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« Back to Books to Please, Part Two main page    Transcript for: Books to Please, Part TwoTHINK TANK WITH BEN WATTENBERG#1311 MICHAEL DIRDA, PART TWO FEED DATE: April 28, 2005 Michael Dirda Opening Billboard: Funding for Think Tank is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello I’m Ben Wattenberg. In today’s fast, computerized environment, good books are sometimes forgotten. Not so for Michael Dirda, a lover of literature since his childhood in a working class town in the Midwest. A Pulitzer Prize winning book critic for the Washington Post, Dirda says that there are wonderful books that people from all walks of life can read and enjoy. Today, he will share some of those with us. What is the state of literature today? To Find Out, Think Tank is joined by Michael Dirda, author of An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland and Bound to Please: An extraordinary one-volume literary education. The Topic Before the House: Books to Please, Part Two. This Week on Think Tank. MR. WATTENBERG: Michael, what is the mission of this Bound to Please book? What is your goal? MR. DIRDA: Well, my goal is really what it has been throughout my career as a journalist: to encourage people to read beyond the bestseller list. MR. WATTENBERG: You don’t like bestseller lists, do you? MR. DIRDA: No, I think that they restrict the trade, so to speak. That is, people go into bookstores with the bestseller list in hand and say, 'Well, give me The Da Vinci Code' or whatever is, you know, the hot book that week. Whereas if they would just go without having had access to anything like a bestseller list and wander the shelves, picking up books or talking to the bookstore owner or chatting with friends or librarians, they would find a lot more books in the way of books that appeal to them than those on the bestseller list - which do tend to be a certain kind of marketable book. That’s not always true. There are – you know, I have a piece on Possession by A. S. Byatt in this book. That was a bestseller. And a number of the books I write about are bestsellers. I have pieces in this – my idea is expanding your reading horizons is important to me, and I do it by enthusiasm and trying to make these books sound fun. So I have pieces here about Terry Pratchett who is a fantasy humorist who writes the Discworld novels. Pieces on – you mentioned Mc – oh, I didn’t mention - Charles McCarry who write wonderful spy novels about Paul Christopher. I don’t only do highbrow books, however, I also urge people to try books that may seem a little daunting. For example, I’m very fond of Raymond Queneau who is a great French writer. He used to be an editor as well as a writer who liked to experiment with language. MR. WATTENBERG: And he says that his – he himself says his books are hard to read. MR. DIRDA: Some of them. Some of them are more ingenious in a way. They show you the possibilities of how you can be more playful in your approach to literature. For example, he wrote a book called something like, you know, A Hundred Million Sonnets, by making a – one sonnet, cutting up all fourteen lines and then making fourteen sonnets underneath each of them so that you would have a little block of type. And if you flipped over the different lines, ’cause they were individual, you’d have different combinations of lines to make different poems. So in fact it would be this vast number. He wrote another book called Exercises in Style where he took a common incident; one guy brushes against another on a bus and nothing much happens, but he writes that same little story – one-page stories – in a hundred different styles. He writes - there’s a dust jacket blurb; there’s a letter of complaint to the bus company and as alexandrine poetry to show you that there are different ways of looking at the same thing. MR. WATTENBERG: And the book you would recommend is – if you’re going to start? MR. DIRDA: I would – if you had to start – he has a very good English translator, Barbara Wright. Probably the book to start with is – was made into a movie, speaking – you mentioned movies - Zazie in the Metro. About a little girl who comes to Paris and wants to ride the metro and it’s on strike and her various adventures in Paris. It’s a delightful book. Queneau is also important because he – he like Constantine, or like Higgins listened to the way French people spoke... MR. WATTENBERG: George V. Higgins. MR. DIRDA: George V. Higgins. He brought the vernacular into – to – into prose in a way that had not been done so much before. MR. WATTENBERG: And... MR. DIRDA: So I like the idea of writers who try something new, whether that new is in a genre or whether it’s an experimental novel, and who make us see more than we -- you know, Joseph Conrad said the function of literature is to – is just to – is to make you see, and that in every – that and it is everything. Different writers, different traditions, you know, whether Europeans - I write about Hungarian writers, Italian writers - make you see things differently; make you see the world differently. And more sensitively. I think that if you read widely in the literature of the world you have to gain a certain amount of greater sympathy for the varieties that people and attitudes toward the way we live. