Well, I could go on with numbers four, five and six—whatever they might be. But I don’t want to be overly pedantic or allow this farewell to go on too long. Elizabeth Bibesco once said that a goodbye, like a welcome, shouldn’t be over-extended. “It is not the being together that it prolongs, it is the parting.”
Still, I’ve never been able to write even a note to the milkman—back when there was a milkman—without a P.S. So just let me stress, one last time, that the world is full of wonderful stories, heartbreakingly beautiful and witty poems, thrilling works of history, biography, and philosophy. They will make you laugh, or hug yourself with pleasure, or deepen your thinking, or move you as profoundly as any experience this side of a serious love affair.
None of us, of course, will ever read all the books we’d like, but we can still make a stab at it. Why deny yourself all that pleasure? So look around tonight or this weekend, see what catches your fancy on the bookshelf, at the library, or in the bookstore. Maybe try something a little unusual, a little different. And then don’t stop. Do it again, with a new book or an old author the following week. Go on—be bold, be insatiable, be restlessly, unashamedly promiscuous.
Afterword
A freelance writer, by necessity, lurches from one deadline to the next. In looking back over this “year of reading, collecting and living with books” I should underscore that I often viewed these Browsings columns as a partial escape or temporary respite from my regular literary journalism. To round out this portrait of a bookman’s year I thought it might be worth totting up the other writing I produced between February 2012 and February 2013. Many of the books or subjects listed below were chosen by me; perhaps a quarter were suggested by my editors.
Weekly Reviews for The Washington Post
(These pieces—each about 1200 words long—appeared on Thursdays in the Post’s Style section)
Feb. 2—The Tender Hour of Twilight: Paris in the ’50s, New York in the ’60s, A Memoir of Publishing’s Golden Age, by Richard Seaver
Feb. 9—As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, by Michael Saler
Feb. 16—Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters, translated from the German and edited by Michael Hofmann
Feb. 23—The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination, by Fiona MacCarthy
March 1—Pavane, by Keith Roberts
March 8—The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis, edited by E. James Lieberman and Robert Kramer
March 15—Off
March 22—The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard, edited by Ron Padgett
March 29—Paul Cain: The Complete Slayers, edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers Jr.
April 5—Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind, by J. H. Rosny; translated from French by Daniele Chatelain and George Slusser
April 12—Lives of the Novelists, by John Sutherland
April 19—Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam, translated by Christian Wiman
April 26—The Memory of Blood, by Christopher Fowler
May 3—The First Crusade: The Call From the East, by Peter Frankopan
May 9—An appreciation of Maurice Sendak
May 10—Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, by Tom Bethell
May 17—Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley, edited by Alex Abramovich and Jonathan Lethem
May 24—The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution, by Faramerz Dabhoiwala
May 31—Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, by Daniel Levin Becker
June 6—An appreciation of Ray Bradbury
June 14—James Joyce: A New Biography, by Gordon Bowker
June 21—The Sovereignties of Invention, by Matthew Battles
June 22—“The Books that Shaped America”—an exhibit at Library of Congress
June 28—A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers
July 5—Guy Vernon: A Novelette in Verse, by John Townsend Trowbridge
July 12—Coquilles, Calva & Creme: Exploring France’s Culinary Heritage. A Love Affair with Real French Food, by G.Y. Dryansky with Joanne Dryansky
July 19—Skios, by Michael Frayn
July 26—Phantoms on the Bookshelves, by Jacques Bonnet; translated from the French by Sian Reynolds
Aug. 2—An appreciation of Gore Vidal
Aug. 9—The Werewolf of Paris, by Guy Endore
Aug. 16—Freedom and the Arts, essays by Charles Rosen
Aug. 23—Cracking the Egyptian Code: The Revolutionary Life of Jean-Francois Champollion, by Andrew Robinson
Aug. 30—Off
Sept. 6—George Orwell: Diaries, edited by Peter Davison
Sept. 13—Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything, by Randy Cohen
Sept. 20—The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey, by Enrique Gaspar
Sept. 28—This is Not the End of the Book, by Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco
Oct. 4—Futility, by William Gerhardie
Oct. 11—The Wolves of Willoughby Chase: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Joan Aiken
Oct. 18—Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener, by Barbara Paul Robinson
Oct. 25—The Big Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Otto Penzler, and The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
Nov. 1—Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke
Nov. 8—Dodger, by Terry Pratchett
Nov. 15—Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield
Nov. 22—Shakespeare’s Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer in the Elizabethan Age, by Daniel Swift
Nov. 29—History in the Making, by J.H. Elliott
Dec. 6—With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, and Others, by Kathleen Spivack
Dec. 13—Titian: His Life, by Sheila Hale
Dec. 20—The Fairies Return, compiled by Peter Davies; edited by Maria Tatar
Dec. 27—Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens, by Robert Gottlieb
2013
Jan. 3—Selected Letters of William Styron, edited by Rose Styron with R. Blakeslee Gilpin
Jan. 10—The Balloonist, by MacDonald Harris
Jan. 17—How to Live Like a Lord Without Really Trying, by Shepherd Mead
Jan. 24—Trent: What Happened at the Council, by John W. O’Malley
Jan. 31—Phantom Lady, by Cornell Woolrich
Feb. 7—The Forgotten Writings of Bram Stoker, edited by John Edgar Browning, and The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years, edited by Dacre Stoker and Elizabeth Miller
Feb. 14—The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, by Paula Byrne
Feb. 21—Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures, by Leonard Barkan
Feb. 28—Robert Duncan: The Ambassador From Venus, by Lisa Jarnot
