Browsings

by Michael Dirda

  Kay agrees and immediately afterward, in the distant fields, begins to glimpse what look like large Alsatian dogs “trying to catch a difficult scent.” When the old Punch-and-Judy man next reappears, he gives Kay a small box for safekeeping. It is no ordinary box. I will say nothing further except that this terrific children’s fantasy novel reaches its climax during Tatchester Cathedral’s 1,000th Christmas Eve service.

  Thomas Hardy’s “The Oxen”—based on a legend that stable animals kneel on Christmas Eve—is short enough to quote here in its entirety. A “barton” is a farmyard, and a “coomb” is a hollow or valley:

  “The Oxen”

  Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

  “Now they are all on their knees,”

  An elder said as we sat in a flock

  By the embers in hearthside ease.

  We pictured the meek mild creatures where

  They dwelt in their strawy pen,

  Nor did it occur to one of us there

  To doubt they were kneeling then.

  So fair a fancy few would weave

  In these years! Yet, I feel,

  If someone said on Christmas Eve,

  “Come; see the oxen kneel,

  In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

  Our childhood used to know,”

  I should go with him in the gloom,

  Hoping it might be so.

  This poem always brings a catch to my throat.

  Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Blue Carbuncle” opens this way: “I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season.” Before long, the great detective is dazzling poor old Watson with one of his most astonishing feats of deduction. A possible client has left behind his old hat:

  “It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been,” he remarked, “and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.”

  With that, Holmes and Watson are off on the case of the stolen Christmas goose. Many Sherlockians reread this story every year, usually on December 27. It is, as Christopher Morley famously declared, “a Christmas story without slush,” and one of the most charming of the adventures of the immortal duo of Baker Street.

  Books for the Holidays

  Giving books for the holidays is always a crapshoot. Sometimes the recipient will gush, “Oh, just what I always wanted—a deluxe pigskin-bound copy of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes.” At other times, he or she will reply wanly, “Oh, a book. I just love books. I used to have some when I went to college.” Most well-bred people are polite: “How thoughtful of you! One can never have too many novels by James Patterson.” But others may blurt out: “Oh, darn! Another copy of Fifty Shades of Grey! What I was really hoping for was a cotton chenille housecoat and a pair of comfy wool socks. Or maybe a new toaster.”

  Given the general rate of failure and misfire, I’ve come to believe that one should simply give attractive copies of the books one loves. So here, arranged by age group, are some of my favorites (with a focus on literary and biographical/historical works). I’ve listed just one or two titles by the chosen authors, but in most cases their other books are often just as good. I’ve also avoided classics that are either over-familiar or that seemed to lack an appropriately festive or fireside feel to them. So you won’t find Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (“This is the saddest story I have ever heard”), nor is there anything here by, say, Kafka, Faulkner, or Jean Rhys.

  Bear in mind that the chronological ordering is, obviously, only approximate. Some people are more advanced readers than others, but good books for even the youngest kids are still enjoyable by the most mature grown-up. I would normally annotate such a list, but this would make for an inordinately long column, so I simply urge you to seek out some of these writers and their works in your local bookstore or online. A few titles may be out of print, but old copies are worth tracking down. Indeed, I’m firmly convinced that an old hardback—whether a first edition or not—is better than a recent paperback. But then I’ve never believed that a gift needed to be absolutely new, otherwise people wouldn’t be buying antique earrings, let alone pre-owned BMWs, for their sweethearts.

  Ages 1-4:

  The Real Mother Goose, illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright

  We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen; illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

  The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, edited by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Arnold Lobel

  Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton

  The Travels of Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff

  Ages 5-7:

  Any good edition of the classic fairy tales

  Bread and Jam for Frances, by Russell Hoban; illustrated by Lillian Hoban

  A Day with Wilbur Robinson, by William Joyce

  Jumanji, by Chris Van Allsburg

  Miss Nelson is Missing! by Harry Allard; illustrated by James Marshall

  Ages 8-11:

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll; illustrated by John Tenniel

  Five Children and It, by E. Nesbit

  The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame; illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard or Arthur Rackham

  Homer Price, by Robert McCloskey

  The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster; illustrated by Jules Feiffer

  The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Blackhearts in Battersea, by Joan Aiken

  5 Novels: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars; Slaves of Spiegel; The Last Guru; Young Adult Novel; The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, by Daniel Pinkwater

  A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle

  The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien

  The Sword in the Stone, by T. H. White

  A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Ages 11-15:

