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Washingtonpost.com

June 29, 2006 Thursday 2:00 PM EST

Dirda on Books

BYLINE: Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World Columnist, washingtonpost.com

SECTION: LIVEONLINE

LENGTH: 5500 words

HIGHLIGHT: Prize-winning columnist Michael Dirda took your questions and comments concerning literature, books and the joys of reading.


Prize-winning columnist Michael Dirda took 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.

The transcript follows.

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washingtonpost.com: Due to flooding in Vermont, Michael Dirda is without an Internet connection and unable to come online today. He sends his apologies from Vermont!

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Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! I'm sorry I wasn't here yesterday, but all the Internet connections were down up on this mountain in Vermont. The rains, of course. Or do I mean the torrents, the monsoon, the Deluge? At least my books were safe back in Washington, though my wife--who works at the National Gallery as a conservator--was in crisis mode when all the electricity failed and the climate controls with it.

For the next six weeks I"ll be teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English, and should--the weather permitting--be writing at my usual Wednesday time of 2 PM.

I'm teaching Literary Journalism and the Short Novel. So far, apart from the bleak rainy days, people have been very welcoming, almost uncannily so. In fact, I've begun to wonder whether Bread Loaf might be the front for some ancient cult that lures unsuspecting people to this mountain and prepares them for sacrifice during some midsummer ritual. All that wicker around here does look a bit ominous. At all events, if you detect subtle personality changes in this chat, please alert the authorities before it's too late.

And with that, let's turn to this week's questions.

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Rockville, Md.: Michael -- you've often recommended Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. I'm about halfway through the third book and am having a hard time concentrating for more than a chapter at a time. The story is dense and Wolfe uses a lot of terms without explanation which is good for immersion into his world, but not so helpful when the reader is tired or distracted. Any suggestions on how to proceed? Do you think this is one that'll be more enjoyable the second time through? Thanks!

Michael Dirda: It is a hard book for two reasons: 1) the hidden stories are never obvious; Wolfe works by obliquity and you need to read between the lines and stay alert. There are time shifts and paradoxes, people are not quite what they seem, and identities need to be established. Who is Dorcas? 2) Wolfe uses archaic language to give a sense of strangeness and distance, but all the words are real and findable in a good dictionary.

Great books are often strange and difficult, until we learn how to read them.

There does exist a Lexicon Urthus, by Michael Andre Driussi, which explains some of the words and gives hints to the understanding of the book. Also, there are a number of articles and--no doubt--an online site or two devoted to explicating Wolfe's masterpiece.

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Jerusalem, Israel : Are books in their present form going to remain the 'platform' for the most valued literary work in the future?

Michael Dirda: For the moment, yes. Every blogger still wants to bring out a real, hardback book. Eventually that will change, and then the platform will have shifted to cyberspace.

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Chicago, Ill.: For a long time I have wanted to read Dante's Divine Comedy, and this summer is the best chance I am going to get. Is there any translation that you prefer and/or one that you might point me to as a first-time reader of the poem?

Also, what are your thoughts on Fanny Price, Austen's protagonist from Mansfield Park? We read the book in school last year and it seemed that everyone (aside from me) hated her (and the rest of Mansfield) and insisted that the book was worthless to read. I found her tedious at times as well, but -- like Emma, with whom I engaged in a love-hate relationship in the margins of my book--I eventually appreciated the stolid protagonist of Mansfield and continue to enjoy Austen.

Michael Dirda: Mansfield Park is the litmus test for Austen lovers, because Fanny is so priggish at times and the lively Elizabeth Bennet-like friend is made a kind of villainess. It's a complicated book too, and I can't say that it will ever be anyone's favorite Austen. Do others have thoughts on this?

As for Dante: Robert Hollander has been bringing out a new translation of the Commedia, and will finish up later this year with the Paradiso. This is probably the contemporary version to read. Robert Durling also has one that seems very well done. The great classicist Robert Fitzgerald very much admired the Laurence Binyon translation, and my old Italian teacher used John D. Sinclair. Perhaps the easiest approach is the Penguin by Dorothy Sayers, with very good notes. Speaking of notes, the master here is Charles S. Singleton, whose six volume Dante consists of three of a rather labored literal translation with facing page Italian and three of excellent, patristic-oriented annotation. You could even try the modern poetic version of Robert Pinsky for the Inferno and W.S. Merwin for the Purgatorio; no contemporary poet has done the Paradiso.