The New York Review of Books
“Sherlock Lives!”—NYRB blog-essay on Sherlock Holmes and The Baker Street Irregulars, Feb. 2, 2012 [1,500 words]
“One of America’s Best”—The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs, by Ambrose Bierce (Library of America), May 10, 2012 [Essay-review, 4,500 words]
“The Art of Revealing the Wreckage”—Richard Ford’s Canada, July 12, 2012 [Essay-review, 3,500 words]
The Times Literary Supplement
Five essays about bookish matters for the TLS’s “Freelance” column [each about 1,200 words, similar to the Browsings pieces]
Bookforum
[Reviews, approximately 1,500 words]
Distrust That Particular Favor, essays by William Gibson (December 2012)
The Atheist’s Bible: The Most Dangerous Book That Never Existed, by Georges Minois (January 2013)
The Barnes and Noble Review
[These pieces appeared as part of my column “Library
Without Walls” and generally ran about 2,500 words each]
“We Revel in Any Kind of Crowd: Dickens the Journalist,” February 7, 2012
“A Dreamer of Mars: Edgar Rice Burroughs and John Carter,” March 9, 2012
Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, by Marina Warner, May 18, 2012
“Diamond in the Roughneck: The Books of Harry Crews,” July 6, 2012
“Mediterranean Breeze”: A Rediscovery of Norman Douglas’s South Wind, August 10, 2012
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter, Sept. 24, 2012
Religio Medici and Urne Burial, by Sir Thomas Browne, October 26, 2012
A Duckburg Holiday (three albums of Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comics), December 24, 2012
The Purple Cloud, essay on the fiction of M.P. Shiel, February 1, 2013
The New Criterion
Philip Larkin: The Complete Poems, edited by Archie Burnett; April, 2012 [Essay-review, 2,500 words]
Library of America:
Online essay, of about 2,500 words, about The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, one of the novels reprinted in the LOA volume American Science Fiction of the 1950s, edited by Gary Wolfe
Virginia Quarterly Review
Essay-review (of about 3,000 words) on The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal (Summer, 2012)
Harper’s Magazine
“The Chameleon,” an essay (3,000 words) on Thornton Wilder, Dec. 26, 2012.
The Weekly Standard
“Symons Says”: 3,000-word essay on A. J. A. Symons, author of The Quest for Corvo, and Frederick Rolfe, author of Hadrian VII (December 17, 2012)
Lapham’s Quarterly
Online essay (2,000 words) about three classics of “mystical” fiction: Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams, Walter de la Mare’s The Return, and Algernon Blackwood’s The Centaur
Reader’s review of a manuscript for the University of Minnesota Press
“The Modern Adventure Novel”—A semester course, a follow-up to “The Classic Adventure Novel,” taught as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland:
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (1912)
Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood (1922)
Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades (1928)
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest (1929)
H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios (1939)
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (1956)
Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers (1959)
Charles Portis, True Grit (1968)
William Goldman, The Princess Bride (1973)
Talks at Princeton University, the University of Maryland, the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, and several schools and civic groups
Biographical Note
Michael Dirda, a weekly book columnist for The Washington Post, is the author of On Conan Doyle, which received a 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and of the memoir An Open Book, which was honored with the 2004 Ohioana Award for nonfiction. Other works include four previous collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book and Classics for Pleasure. Dirda graduated with highest honors in English from Oberlin College and earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University in comparative literature (with a concentration on medieval studies and European romanticism). He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the online Barnes and Noble Review, as well as a frequent reviewer for several other literary periodicals and an occasional lecturer and college teacher. In 1993 Dirda received the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. He and Marian Peck Dirda, senior prints and drawings conservator at the National Gallery of Art, live just outside of Washington, D.C. They have three grown sons.
Acknowledgments
Robert Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, asked me to write these weekly essays. They were turned in to Sudip Bose who, when he wasn’t saving me from error, provided wise counsel, encouragement and direction. I am grateful to them, and the staff of The American Scholar home page, for all their help and hard work on my behalf.
Browsings is dedicated to four of my “mentors,” though I knew only Robert Phelps personally. As essayists and literary journalists, they showed me that one could discuss books with passion, intelligence and wit, and do so in a distinctly personal way. At various times in my life I read each of them avidly, seeking to understand how they created such genial, idiosyncratic presences on the page through style and diction alone. They’re hardly to blame for my shortcomings, but they made me the writer I am.
Finally, I am grateful for the enthusiasm and contributions of everyone at Pegasus, starting with Claiborne Hancock, Jessica Case, Iris Blasi and Maria Fernandez. You have all been wonderful. The handsome dust jacket design of Browsings should be credited to Michael Fusco Straub. Not least, Ed Perlman long ago encouraged me to give my original columns a more permanent form. My agents Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu then guided and advised me with their usual spirit and acumen. Thank you all for helping turn these bite-sized literary entertainments into a book.
BROWSINGS
Pegasus Books LLC
80 Broad Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10004
Copyright © 2015 by Michael Dirda
First Pegasus Books cloth edition August 2015
Interior design by Maria Fernandez
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60598-844-3
ISBN: 978-1-60598-845-0 (e-book)
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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