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July 19, 2006 Wednesday 2:00 PM EST

Dirda on Books

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

SECTION: LIVEONLINE

LENGTH: 5235 words

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


Prize-winning columnist 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.

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Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! I'm still up here at Bread Loaf, teaching away. The day before yesterday it was, I'm told, hotter in Vermont than in Washington. Sigh. My classes are half over now, and we do have a three-day weekend, so I'll be flying home to visit family tomorrow afternoon. As it happens, though, wife and children (and two of children's friends) came up for the weekend, so I had to show five somewhat restless young men--ages 15 to 22--parts of Vermont. The first thing they wanted to see was the Otter Creek Brewing company, followed by the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream tour. So it goes.

I continue to feel under the weather, though I am soldiering on. I do recall, more and more, words I read as a boy in Ben Franklin's autobiography (or one of his essays): "Ninety percent of the world's work is done by people who don't feel well."

And with that, let's get on to the questions for this week.

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Dupont Circle, Washington, DC: Mr. Dirda:

I am reading through Ronald Firbank this summer and am wondering why you choose to teach from among his works Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli?

Also what can you say re: Firbank's characterizations of black people in his fiction? I understand the time and milieu in which Firbank wrote. Like with, say, Twain, one tries not to be offended, but ...

Thanks

Michael Dirda: Firbank is the master of camp humor, and I wanted to teach books that were foundation works in various genres. I also find him very funny, and feel he did a lot to give air and light to English prose. Before Firbank, there's always, more or less, a slight air of stuffiness, of fustian in novels. Afterwards, they seem to move and breathe more freely. Part of this derives from his ability to leave things out, and to capture accurately the way people talk.

Sorrow in Sunlight was renamed Prancing Nigger in America. It's important to remember that Carl Van Vechten, who was very interested in and supportive of Negro culture, was Firbank's great champion. Yes, the book is full of caricatures of black people, but ALL of Firbank's characters are caricatures. Are saints really like the heroine of The Flower Beneath the Foot? And Sorrow/Prancing is, in fact, very sympathetic to its black characters and their dreams. It is, I think, the most touching of all his books.

I chose Pirelli because it's often regarded as Firbank's masterpiece, but I didn't like it all that much when I first read it. I wanted to give it another chance, another look, and any Firbank novel would have served my purposes.

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Minnetonka, Minn.: Michael,

I just finished a biography of Charles Flandrau titled, In Gatsby's Shadow by Larry Haeg. Three local authors each a decade apart made to the Ivy League and became writers (Flandrau, Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald). Lewis and Fitzgerald were successful (sold out) but all became alcoholic. An interesting sidelight was that Alexander Wollcott was so influential as a critic (especially on radio) that his word could drive sales for books and make or break theater shows. So my question, have you ever heard of Flandrau and does alcohol always destroy the best writers?

Michael Dirda: I've never heard of Flandrau, but this does sound an interesting subject for a book.

Alcoholism among writers is a vexed issue. Faulkner and the writer/artist Stephen Longstreet once sat in a Paris cafe and listed all the American writers who drank to excess, and they decided that all great American writers were alcholics. I don't know. Certainly, for those with the tolerance, some alcohol can relax one's mind or inhibitions, allow one to tap into aspects of the self otherwise closely monitored by reason. But I don't think anyone has ever written really well, while seriously drunk. More likely, even writers like Chandler waited for sober moments to clean up and polish the sentences they'd churned out when soused.

Artists, though, are such extremists and maybe they do need this disordering of all the senses. As the title of a book on Fitzgerald says, "The Price Was High."

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Mickey Spillane : Mickey Spillane, the creator of Mike Hammer, passed away a couple of days ago. His death is a huge loss to fans of pulp fiction.

I've always been a big fan of pulp fiction. I couldn't get enough of it as a kid. What are some of you favorite pulp novels?

Michael Dirda: Yes, I was sorry to hear about Spillane's death. All the great ones are leaving us. "How could you? Mike" I think I had just enough time to get in before it was too late. "It was easy." Or something like that. They don't write 'em that way any more.

