exchanged a greater sympathy to global literature of our time--we read Japanese and Indian novels with ease--but have lost our ability to read Maria Edgeworth and Charles Dickens.
_______________________
Kensington, Md.:
Is the Hugo a good guide to meritorious SF?
Michael Dirda: Yes, though it is a popularity contest, and the very best books seldom win the award. But at the very least good ones do. For classic sf, you should look for The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes devoted to short stories and novellas.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.:
Michael,
I was just wondering if you'd had a chance to read the new Thursday Next novel. I definitely loved the first three, but the rapid pace at which the books are arriving now could be a bad omen for quality.
Michael Dirda: I haven't read the fourth one, and don't have any immediate plans to do so. I enjoyed them, but I was starting to feel that things were getting a little out of hand--too much, too fast. The kind of humor isn't varied quite enough. All that sounds harsh, for books that are still a lot of fun.
_______________________
Silver Spring, Md.:
Did you see where they found 250 more Philip Larkin poems?
Just when they cleaned all the dross out of the Collected Poems, there are 250 more to weed through.
Can't they let the man's chosen canon stand?
Michael Dirda: No, I want to see all the poems--even if the ones they've found are probably not all that good. But who knows? Maybe there's another "Aubade" stuck in among them.
Still, at this rate, Phil's going to end up as prolific as Browning or Tennyson.
_______________________
The Pentagon:
Could you define pulp fiction for us? (I had no idea Tarzan qualifed. Now that I think about it, I had no idea it actually meant something in the literary world.)
Michael Dirda: Pulp fiction means, now, essentially popular adventure stories, written mainly for entertainment, that usually got their start in cheap monthly magazines like All-Story, Black Mask, Weird Tales, Amazing, or Thrilling Wonder Stories. Romance novels may be regarded as pulp fiction, but most of it tends to be manly adventures, of one sort or another. Its authors tend to be mythologists at their best--Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes--but most are simply entertainers. Pulp fiction is fun to read--and the actual pulp magazines are hotly contested by collectors of magazine cover art.
_______________________
Irvine, Calif.:
Since Brian Lamb is no longer doing Booknotes, I'd love to see you do the interviews. I love your work.
Michael Dirda: Well, I would love to do Booknotes. But no one has asked me. I'm usually pretty good at public performance. Do tell Brian. Still, my understanding is that they are going to have a different sort of interview program.
As it happens, I've always wanted to see Apostrophe, the late French writer-interview program that became a national cult.
_______________________
Elon, N.V.:
Hello Michael,
I so admire your vast knowledge and love this weekly chat. Most of the discussions are over my head but I had learned quite a
lot and chosen some new authors as a result.
I just read E. L. Doctorow's The Waterworks and loved it. I had to come back to the 21st
century each time I closed the book. I have
heard the audio tape read by Sam Waterson is
excellent. I do enjoy audio books as I am
driving to and from work and feel that I am
at least exposed to more literature that way.
I especially prefer the audio books in this year of war and elections.
My question is, what is your opinion of books on tape, are we cheating - do they fit
in the same category as movies?
thanks for sharing your great knowledge each
week!
Thanks
Michael Dirda: No, audio tapes, especially unabridged ones, are real books. We can stop them, go back to passages we like, etc etc. If they weren't books, we would have to claim that the blind don't really read when they listen to them.
I even like abridged audio books, but cutting does start to raise questions of what is lost.
_______________________
Silver Spring, Md.:
Michael,
As someone who was born in the Bronx, I do in fact sympathize with the Yankee fan, and share his joy at their more recent success.
Regarding movies, are there any films that you believe are worthy of the literature on which they are based? Do you believe that such an achievement is impossible, or just unlikely in the extreme? Also, are great books in some genres (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, mystery/suspense) more likely to yield a great film? I thought "Master and Commander" was quite well done, as was "The Hours" (sans Meryl Streep's crying scene, which was not in the book) and "The Lord of the Rings" films. Then again, when I contemplate "I, Robot," I picture Asimov spinning in his grave.
Michael Dirda: The movies you cite are good movies and very effective. The problem I have is the underlying subtext of your question: People today feel that a movie somehow validates a book. They are different esthetic experiences. I believe movies are essentially visceral, emotional, spectacular (in all senses), while books are thoughtful, demanding and more profound. It's easy to see why movies drive out books, like bad money driving out good.
_______________________
College Park, Md.:
Thanks for posting my Kennedy and Dostoyevsky notes. About Donald Justice, I had no idea. You’ve made me so sad. Didn’t he attend Iowa? He wrote a sonnet titled something like Henry James at the Pacific. A crushing poem. How sad. And how sad that a talent such as his passes with such little notice.