This may be more than you want to know, but the important thing is just to plunge into the poem.

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Winston-Salem, N.C.: Some of my favorite authors are New Yorker non-fiction writers, older ones like Joseph Mitchell; more recent, John McPhee and Calvin Trillin; and recent, David Remnick. I realize that I could find their books easily at Internet sites like Amazon and Alibris, but I'd rather browse a bookstore than a Web page. My question is this -- could you join in a campaign to require all new and used bookstores to have a book section of "New Yorker Non-Fiction Writers?" My wife bought me John McPhee's latest for Father's Day and I noticed that its suggested shelving was "Transportation." I guess it would join "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed" there, across the aisle from "Oranges" in agriculture and "The Pine Barrens" in forestry. I'm always amused when I find books shelved under correct, but inappropriate, categories. Any favorites from your book browsing adventures?

Michael Dirda: Perhaps this is the glory of the New Yorker writer--to be shelves in different places around the bookstore! Somehow I think it might be a little too much like inbreeding to have all the New Yorker people together. And who is and who isn't a New Yorker nonfiction writer? Is Truman Capote or John Hersey? Kenneth Tynan? I suspect that they wouldn't care to be so labeled.

By the way, I gave David Remnick his first book review when he was a summer intern at the Post. It was a book by Mary Robison.

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Ashcroft, B.C. (BR): Better late than never, but I'd suggest to the Dickens enthusiast who posted last week that he try 'Our Mutual Friend' before 'Bleak House.' 'Pickwick Papers' is my favourite Dickens novel, and is such an ultimately joyous book that just thinking about it makes me smile, although there are dark moments: Mr Pickwick's incarceration for debt foreshadows the much bleaker 'Little Dorrit'. I'd also recommend 'Sketches by Boz', short pieces written by Dickens before he turned his hand to novels: full of all the exuberance of a twenty-something author starting to discover just what he can make words do.

Also, although I have sworn off fantasy reading for the next little while, due to a surfeit of it over the last six months, I will be making an exception for 'Little, Big'; there have been so many enthusiastic posts about it here, by you and others, that I broke down and ordered a copy. Thanks for providing a forum like this to spread the word about great books!

Michael Dirda: Many thanks for the guidance. I've never read Boz myself. Ah, world enough and time!

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Arlington, Va.: The "New York Times" recently ran a piece where they solicited opinions from various literati about the single most important American novel of the last 25 years.

They made much of the fact that older novelists (of the Updike/Roth generation) made the list, and younger novelists did not.

The methodology seemed pretty flawed to me. Asking for the single 'best book' seems to force the choice to be more established author. The rules also seemed verkakte: somehow the Rabbit tetraology counts as one book written in the past 25 years, yet great works by William Gaddis, John Barth, and Thomas Pynchon were excluded because the works were 'too old.'

Any thoughts on that particular example of listmaking? Alternatively, any thoughts on the need we seem to have to create 'definitive' lists of the 'best books'?

Michael Dirda: Clearly, older writers will fare better in most such lists, since only established critics will be asked to choose and most of these will be somewhat advanced in years. Gaddis, Barth and Pynchon certainly belong on any list of Great American Novelists, but the books for which they are most admired tend to be their earliest, which are outside the time limits. As for lists: People like them, if only because they want to argue with the choices or to point out oversights. I, moi qui parle, have made up many such lists in my time, and published quite a few of them. I do think that lists made by individuals tend to be somewhat more interesting because more idiosyncratic and personal and, consequently, unexpected. It's really rather tedious, in a sense, to see Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth so honored--who doubts that they have produced important books? But were to include Russell Hoban, John Crowley, Annie Proulx, and James Salter--that would be more interesting. And if one were to choose, say, Donald Westlake, Stephen King, Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin and Thomas Ligotti--that would be even more interesting.

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Anonymous: Why is Updike catching so much hell for his new novel, Terrorist? Reviewers usually love him. Reads like a regular Updykian foray into something he doesn't understand very well. Pace: Brazil, etc.

Michael Dirda: Don't know. I'm told that Terrorist is his best selling book since Couples, though.