  The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by A. Conan Doyle

  Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Herbert Wise and Phyllis Fraser

  Collected Ghost Stories, by M. R. James

  101 Years’ Entertainment: The Great Detective Stories, edited by Ellery Queen

  The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, edited by Robert Silverberg (volume one: short stories; volumes two and three: novellas)

  The Golden Argosy: A Collection of the Most Celebrated Short Stories in the English Language, edited by Van H. Cartmell and Charles Grayson

  The White Nile and The Blue Nile, by Alan Moorehead

  Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing

  Ages 16-19:

  She, by H. Rider Haggard

  The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope

  The Grand Sophy, by Georgette Heyer

  Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees

  The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien

  The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

  The Thurber Carnival, by James Thurber

  The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester

  The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance

  True Grit, by Charles Portis

  Ages 19 and up:

  Fiction:

  Kim, by Rudyard Kipling

  Seven Men, by Max Beerbohm

  Leave it to Psmith, by P. G. Wodehouse

  Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley

  Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L. Sayers

  The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov

  The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

  Gentlemen Prefer Blonde
s, by Anita Loos

  The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin

  The Locusts Have No King, by Dawn Powell

  Pictures from an Institution, by Randall Jarrell

  Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter

  A Fan’s Notes, by Frederick Exley

  Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger

  Small World, by David Lodge

  Amphigorey, by Edward Gorey

  Nonfiction:

  Poets of the English Language, edited by W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (five volumes)

  Individual editions of the poetry of T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anthony Hecht

  Eothen, by Alexander Kinglake

  Up in the Old Hotel, by Joseph Mitchell

  The Best of Myles, by Flann O’Brien

  Hindoo Holiday, by J. R. Ackerley

  Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Letters of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, edited by Simon Karlinsky

  The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, by John Dickson Carr

  The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley

  The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays, by Guy Davenport

  In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin

  The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald

  Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt

  United States: Essays 1952-1992, by Gore Vidal

  Well, I’d better stop. I’m beginning to think of more and more titles. But remember: these are just some of the books that I enjoy giving to people. Tastes may differ, and I’ve no doubt overlooked the one work that a) changed your life, b) to which you return regularly for comfort and renewal, or c) that you wished everyone in the world knew about. At all events, I do think any of the treasures listed above would make for good reading on a cold winter’s night (or two or three). Happy holidays!

  Let Us Now Praise Dover Books

  Last month my friend Tom Mann—author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research and, as Washington insiders know, the man to see at the reference desk of the Library of Congress—handed me a copy of a book entitled Shakespeare, In Fact, by Irvin Leigh Matus. Originally published in 1994 as a hardcover by Continuum, this carefully researched, data-rich, and beautifully written account of Shakespeare’s life and career has now been reissued, quite handsomely, in paperback by Dover Books. I recommend it strongly, especially to Oxfordians, Baconians, and all the other groups who imagine that Shakespeare wasn’t educated enough to write such brilliant plays.

  Irv Matus, who died in 2011, by himself gives the lie to that elitist canard. As Tom points out in his introduction to this Dover edition, Irv “had no formal education beyond a high school diploma, but he wrote two of the best books ever on the Bard and his era. At the time he finished the first one, Shakespeare: The Living Record, 20 years ago, he was living on a heating grate behind the Library of Congress.”

  I won’t say more about Tom’s vivid portrait of Irv, except that it could have been printed by The New Yorker back when Joseph Mitchell, A.J. Liebling, and Wolcott Gibbs were writing profiles of gifted and eccentric characters. It almost goes without saying that Irv Matus was a proud member of Washington’s most mysterious and exclusive association, facetiously referred to as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but consisting of specialists and authorities on everything from forensic anthropology to fingerprints to South African politics and sociology. You can’t apply to join the League, by the way, you can only be invited by its all-powerful president, a shadowy figure right out of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday.

  A few days after Tom gave me that new copy of Shakespeare, In Fact, I ran into Paul Dickson at a used bookstore. Paul—immensely genial, in both senses of the word—is himself an obvious candidate for the League. He’s the biographer of legendary baseball owner Bill Veeck, an expert on language (War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases Since the Civil War is in its third edition), and a scout for Dover Books. In this last capacity, he keeps an eye out for old and odd works that should be returned to print. For instance, Paul introduced Dover’s 2012 reissue of Old-Time Camp Stoves and Fireplaces, a practical manual first published in 1937 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. (My father might have used the original, since he joined the CCC in his youth and worked in some out-of-the-way parts of California.) Paul also wrote the text for Courage in the Moment: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961-1964, a recent Dover “original” built around Jim Wallace’s you-are-there photographs of protests and sit-ins. Not least, this astonishingly energetic and prolific author helped Tom engineer the re-publication of Shakespeare, In Fact.