Favorite pulp novels--I'm fairly traditional: early Hammett and Chandler, the main James M. Cain books, lots of short stories from collections based on Black Mask, featuring early Erle Stanley Gardner, Norbert Davis, et al. To my regret, I've yet to read David Goodis.

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Trumansburg, NY: Do you have any recommendations for a book that gives detailed examples of a close reading of a major novel? Something that discusses all the uses of figurative language, allusions, etc., essentially all the stuff I'm missing because I'm too dense to see it?

Michael Dirda: Hmmm--suggestions, anyone?

There are lots of books that annotate major novels, from Ulysses to The Recognitions, but these usually point out the sources for allusions, quotations or unusual language. They generally don't go into interpretation very deeply. Major critics have offered extended readings of books, which might suit your needs--Edmund Wilson on The Turn of the Screw, Philip Rahv on Dostoevsky, etc etc.

I suspect that an extended explication de texte might grow tedious for any but the most determined critic, let alone his reader.

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Stevens Point, Wis: At this year's ReaderCon John Crowley announced that the fourth and concluding volume of his Aegypt quartet will be issued not by a major publishing company, but Small Beer Press, the imprint owned by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. As a reader I'm elated and would welcome its publication in any form, from samizdat to e-scan; but at the same time I'm wondering how a development like this might affect the writing of Other Great Works. Gene Wolfe, for example, did not write the third volume in his Soldier series because he was told by his publisher that TOR was not likely to pick it up. Will small press therefore be the savior of such works or only increase the possibility that these underappreciated masterworks are never written in the first place?

Michael Dirda: Insofar as writers expect to make money on their work, they must rely on major trade publishers. In that sense, the publishers influence what books are produced, just as the publishers are now influenced by Barnes and Noble sales as to what books they commission. It's a vicious circle. For whatever reason, I presume that Crowley's book was not deemed commercial--probably, to a large extent, because it only makes sense if you've read the three previous novels and these are likely to be out of print just now. So a trade publisher would need to reissue the first three in paperback at the same time as the new book. But then Bantam or Morrow or whoever published the first three might not want to release paperback rights or might be asking an exorbitant amount for them. And so the prospective publisher has no choice but to reject the fourth volume. Small Beer can publish it because its audience already knows the earlier works, and it will probably do fairly well, by small press standards, but a few thousand copies aren't enough for a trade house to bother over.

That's my guess on what happened with Crowley.

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Denver, Colo: Hi!

I recently moved out to Denver from the DC area.

Any good books come to mind on Denver and/or Colorado? Non-fiction, history, fiction all welcome.

On a somewhat related note, what is the general opinion of the old WPA-sponsored books on each of the states?

Thanks for chatting.

Michael Dirda: The WPA guides to the states, and those to the rivers of America, are much collected, and were frequently written and edited by distinguished scholars and authors. Much is now dated in them--they are 75 years old and the world has changed. But there are descriptions and cultural essays that are still important.

Denver--hmmm. Any ideas?

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alcohol & writing: My husband is a painter and will almost always have a glass of wine in one hand and his brushes in the other. He doesn't get drunk, but he claims that it relaxes him to get the creative juices flowing. On the other hand, I'm a writer and won't touch alcohol before working. And on a similar vein, the connection between mental illness and artistic ability is also tenuous: I couldn't work while I suffered from depression, but the pain remembered does inspire my work now that I'm better.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks.

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Colorado Springs, Colo: I'm the poster from a few weeks ago who asked for recommended reading of short novels. I just finished Chronicles of A Death Foretold. I'm wondering though how to read How It Is, which I bought? As a writer and critiquer of other writers, I put it down after the first page because I couldn't determine where to pause or where the thought ended. Help.

Michael Dirda: Well, HOw it is is late Beckett, and so it's not going to be an ordinary book. You need to essentially go with the flow of the prose and before you know it you'll understand were the pauses are. The text is in short bursts really, and there is considerable poetry in it. Still, it is a work that sets one of the boundaries of fiction, both in treatment and in action.