By the way, I quite liked Brazil, and thought it neatly done.

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Petoskey, Mich.: I would simply like to say the novel, 1984 is a true classic which has valuable lessons for all times. I think especially now, and I would urge all people to go and read it, even if you have read it before.

Michael Dirda: I can see that you have won the victory over yourself. You love George Orwell.

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Minnetonka, Minn.: Michael,

As a collector I'm interested in authors' papers and libraries. I want to know what the authors read and what they thought about it. If they don't write book review I feel the need to get clues from their notes or marginalia in books. Short of writing a biography, are there any authors that interest you enough to want to look through their papers or libraries?

Michael Dirda: An interesting question. A writer friend once told me that the true test of one's devotion to an author was the willingness to collect his occasional journalism. I did this, for instance, with Randall Jarrell--tracking down his magazine pieces in libraries and photocopying them at what was for me great expense. Of course, most of that work was eventually collected in Kipling, Auden and Co--which I naturally reviewed. Who better?

I recognize that the study of drafts and marginalia is important, but I find myself frustrated by an impatience with handwriting. For me, the thrill is the iconic mana inherent in actually seeing or even touching the holograph copy of, say, The Sound and the Fury. Of course, I did enjoy reading an unpublished Hemingway letter where he comments pungently on a movie made from one of his books. I was shown both these while on a trip to Charlottesville, for a piece partly about the U. VA library.

I suppose all this is partly because we so honor a writer we want to partake of his essence, almost like some kind of esthetic communion. I own a Christmas greeting signed by T.S. Eliot and it pleases me to see it and know it's his signature. I nearly traded my signed first of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye for an autograph letter of Marcel Proust, mainly because I value Proust a whole lot more than Morrison. I didn't though, because I thought her novel would accrue in value and help send my last kid to college.

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New York, N.Y.: I just wanted to recommend Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" to anyone who hasn't read it. Its humor is as dark and poignant and relevant as it was when it was first written. Don't let the musical version dissuade you. This is serious stuff. In a way it is one of the biggest expositions of Twain's philosophies.

To quote:

You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags -- that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient."

Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks. These are, to recall another American book, times that try men's souls.

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Alpharetta, Ga.: I am a teenager, and I immensely enjoyed both "The Catcher In the Rye" and "The Bell Jar" and "Hamlet." But, I've had a hard time finding comparably great coming of age stories, in terms of novels. I really liked "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," but that was TV.

Michael Dirda: Yes, but it was great TV--or so I've been assured by my friends.

Coming of age stories--Gee, there are quite a few out there. If you're a girl, you might like Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, if a boy, you might try, Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. But really there are many to choose from. Have you tried asking your local librarian for suggestions? Always a good move.

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Munich, Germany: There's been some pretty wicked weather in Munich too. I wanted to head off to the castle park for a bit of reading, but dark and brooding skies prophesied a nasty storm.

I've had the feeling lately that I've been neglecting American literature. But with all the talk about top authors and books, I was wondering what became of Jane Smiley. I would have thought that Smiley's, "A Thousand Acres", would have made the top 25, but she was nowhere to be seen.

What is Jane Smiley doing these days and have you ever met her?

Michael Dirda: I've met her briefly, when A Thousand Acres received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She seemed very likeable. Smiley continues to write prolifically and her books are well received, though none has been quite so popular as Acres. She's also admirably various, having done a book set in Iceland, one among the horse racing crowd, and one a comedy about a university. Most recently, she brought out a hefty book about her favorite classics. She's certainly worth keeping up with.

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Calgary, A.B. Canada: Fanny: I think the difficulty in 'liking' Fanny is intended. It makes us think closely about what the book is really about. I've always thought that unlike Austen's comedies of manners, Mansfield Park is not about metaphorical social dances and missteps, but about faith and religion. The more easily likeable characters are ultimately shown to be spiritually as well as ethically and morally corrupt (including Sir Thomas who seems to have more goodwill for Fanny than other adults in the circle, but sacrifices his children's moral education and owns slaves). Fanny -can- only be steadfastly pure to convey the contrast, which does make her a little hard to take.

Mansfield Park, in its occult discussion of religion, reminds me of Bronte's Jane Eyre; not about Jane marrying Mr. Rochester but Jane steadfastly following the voice of God to a spiritual reward, and therefore about religion and not about romantic love, to my way of thinking.

