Virtual Memories Show #127:
Michael Dirda – The Meandering Reflections of a Literary Sybarite
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“I enjoy going back to Lorain, Ohio because I’m reminded that the world of Washington and the East Coast literary establishment is a very narrow, special one that’s parochial in its own way. The rest of the world has other concerns: family, job and life in general. Whereas we get all up in arms about very minor things.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning book reviewer Michael Dirda rejoins the show to talk about his new collection, Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books
“The books that you don’t grasp immediately, the ones that leave you off-kilter . . . those are often the books that really last, and matter.”
Our first three-time guest also talks about the democratization of book reviewing, the problems of storing books in his basement, what he wants an author to think upon reading his book review of a book, his affinity for Clive James’ work, whether his reviews have a coded autobiographical element to them, how the limitations of the book review form shaped his style, why he disagrees with John Clute’s philosophy on spoilers, and more!
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We talk about a lot of books in this episode. Here’s a list of ’em (Note: if I ever go to a Patreon crowdfunding model for the show, this is the first thing that goes subscriber-only):
- Little Big Man
– Thomas Berger
- Suspects
– Thomas Berger
- The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination
– Daniel Boorstin
- The Discoverers
– Daniel Boorstin
- Heart of Darkness
– Joseph Conrad
- The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus
– Cyril Connolly
- The Moving Toyshop
– Edmund Crispin
- Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books
- Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments
– Michael Dirda
- On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling
– Michael Dirda
- The Robe
– Lloyd C. Douglas
- The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded
– Clifton Fadiman
- Party of One
– Clifton Fadiman
- Enter Conversing
– Clifton Fadiman
- The Recognitions
– William Gaddis
- Muse: A novel
– Jonathan Galassi
- The Green Carnation
– Robert Hichens
- The Odyssey
– Homer
- Appleby’s End
– Michael Innes
- Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
– Clive James
- Kim
– Rudyard Kipling
- Zorba the Greek
– Nikos Kazantzakis
- Dazzle
– Judith Krantz
- V R Lang: Poems & Plays with a Memoir
– Alison Lurie
- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds
– Charles Mackay
- Bright Lights, Big City
– Jay McInerney
- The Scarlet Pimpernel
– Baroness Orczy
- Atlas Shrugged
– Ayn Rand
- Burning the Days: Recollection
– James Salter
- Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps
- Anathem
– Neal Stephenson
- Walden
– Thoreau
- Stoner
– John Williams
- On Writing Well
– William Zinsser
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
- Michael Dirda, part 1 and part 2
- Clive James
- John Crowley, Scott Edelman
- Frank Wilson
- Jessa Crispin
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About our Guest
Michael Dirda is a weekly book columnist for The Washington Post, and he received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the author of the memoir, An Open Book: Chapters fom a Reader’s Life
Credits: This episode’s music is Ah, Putrefaction by Jaristo, from Hans Zimmer’s film music for Sherlock Holmes. The conversation was recorded at the Boston Marriott Burlington on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
(New York Review Books), which profiles Lionel Triling, Dwight Macdonald, Alfred Kazin, William Maxwell, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, WH Auden, Frank O’Hara. We discuss the role of individuals in mass culture, the intellectual’s temptation to be a leader, the outdated figure of the Beloved Professor, Orwell’s misinterpretation of Auden, the writer he was terrified to meet, the failures of identity politics, the purpose of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum, his lack of nostalgia for the era of public intellectuals, the way certain books need a year off from teaching in order to recharge, and more. 
(1999) is a sequel to his 
(1981). His book, 
, was published by Pantheon in 2006. His new book is 
. He has prepared editions of novels by Hardy, Bennett, Meredith, Wells, and Trollope, the first five volumes of a complete edition of Auden, and selections of Auden’s poems and prose. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, TLS, the New York Times Book Review, and many other journals and collections, and he wrote an introduction for a new edition of Gravity’s Rainbow. He has also written about computers, music, and the visual arts. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was the first Isabel Dalhousie Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
(2006); 
(2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; 
(2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; and 
(2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy Award. Check out her 
. I recorded the intro and outro on a 