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Washington, DC: My rising 10th grade son has to read a non-fiction book this summer. Do you have any recommendations for good biographies or perhaps something dealing with ancient cultures? (He will be taking AP World History next year which is heavily focused on ancient civilizations.)

Michael Dirda: Hmmm. Nonfiction, eh. You might look for one of the many books by Michael Grant, a prolific translator and scholar of the ancients, who has produced histories of the Caesars and the Greeks that are readable and reliable. He stresses anecdote and story, too.

M.I. Finley's book The World of Odysseus discusses the background of the Odyssey with entertaining detail and speculation.

There are several books on archeology that might fit in here, e.g those of C.W. Ceram and titles like Gods, Graves and Scholars.

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Silver Spring, Md: For Trumansburg who wanted examples of close readings, here are two suggestions:

First, an anthology called Close Readings, edited by Frank Lentricchia and some other guy. Lots of good examples of close readings.

Second, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas Foster. Broader scope, very entertaining, includes several sample close readings but has more on general things like symbolism.

Michael Dirda: Yes, thanks. But I thought he wanted a single sustained reading of one major book. There are many examples of brief close readings of parts of novels.

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close reading: Au contraire! I think most serious readers would love to find the type of books that contain close (or semi-close) readings of novels. I bought about three different books on Jane Austen recently, looking for just such a thing, and they were all washes. Two were terribly shallow and one was way too off-topic and narrowly focused.

Chatters occasionally ask about this, usually in the form of "Do you know of any journals . . . ?" The problem is that reviews don't provide it, scholarly journal articles are usually too narrow in focus, and the reader is stuck when he/she wants to go deeper.

Here's an example from the movies: I somewhere (NYT?) read a kind of "close reading" of the movie "The Hours." In it, the author pointed out that the robe that one character wears through much of the movie is made from the bedspread he had when he was a little boy---something that is glimpsed very briefly in the movie and I certainly did not notice. This is exactly the kind of thing avid but general readers (not specialists) would love to find for novels.

Michael Dirda: Perhaps this is a felt need. But I now do remember a series that comes close to this. It's British, the books were about 200 pages long in paperback, and they covered major works of world literature in a somewhat sustained way. I read the volume on The Tale of Genji some years back and it was excellent. It might be called Landmarks of World Literature.

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Riverdale, Md: Who are you introducing at the Sept. 30 '06 National Book Festival - or do you know yet?

Michael Dirda: So far as I know, I may not be introducing anyone this year. No one has yet asked me, but then Book World wouldn't even think about this until September.

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Books on plane crashes: For the poster last week who asked about plane crashes.

Robinson, by Muriel Spark

the Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

Michael Dirda: Many thanks. This one called Lord of the Flies sounds kind of good. (Okay, just kidding.)

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Omaha, Neb: Re: Alcoholic writers. I read an interesting psychology book that offered semi-close readings of the works of a wide span of literary figures: "Touched with Fire" by Kay Redfield Jamison. The book suggests that manic-depressive disorder is the most common cause of the eccentric behavior of writers and artists, including the alcoholic ones. I had thought that psychological analysis, Freudian or otherwise, had really lost credibility as a critical school of thought, but this book was quite interesting. To your knowledge, have there been any other recent works on "madness and the artistic temperament"? Thanks for doing this chat!!

Michael Dirda: Hmmmm. Jamison is something of an authority. I feel sure there must be such a book,but I can't think of anything except old titles like Frederick Hoffman's Freudianism and the Literary Mind, or whatever it was called. Most Freudian and Jungian analysis these days tends to be directed at the books rather than their authors.

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Munich, Germany: As an aficionado of Glenn Gould, you've probably never taken any notice of the poetic lyrics of modern music, but today, I've been thinking of a certain verse;

You've got to kick the night,

until it bleeds daylight.

It was written by the Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn, and borrowed by the Irish rock icon, Bono, for a song by his band, U2. It inspires me to believe that the truth is something that isn't often easily come by.

Have you ever been moved by lyrics in music and been tempted to analyze them?