Your view Mr. Dirda?

Michael Dirda: How can I argue with such a cogent presentation of the book's theme as this? I will add that when Nabokov taught Austen he chose Mansfield Park.

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Arlington, Va.: Have you ever read C.S. Lewis's last (and in my opinion best) novel, Till We Have Faces? It is a superb retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.

Michael Dirda: I own it in hardcover but haven't read it. One of these days.

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New York, N.Y.: I recently started reading "Everything is Illuminated" and immediately had a massive revulsion attack. It seems to be a complete hack job: idiotic, adolescent humor, hollow characters, abstruse pseudo-mystical narratives pregnant with contrived meaninglessness, all masquerading as post-modern profundity. Everyone seems to be heralding this work and celebrating the supposedly precocious early-20s author. But the book reads like a very bad, too-clever-by-half, high school writing assignment, so the author is in fact punching below his weight. Yet the blurbs include stellar revues by the Times of London, among others. How does this stuff get published, much less garner such revues, or am I missing something? I don't recall ever being this tone-death to "great" literature before.

Michael Dirda: You may, of course, be absolutely right about the book. People do get on bandwagons and the flashy and meretricious does sometimes get taken for something other than paste. Or you could be dead wrong and this is The Catcher in the Rye of its generation. I don't know because I haven't read the novel. My tendency, however, is to be suspicious of too much praise for the work of very young writers--recognizing that this may be the old, and slightly envious, fogey in me talking. But the books that count for the long haul do tend to be initially strange, off putting and disturbing rather than widely admired. Joseph Hergesheimer was the most popular and critically esteemed American fiction writer of the 1920s. If I were to predict, I would guess that Foer should be likened to Jay McInerney, whose Bright Lights, Big City was a Big Book of its time, but whose later work has been more tepidly admired.

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Lenexa, Kan.: Mr. Dirda: (Posting early--lunch with a buddy): My Karen Joy Fowler-Jane Austen project ("Northanger Abbey" episode) has propelled me to Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho" and Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" (unabridged-13 CDs audio). Did you read "Udolpho" at Cornell? I recall Heinlein references in "An Open Book" and in "Bound to Please." How well do you know Heinlein's epic saga of the "Stranger"? Thanks much.

P.S. One of Fowler's book club members told a pompous mysteries writer, "Austen can plot like a son-of-a-bitch."

Michael Dirda: I know about Radcliffe and Udolpho but haven't read either. There are times I think my learning is entirely made up of gaps.

AS for Heinlein: I've read a lot of his work and like most people prefer his pre Stranger novels and short stories. I read Stranger back in the sixties with enjoyment, but even then preferred Double Star or such short stories as By His Bootstraps and All You Zombies.

You certainly are an ambitious reader. I am cowed by your industry.

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Tallahassee, Fla.: On Mansfield Park -- Fanny is irritating, but while I couldn't stand her when I was young, I have more patience for her now. If nothing else, I probably have more of an idea what 'poor relation' really meant. Mary isn't really a 'villain', she's just not Fanny. This book from Mary's point of view, with a different type of girl as heroine, would be very different. The question for me is, what's up with Edmund? Why was he blind to the truth for so long? Perhaps because Mary also had value, and could have made him happy as well. She certainly loved him. Austen always ends books with a little peak into the future, which always make me want a larger one. Fifteen years from now, are they really happy, or is Edmund bored and taking her for granted, while Fanny is overwhelmed, being too meek to handle the children or parish duties? Edmund may well think of what might have been, and Fanny learns the lesson 'Be careful what you wish for -- you might get it.'

Michael Dirda: Very shrewd comment. Obviously Jane Austen brings out the best in readers.

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My Old Ky. Home: Sorry, my tailpipe's been dragging but I wanted to return to your review of the Spinoza book a few weeks back. This must be some of the intellectual history you refer to but, I was wondering, how much background reading did you do and how long did it take to write your review, as in, how quickly can you digest philosophy of that depth and ilk? It was a sterling piece. Thanks.