Michael Dirda: Well, I noticed, and I'm only sorry that my review will be 10 days too late for him to see. Not that he should have cared: He wrote fine poems, and they will be read by anyone who cares for poetry. That's all any writer can hope for.
_______________________
The Pentagon:
Thursday Next. I find it very frustrating when authors take a story that they intend to tell in 2 or 3 books and then because commercial success is so rare, they just keep writing. I enjoyed the first book very much, the next two a bit less, but I will not continue. We seem to be heading the way of the movie, if it is successful, write a sequel because that is easier and will make more money then creating new characters and storylines!
Michael Dirda: No disagreement from me.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.:
Interesting question and answer about reading in translation. I have had the luck to be able to read many books in Spanish, French and Italian, and wouldn't for anything trade the experience of having read them in the original. Inevitably, much is lost, since translation is as much an art as a science. Yet, unless you happen to read every language on the planet, you will be cut off from many great reading experiences if you only read books in their original language. Imagine going through life without having read Dante or Cervantes or, for non-English speakers, Shakespeare. While reading a great book in translation is a second-hand experience, it still beats not having read it at all. Think of all of the great Greek bronze sculpture that we only know by looking at Roman copies in marble.
Michael Dirda: My very point too. Great minds clearly think alike.
_______________________
Alexandria, Va.:
For College Park:
No one loves Kennedy's Albany novels more than I do, but I've never quite believed the hypersexual women he creates -- Legs Diamond's moll or the heroine of Flaming Corsage -- though I think he nails his Average Janes -- his wives, moms, and aunts seem totally real to me.
Michael Dirda: Hmmm. I've met a couple hypersexual women in my day, not that I'm going to go any further down this road.
_______________________
Fitzgerald in Rockville:
His tomb is located in the old cemetery of St. Mary's Catholic Church at the intersection of Rt 355 (Rockville Pike) and Rt 28 (Viers Mill Rd)
Michael Dirda: Many thanks for the exact location. I visited the tomb the day I first came to Washington. I stood in the rain, in my poncho, and read the inscription. My supernatural story, "Dukedom Large Enough," to be published in the October issue of All-Hallows--the magazine for the classic English ghost story--touches on Fitzgerald, Rockville and Gatsby. But it's mainly about two book collectors and a deal with the devil.
_______________________
Woodley Park, Washington, D.C.:
Onegin: I don't speak or read Russian, but I loved the English blank verse translation I read a few years ago. I mentioned Onegin to a Russian friend of mine -- he regarded me with a look of passionate jealousy (this was -his- poem!), then a flash of contempt (how dare I read his poem in -English-!), quickly subsumed by a mixture of pity and pride (the first for my illiteracy, the second for Pushkin's ability to get through to even the most dimwitted and language-challenged). Then we had another drink and got into Stanislaw Lem.
Michael Dirda: Probably you read Charles Johnston or James E. Falen--generally regarded as the best in English. Lem, being Polish, migth well provoke your Russian friend.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.:
Tying in multiple themes from today's chat. Have you seen the recent documentary The Stone Reader, which focuses on the work of a forgotten writer from the Iowa Writer's Workshop? Any thoughts on the movie or on the tendency of perfectly good writers to be forgotten in the mists of time?
Michael Dirda: Stone Reader is a great movie, the best documentary about the writing life I"ve ever seen, maybe the best documentary film ever. Mark Moscowitz, the director and protagonist, goes in search of Dow Mossman, author of the briefly celebrated and then forgotten Stones of Summer. I never expected to like this movie when I sat down to watch it, but found it absolutely enthralling. Everyone who loves books should see it.
Now, Mark, I've done my part: When are you going to start filming An Open Book?
_______________________
Woodley Park, Washington, D.C.:
Michael, in the transcript of last week's show you mentioned your desire to write a book about the adventure novel -- what a great idea! Please put in a few kind words for John Buchan. A good friend gave me a hardbound copy of "The 39 Steps" with illustrations by Edward Gorey a few years ago; it's one of my favorite books on the shelf. Yes, Buchan does sometimes slip into "with one bound he was free" plot devices, but you have to love his enthusiasm.
Michael Dirda: Yes, I would like to write a book on the adventure novel, but nobody seems intereste in it. But maybe I need to work up a better and fuller proposal.
Buchan is a key figure, the transtioning author between Kipling and Eric Ambler/Ian Fleming. Greenmantle is a classic about the espionage and upheaval in the Middle East. I wonder what it would be like to read now.
_______________________
Alexandria, Va.:
Vous etes si accompli en francais..avez-vous etudie en France? Ou?