Michael Dirda: Bono--Is this Cher's late husband, Sonny? Okay, that was juvenile. I find it hard to take seriously anyone named Bono. It's like Fabian in my mind.

Pop lyrics always touch me a great deal--especially in country and western heartbreakers and in classics of the American Songbook. But on most contemporary rock or rap I have a lot of trouble just making out the words. But the lyrics to songs like "Let's Face the Music and Dance" or "They can't take that away from me" are very powerful aural pheromones. As I say, I also weep over my lost youth when I hear certain oldies.

Back in the 60s Richard Goldstein brought a collection called The Poetry of Rock, in which he reproduced and commented on rock lyrics. And, of course, Christopher Ricks, as eminent a critic as they come, recently produced a long serious study of Bob Dylan.

But in general most pop lyrics are relatively inane or trie when divorced from the music. But with the music, they can break your heart. As Noel Coward famously remarked, "Strange how potent cheap music can be."

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Virginia: What's best to read in the blistering heat? Do you turn to, say, Russian lit as an antidote? I'm tempted to give in and tackle The Inferno.

Michael Dirda: I've written a couple of columns over the years about hot weather books. You can either go for accounts of the cold--polar exploration is always good--or you can just swelter along with Philp Marlowe in Southern California or Meursault in North Africa. Perhaps this might be a good time ro read Kenneth Clark's The Nude.

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How to Read Literature Like a Professor: I wouldn't recommend this book. I found it very, very basic and disappointing. I'll try the other book the chatter recommends, though (Close Readings).

Michael Dirda: thanks

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For Denver: The Beany Malone series of teen fiction is set there.

Michael Dirda: thanks

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New York, NY: Goodis' "Shoot The Piano Player" is incredible. Almost an hour by hour account of a couple days with this one burst of the main character's entire history condensed to 10 pages or so, and then back to the original pace. I really loved it.

To the person looking for close readings of major novels I'd suggest any of the Norton or Oxford versions of books. They all have excellent notes and introductions, and often include essays and reviews both when the work was originally released and more contemporary.

Michael Dirda: Yes, those are both good series, but they aren't really close readings--they offer useful annotation, good apparatus (ie maps), and sometimes very academic essays. Still, I like them a lot.

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Andover, Mass: Mike,

I'm new to the discussion but always read the transcripts after the facts. I have two questions: Why does it seem (feel like) that fewer and fewer people are interested in reading? Second, where is the best place start when diving into Hemingway for the first time?

Michael Dirda: Hard to know for sure if fewer and fewer people are reading, though it does seem that the focus of energy is now directed to screens rather than pages.

For Hemingway: read The Sun Also Rises or the collection In Our Time. These, and a few later stories, are what seems likely to last of Hemingway.

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Lenexa, Kan.: Re Spillane: He attended my college (for a semester)--Ft. Hays State University. Even though I'd heard he received a "C" or "D" in his English class, the college was always proud of him--bestowing on him a distinguished alumnus award. He returned on occasion and the current president used him to help in some fundraisers.

A friend of mine asked him once when he was at Hays, "Are you still writing?" He said "Only when I need the $/%#-- money."

Michael Dirda: As I said, they don't make 'em like that any more.

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Colorado Springs, Colo: I am curious, do you know why most major bookstores separate African-American literature (and sometimes Asian literature) from literature in general. This has always makes me uncomfortable (not being African-American) when I want to read a book that happens to have been written by such an author (most recently, I picked up Toni Morrison's Beloved). It seems like separating certain literatures by race makes them less accesible--it is as though these shelve signs indicate that "these books are for this race only" or "only deal with issues that concern this race." Does this bother you or anyone else posting? Or am I alone here?

Michael Dirda: It's all about marketing. Bookstores aren't being racist or insensitive. Many authors hate being categorized like this--or as mystery writers of science fiction novelists or fantasy authors--when what they produce is, in their judgment at least, Fiction or even Literature. But the world is the world.