Michael Dirda: I spent a lot of time on that one, largely because much of Spinoza is such hard work. In fact, the piece I submitted was judged too difficult and I had to rework it and trim it. I read a number of books about Spinoza, aside from the ones I mentioned in the review, and I must have immersed myself in his thought for a fairly intense three weeks. Thanks for the kind comment about the piece, as I've never been quite sure about it myself. I may have been out of my depth but I try to practice the "stretching" (in the books one reads) that I preach to others.

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Arlington, Va.: Jane Smiley's poignant novel of life in the far North was Greenlanders (although many of them came from Iceland).

Michael Dirda: Of course, you're right. I apologize. I remember that she introduces the big collection of Icelandic sagas and that threw me off. Now where is that sword I keep nearby for ritual suicide?

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Newport, R.I.: I am currently reading "I am Charlotte Simmons" by Tom Wolfe. It is my first Wolfe novel, and something about it is rubbing me the wrong way, although I enjoy his writing style. I seem to recall from past chats that you did not find this to be his best work either. Is there another Wolfe novel you would suggest? Thanks!

Michael Dirda: Wolfe doesn't like young people and has little sympathy for them or their world.

You should read his early journalism--The Pumphouse Gang collects a number of good short pieces. In this, and Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, he made his reputation as an original stylist and reporter.

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Plano, Texas: Hi Michael, I loved The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Can you recommend similarly gripping and well-told biblio mysteries? I've read Eco's 'Name of the Rose' and enjoyed it as well. Thanks.

Michael Dirda: A.S. Byatt's Possession. Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas.

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Arlington, Va.: I recently checked out a collection of Waugh's short stories, having never read him before. With two or three pleasant exceptions, I found most of them far more cynical and creepy than comic (The Man Who Loved Dickens is a prime example). Should I expect more of the same if I were to read Brideshead Revisited?

Michael Dirda: Waugh can be creepy, but he can also be somewhat sentimental, as in Brideshead. To like him a lot, you need to enjoy the purity of his English prose, and his gallows humor. This can be found at his best in Decline and Fall and the other pre World War II novels--though A Handful of Dust is quite dark and, in fact, ends with a version of The Man Who Loved Dickens. In truth, I enjoy Waugh's letters and essays as much, or even more, than his fiction.

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Colorado Springs, Colo.: So you're teaching on the Short Novel...Do you think, in general, major subplot(s) in a short novel distract from the plot? I've always considered subplots unnecessary in shorts, but I've not formally studied literature. Will you recommend a few of the best short novels ever written?

Thanks

Michael Dirda: Well, most short novels tend not to do much with subplots, at least in any elaborate way. I'm teaching the following:

Diderot, Rameau's Nephew, Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, Wells, The Time Machine, Nesbit, Five Children and It, Toomer, Cane, Firbank, Cardinal Pirelli, Beckett, How It Is and one more that escapes me at the moment.

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Pittsburgh, Pa.: Do you like to have background music playing while you read? If so, what kind? As a student I learned to read with just about anything blaring, but now prefer jazz.

Michael Dirda: No, I prefer quiet. Sometimes I will put on some wallpaper classical music--Haydn string quartets, for example--but mainly when there's noise around me. If I put on vocal music, I find myself listening to the words.

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Iowa City, Iowa: I enjoyed the "English, August" novel book that you reviewed a while back and it sent me looking for a copy of the Meditations by Marcus Aurileus. Is there a translation that sets the standard? The Everyman edition from Farguarson seemed at cursory inspection to be 'better' than the Penguin edition but there are some recent ones available too.

Michael Dirda: I believe the George Long translation is the old standard, but Penguin is almost always reliable for a good modern version of any classic text.

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Washington, DC: Michael, have you read Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour (or anything else by Surtees)? If so, what do you think? If not, why not? Thanks. And thanks for these Wednesday chats!

Michael Dirda: I have a little volume of extracts from Surtees, but haven't read him. I occasionally see books like Handley Cross and think about picking one up, but they are usually so expensive because of the illustrations, by, I think Rowlandson. So, no, I haven't read Surtees. Where is that sword again?

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Adams Morgan, Washington, DC: Hi Michael--

I'm making a trip to New York City and wonder whether you could recommend an up-to-date, comprehensive guide to the city's antiquarian and used bookshops. Or is there a Web site for this? Thanks in advance!