Michael Dirda: Marseille.
_______________________
Takoma Park, Md.:
My favorite book/movie comparison is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I think it is a great book, and the movie is different in ways that reflect the nature of their respective media. Not as good as the book, but terrific nonetheless.
As for the idea that movies must be spectacle, I have to disagree. Movies are visual, but not all visual is spectacle any more than all words are shouting.
Michael Dirda: Well, of course you're right. Screwball comedies and film noir need good words as much as antic scenes and dark shadows. But today's movies, the movies that people go to--they appel to our guts or genitals, far more than our minds.
You do realize I'm being slightly polemical, albeit in a good cause. I once intended to be a film critic, and have probably seen every important movie ever done up to about 1970, at which point I began to lose interest in film and gradually stopped watching them. I've accumulated hudnreds of videotapes and DVDs though--stored up for some moment when my passion for film will be reawakened. Or when I find that my time is beter spent watching celluoid than staring at type.
_______________________
Buffalo, N.Y. -- regarding translations:
I forget where I read this but Garcia-Marquez claimed that Gregory Rebassa's English translation of "100 Years of Solitude" was superior to his Spanish. I think he was jesting but it's interesting to think about.
Michael Dirda: The library in John Bellairs's children's thrillers has a motto: "Believe half of what you read." This is good advice for all readers.
But I've heard the G-M story before. It's also said that when Solitude was going into Englihs, G-M requested that Rabassa do the translation. Rabassa wrote back that he was backlogged with project for five years. Garcia Marquez responded; "I'll wait."
_______________________
Woodbridge, Va.:
Re novels vs. movies: I guess we all realize the advantage that novels have over movies in portraying the inner thoughts and feelings of characters--movie directors have to use a variety of techniques--flashbacks, voiceovers, skillful acting, other creative devises--to do what is almost natural in a novel, since reading is ultimately thought. But another thing that I think novels do better is to portray the passage of time, partly just because it takes longer to read a novel. The reader may put the book down for several days and then take it up again; he may think about it in the meantime; the actual reading may take many hours, allowing the novelist to create a world and to create the sense of the passage of time.
Michael Dirda: Yes. THe range of books is vastly greater than movies. They make good or great movies out of books; they can only make novelizations out of movies.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.:
Can you recommend some interesting European history books? I've recently read A Distant Mirror, Brunelleschi's Dome, The Return of Martin Guerre, and The Reckoning and am looking for something in the same vein, though not necessarily about the same time period. I'm particularly interested in English, Italian and French history. Thanks.
Michael Dirda: Sure. John Hale's The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance; John Brewer's The Pleasures of the Imagination (18th century), Jenny Uglow's The LUnar Men (18th century), Peter Washington's Madame Blavatsky's BAboon--about the theosophists, any of Anthony Grafton's books about Renaissance intellectual history, or Peter Brown's on late antiquity, Peter Conrad's Modern Places, MOdern Times. Oh, there are many. I love intellectual history.
_______________________
Germantown, Md.:
Have found a couple mini-Gory books and loved/loathed them! How many of these did he do? (...shudder... the couch!)
Michael Dirda: Many, many. 50? Probably more. There are three omnibus albums, and individual volumes have been reissued. The Curious Sofa, The Hapless Child, The Loathesome Couple, The Untuned Harp--classics.
_______________________
Takoma Park, Md.:
My favorite book-ending device is "A tremendous number of shots rang out and they all fell down dead." used satirically by Joanna Russ in On Strike Against God.
So many books could have been well and early terminated thus.
Michael Dirda: Ah, Joanna! It's to Russ that you all owe Book World's sf column. When I wanted to start reviewing science fiction, I wrote to Joanna--whom I'd known when I was at Cornell (she'd visit a friend in Ithaca, one of the dedicatees of The Female Man)--and she told me who to read, the important critics, the key books. I wish she were still writing. It's been a long time.
_______________________
Lexington, Ky.:
Michael, Sad news about the death of Donald Justice, just as his 'Collected Poems' is due. Where would you place Justice in the pantheon of contemporary American poets? And, what are some of his best poems?
Michael Dirda: He's roughly the peer of Richard Wilbur and Anthony Hecht, among our living masters.
See my review for more on the poetry.
And I see that I've gone past my allotted hour. We must petition washingtonpost.com to give me two hours a week (and some serious cash) to continue bringing sweetness and light to the internet. Or something.
Anyway, until next Wedensday at 2, keep reading!
Oh, and I'm sorry that I didn't get to all the questions again. Oh, it's such a burden being popular!
_______________________
Automatically Update Page
Get New Responses
Submit Question
| 