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London, UK: I enjoy reading the work of young literary writers of color:

Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Adichie, Helen Oyeyemi,

Uzodinma Iweala, and Colson Whitehead. The latter two are

from the US. Could you recommend other emerging writers

of color from the US?¿¿

Michael Dirda: Hmmm. This actually is a good segue from the previous posting. I myself don't tend to think of people as writers of color--unless they make a big deal of it themselves. One reads Edwidge Danticat because she's a good writer, just as one reads Edward P. Johnson or Sherman Alexie. I'm sure you can find some good ideas by going to--wait for it--the African-American section of your local bookstore. You now see why bookstores have such sections.

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New York, NY: The mention of Beckett's "How It Is" reminds me of Timothy Dexter.

At the age of 50 he decided to write a book about himself - "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress." He wrote about himself and complained about politicians, clergy and his wife. Since he had never learned to spell properly, the book had no commas or full stops, and capital letters were sprinkled all over the place. At first he handed his book out for free, but it rapidly became popular and ran into eight editions in total. When people complained that it was hard to read, for the second edition he added an extra page - of punctuation marks - asking readers them to "sprinckel them like salt and pepper".

Michael Dirda: Cute. Beckett had an extraordinary ear and if you give his prose a chance its lilt and rhythm and punch will carry you along. Same is true of the daunting looking Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

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Lenexa, Kan.: Mr. Dirda: I just finished Maria Arana's terrific novel, "Cellophane." I found it a totally gripping tale from the little boy studying through the store window the engineer's trick of "perpetual motion" to the river-floating detritus and demise--the little boy's "Rosebud" gone, his Floralinda (Beautiful Flower) flaming on the swollen banks of the Ucayali.

It seems a perfect fictional complement to "American Chica." Every sentence was polished, much of it brimming with native biota. Echoes I heard were Marquez, Allende, Kingston, Conrad, K.A. Porter, Kingsolver, Millhausen, W.H. Hudson...

QUESTIONS: Have you read it? Did you see parts in draft? There are young Latin writers trying to escape the magic realism shadow of Marquez (reminiscent of Welty's comments on Faulkner). Do you have any thoughts on the matter? Thanks much.

Michael Dirda: I'm sure Marie will be thrilled by your comments. I haven't read the book, but we did chat--very generally about its progress--over the past year. I neither offered nor gave any guidance.

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Venus: Hello, Michael. What is the best English translation of "War and Peace"?

Thank you.

Michael Dirda: I still would turn to Aylmer and Louise Maude. You can find a hefty well made Inner Sanctum edition with useful maps and commentary.

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New York, NY: Just read on Donald Westlake's website that he had a rough 2005 - endured 10 eye operations and suffered permanent damage in one eye. But I am happy to report that he is back working. He has a Parker novel out in November, and just completed a Dortmunder one. The man is amazing, and truly underrated. I've only read about 5 of his books, and enjoyed them all. His prose style is so smooth and readable, yet manages to avoid the cliches of genre writing. Currenly reading Kahawa, which many consider to be his best. Are there any other authors as prolific and able to maintain such high quality?

Michael Dirda: Not many. Westlake's friend Lawrence Block is comparably prolific and of high quality. Peter Straub is underrated for his versatility and consistency. But I do tend to think of Westlake as being in a class of his own.

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Washington, DC: Michael Normally I've enjoyed books you've recommended, but I have to say that Little, Big wasn't one of them. I gave it a good shot but just couldn't get past Crowley's precious, self-conscious style and relentless quirkiness. It just grated after a while, so I put the book down. Sorry!

Michael Dirda: No offense taken. There's no reason people should like the same things I do. And vice versa.

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Silver Spring, Md: Toni Morrison and the other Most Recognizable to Everybody black writers are not harmed by the separate sections, or at least not much.

The people harmed are midrange marvelous black writers like Percival Everett and Colson Whitehead.

Michael Dirda: Yes, Everitt is a particularly good example, since he mocks just such marketing labels.

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Washington, DC: Hi Mr Dirda,

I was browsing my local "big-chain" bookstore and came upon a well-illustrated, presentation copy of a book called The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I was intrigued by the book's packaging, so I googled him and found him to be a sort of mystic.