Michael Dirda: Hmmm. There used to be a set of volumes devoted to the bookstores of the North East, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, etc etc. In truth, unless you know New York well, there are only a handful of shops in Manhattan--the Strand, 12th Street Books just a couple blocks away, Skyline Books on 18th, and three or four others. I think if you go to one you can ask for directions to the others.

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Short novels: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Also, GGM's Aventures of Miguel Littin: Clandestine in Chile is a very interesting example of literary journalism.

Michael Dirda: Yes, a very fine short novel--quite a tour de force of temporal displacement.

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Tallahassee, Fla: I wanted to defend on-line book shopping, which has taken hits in past chats. It's a lifesaver to those of us who are not in metropolitan areas and do not have access to decent used book stores, and there's still enough variation in price and availability that it's well worth browsing just for comparisons. If you want something specific it's fabulous, especially since foreign stores are often included in the sites (disclosure: I'm thinking of abebooks.com, which feeds my addiction). So if you really wanted Masefield's "Box of Delights", you could find it in England for a buck and have it shipped -- which will probably be $25, but what price happiness?

One objection I've heard is that you miss the random happy finds, but that's not true. By putting in general terms like just an author's last name or a subject keyword, I've often found books I hadn't known existed, but instantly had to have. It's just another kind of browsing with another kind of happy finds. Besides, what other bookstore is open at 4 am?

My first foray into on-line buying was prompted by a desire to acquire a favorite childhood book. All I remembered was that the boys fell into gingerbread, and Mom thought the story was foreign. Two minutes later, Maj Lindman's "Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Gingerbread" was winging its way toward me. I could have searched for years looking for a bookstore that not only had someone who could tell me the title, but had the book. Sometimes the joy is in the hunt, but sometimes you just want the book.

Michael Dirda: Nicely put. I fear that once I start online bookbuying, I will become even more of a lost soul.

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Washington, DC: Speaking of the Pickwick Papers (which, in case you don't remember, "we" were here last week) I wonder whether anyone has ever pointed up the similarities with Wodehouse? To give just one of many examples, the following could have been written by either Dickens or Wodehouse. (Indeed, if it weren't already familiar, I might have put my money on Wodehouse as the author.)

"Serpent!"

"Sir!" exclaimed Mr. Winkle, starting from his chair.

"Serpent, sir," repeated Mr. Pott, raising his voice, and then suddenly depressing it; "I said, Serpent, sir-- make the most of it."

When you have parted with a man, at two o'clock in the morning, on terms of the utmost good fellowship, and he meets you again, at half-past nine, and greets you as a serpent, it is not unreasonable to conclude that something of an unpleasant nature has occurred meanwhile. So Mr. Winkle thought. He returned Mr. Pott's gaze of stone, and in compliance with that gentleman's request, proceeded to make the most he could of the "serpent." The most, however, was nothing at all; so after a profound silence of some minutes' duration, he said,--

"Serpent, sir! Serpent, Mr. Pott! What can you mean, sir?--this is pleasantry."

Michael Dirda: You're quite right.

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Michael Dirda: Well, our hour has come to an end, and so has my computer time here at the library. I'm sorry not to have gotten to all the questions. Do try me next week. Until Wednesday at 2, keep reading!

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	PROFILES & BIOGRAPHIES(71%)
	COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS(68%)
	FLOODS & FLOODING(60%)

Geography
	UNITED STATES(90%)
	VERMONT, USA(90%)
Minor Terms
	OHIO, USA(79%)
	FLORIDA, USA(71%)



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SUBJECT: LITERATURE (90%); BOOK REVIEWS (90%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (90%); WRITERS & WRITING (89%); BIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE (78%); CLASSICAL MUSIC (73%); PROFILES & BIOGRAPHIES (71%); INTERNET & WWW (63%); FLOODS & FLOODING (60%); HUMOROUS LITERATURE (73%); PAINTING (71%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (68%) style_dirda_3738

GEOGRAPHIC: VERMONT, USA (90%); OHIO, USA (79%); FLORIDA, USA (71%) UNITED STATES (90%)

LOAD-DATE: June 30, 2006

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication


Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
All Rights Reserved


Search Terms 		[(peace "gene wolfe")](28) View search details
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Date/Time 		February 20 2010 10:11:12

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