  On my way home from chatting with Paul, I started to think about Dover Books and their importance in my own reading life. Because of Dover paperbacks, I was introduced to M. R. James’s Ghost Stories of an Antiquary and to the adventures of Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados, marveled at the great cases of Jacques Futrelle’s Professor S. F. X. Van Dusen, known as The Thinking Machine, and was awed by the cosmic science fiction of Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men and Star Maker. Because of Dover Books I was gradually able to accumulate a small library of wonderful and unusual titles, ranging from the mysteries and ghost stories of Sheridan Le Fanu, to H. P. Lovecraft’s groundbreaking essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, to Martin Gardner’s first great debunking classic, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.

  In those days of yore, Dover proudly trumpeted that their paperbacks were “designed for years of use,” that the paper wouldn’t deteriorate, and that the pages consisted of sewn signatures, with ample margins. Sometimes the outer cellophane layer of the covers would delaminate, but this didn’t affect the book in any serious manner: It would still open flat, and the type face, except in those publications that reproduced the actual pages of old magazine serials, would always be large and legible. In short, a Dover book was “a permanent book.” Best of all, the company’s offerings were cheap—only a few dollars new and often findable for even less in thrift shops and second-hand bookstores. There must still be a couple of dozen Dover editions scattered around this house. Even now I sometimes take one out and study the lists of “titles of related interest” printed on either the inside covers or as an appendix.

  For example, at the back of Three Martian Novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, there are 15 pages describing books about science, philosophy, history, and languages. You could buy W. P. Ker’s enthralling Epic and Romance, or E. K. Rand’s Founders of the Middle Ages, or W. G. Sumner’s Folkways. In my copy of Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood, the inside cover carries an extensive list of “Dover Mystery, Detective, Ghost Stories, and Other Fiction,” including Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan, G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, and Five Victorian Ghost Novels, edited by E. F. Bleiler.

  Everett F. Bleiler! Even as a boy, I noticed that this Bleiler guy introduced many of the books I most cared about. He seemed to have read everything, and, as I later learned, he actually had. To this day, I keep The Guide to Supernatural Fiction and Ev’s two similar volumes about early science fiction near my bed for late-night browsing: They are among the world’s most beloved, and valuable, reference books. In the first, Bleiler lists and annotates—i.e., summarizes, with capsule judgments—1,775 books from 1750 to 1960, “including short stories, weird fiction, stories of supernatural horror, fantasy, Gothic novels, occult fiction, and similar literature.” Because many, if not most, of those 1,775 titles are collections or anthologies, that means Bleiler read literally thousands of pieces of great, good, and wholly ephemeral genre literature. The science fiction volumes cover many additional thousands of novels and stories.

  These splendid books—perhaps the greatest publications ever of Kent State University Press, yet now sadly out of print—are the harvest of a lifetime of reading. For more than 20 years Bleiler worked as an editor, later an executive vice president, at Dover, and was responsible f
or rediscovering and making available some of the most important titles in Victorian and Edwardian popular fiction. He was himself an exceptionally learned man, having written a Japanese grammar, produced a scholarly edition of Nostradamus, and contributed regularly to specialized journals about arcane works of Renaissance allegory and fantasy.

  He was also kindly, generous, and modest, and I am proud to have exchanged letters and phone calls with him, and once—only once, alas—to have met him for a bookish lunch in New York. He is one of the heroes of modern literary scholarship, and I wish I’d gotten to know him more and better.

  But his legacy remains. Many—and it really should be all—of his Dover editions remain in print. His great reference volumes are standard bibliographic tools for antiquarian bookdealers: “Not in Bleiler” is the sign of a truly rare work. His son Richard Bleiler, moreover, continues to extend his father’s scholarship, and has added his own researches to it.

  Sigh. What I wouldn’t give to be 14 years old again, on Christmas break from school, and reading, for the first time, Gods, Men, and Ghosts, Bleiler’s selection from Lord Dunsany’s gorgeously written and clever fantasies. Oh, well. There’s one thing the adult me knows for sure: If Ev were alive today and living in Washington, and if he could be persuaded to join, he would certainly be one of the most extraordinary members of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.