Have you read this book or any by him? do you have any opinions?

Thanks, and I hope you are cooler in NE than we are in DC!

Michael Dirda: Somewhat cooler today. I've not read Coelho and he's just a name to me, though with those mystical associations.

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Lexington: Michael, Donald Hall, our new poet laureate, wrote lyrically of Summer in New Hampshire ( but it will do for Vermont also ): "the Summer place becomes a mental state, a name for sweet freedom, innocent irresponsibility, imagination's respite, time for loafing and inviting the soul." It was a great resource for the Transcendalists, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne all summered there and wrote about Monadnock. Hawthorne died in Plymouth on his way to a summer vacation with Franklin Pierce in the New England Alps, and wrote "The Canterbury Pilgrims" about a Shaker settlement in NH. Harry K. Thaw summered there after he was released from the insane asylum, climbing Mt Kearsage. Kipling lived for a while in Brattleboro and I think wrote 'Captains Courageous" there. The James boys summered there also.

On the other hand, I had some VErmont friends who lived near Grafton for over twenty years and were told by the natives they would never be Vermonters. As it was explained to them, you could cook rocks in an oven for a long time and when they were 'done' they would never be buns but just rocks.

Michael Dirda: Well,yes: Certain regions, certain towns are just that way. You need to be born there to really belong there--at least in the eyes of natives.

I've discovered that the magic of Vermont and New England isn't really there for me. I think I'm a Southerner at heart--I loved New Orleans and even Oxford and Jackson,Mississippi, and Florida. In Europe I love the South too--Provence, the Mediterranean, Italy.

_______________________

Chapel Hill, NC (Audio Book Girl): Hi, Michael. What do you have up your sleeve in the 'lovable

rogue' category? Where the heroine suffers, but emerges

triumphant. Also, platonic friendship---lasting and intense.

Letters? Thanks.

Michael Dirda: ANy help here? I'm afraid my sleeves are pretty empty on this. When I think of lovable rogue, I think of Simon Templar, the Saint. Suffering but triumphant heroines--that could fit a lot of gothic novels. Maybe I need a more detailed question. Sorry.

_______________________

Clearwater, Fla: Michael,

I'm curious if you caught Louis Auchincloss's "top 5" list of novellas in Th Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago (especially since that topic has come up here of late). They were:

1. Madame de Treymes, Edith Wharton 2. The Author of Beltraffio, Henry James 3. Olivia, Dorothy Bussy 4. The Portrait of Mr. W.H., Oscar Wilde 5. Le Procurateur de Judee, Anatole France

Any comments on or additions to this list? (Absolutely loved "Book by Book" by the way!)

Thanks so much, John

Michael Dirda: This is a very elegant list. Though, to be fair, the Wilde is more a tract than a novella (about the identity of the begetter of the sonnets--but it is witty in its homosexual thesis) and the Procurator of Judea is really a short story. It ends famously, almost notoriously: Pontius Pilate has retired and some old friends come to visit. Over wine they talk about the old days, and one brings up the wonder worker Jesus of Nazareth and asks whatever happened to him. Pilate answers, in the last sentence of the story, "Jesus? Jesus of Nazareth? I cannot call him to mind."

_______________________

Jakarta Indonesia: Mr. Dirda, Can you recommend a book about The Divine Comedy which focuses on the text, but uses the text as a springboard to discuss the intellectual and political history of 13/14th century Italy? Thank you.

Michael Dirda: Hmmm. Most general books on Dante would have a chapter or more on the political historical background of the poet and his poem. I'd start there.

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Cincinnati, Ohio: Last week, several people mentioned reading Mark Twain's book on Joan of Arc. So on a related note, what do you and today's participants think about Steinbeck's version of King Arthur?

Michael Dirda: I've never read it, but have been told it's quite good, though Steinbeck was never quite done with it and it came out posthumously.

And that, friends, brings us to the end of another session of Dirda on Books! Until next Wednesday at 2--keep reading!

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