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Let’s jump ahead to two books and two authors: George Orwell and Gore Vidal. And you mentioned both of them. Talk to me briefly about Orwell. That’s – I guess his – his two famous books are the really great novel 1984, and this sort of - what is it, an allegory - Animal Farm. Tell me a little bit about... I mean, 1984 is sort of a – it’s a story. It’s – what I think a novel ought to be. I mean... MR. DIRDA: But it’s a – I mean it’s a story where the style matters and the choice of words matter. The first sentence, 'It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.' Automatically he set up, you know, he’s – that style has captured you. The clarity but also the ominousness of that thirteen. Orwell is important... MR. WATTENBERG: It’s about the rise of totalitarianism? MR. DIRDA: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: Right. MR. DIRDA: Those books are important, but in some ways Orwell is almost more important because of his prose than at – for any particular book. His essays are the great examples of what we think of as the classic modern style: transparent, plain, clear, concise, to the point. Kids are taught if they could write perfect English, they should write like Orwell, or maybe E.B. White. That’s a kind of – he’s the great example of that. His vision of course was political... MR. WATTENBERG: I mean, it is profound - yet I wouldn’t say easy to read; it’s not hard to read. It’s got a plotline but – and you say something in it very interesting. You talk about his attractive political convictions. What do you mean by that? MR. DIRDA: Well, Orwell was a, you know, was a – was in favor of the common man. He was a great - he spent a lot of his life reporting on the condition of coalminers, of people who were down and out. He – his sympathies were with essentially the workingman and wanting to create and help, you know, improve his lot in life. He was – he was a man who did not believe in ’can’t’ of any sort, whether it was from the left or from the right. He wanted – he was a great – he looked for the truth. MR. WATTENBERG: No one would deny – on any side of the political spectrum - that one of his animating themes was anticommunism. MR. DIRDA: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: I mean given – given when he wrote and what he wrote. Animal Farm is a – is an allegory about a totalitarian dictatorship and 1984 was. . . MR. DIRDA: He was certainly against the kind of communism that was associated with Russia and the show trials and the world that had grown up there. But you know, his books of the ’30s are clearly socialistic in sympathy. But he came to see that what happened in Russia was certainly a distortion of those values that he had – he had admired and that the society had become in fact totalitarian, heavy- handed, cruel, and inhuman. And this is what he shows us in 1984, which of course is about 1948 with the years reversed. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, now, and by saying that he has attractive political convictions you obviously... MR. DIRDA: These are what I mean. MR. WATTENBERG: ...identify with that sort of thing. Now you also write - and in a very favorable way - about Gore Vidal who is a great prose stylist, but no one would ever –- and I don’t want to say that Gore Vidal is procommunist ’cause that would not be correct. I don’t know what his earlier life was. But he’s certainly not a professional anticommunist the way George Orwell was. I mean that’s not his shtick. MR. DIRDA: No. MR. WATTENBERG: What –- and you get the feeling on Vidal that he’s always trashing America. MR. DIRDA: I think he’s trashing America because he loves America. I mean his family has had long political connections. He’s, you know, been a product of very much the aristocratic American tradition. And much of that he values - although his sympathies are... MR. WATTENBERG: His grandfather was a U.S. senator or... MR. DIRDA: Yes, a blind U.S. senator. Senator Gore. And Vidal learned much of his taste in literature by reading aloud to his grandfather, whom he was very devoted to. Vidal’s – Vidal’s our great gadfly. He’s criticizing America because he sees excesses and no matter what they are – and often they’re very controversial. But he has gone there boldly and said, you know, this is what I see, this is what I think. And as American citizens you should, you know, we should all think twice about our policies, you know, say in the Middle East or our attitudes toward the rich or government or what have you. MR. WATTENBERG: Do you tend to – when he sticks to his writer’s trade rather than his polemicist’s trade he’s a wonderful writer. He wrote a biography of Lincoln didn’t he? MR. DIRDA: He wrote a novel about Lincoln. MR. WATTENBERG: Oh, he wrote a novel. I’m sorry, he wrote a novel. MR. DIRDA: But it was a biographical kind of novel. MR. WATTENBERG: Yes, biograph... it’s a wonderful book. MR. DIRDA: He has a whole series of books about America. American history starting with Burr – about Aaron Burr - going up through Lincoln and up to the 20th century, Washington, D.C. and other books. So that you get a kind of potted history of the United States through his novels. He’s a Cracker Jack researcher in historical books, too. And he does have this gift of – this verbal flair and wit that all of us envy. MR. WATTENBERG: Now. There are a couple of real surprises in here. One is Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan. Tell me about that. That’s a book I grew up on and could we still enjoy it? MR. DIRDA: Well, I think so. I – I’m a –- Certain popular books - we think of Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan in particular - are important as realms of our imagination. Without them we would be impoverished. Sher – you know, Sherlock Holmes represents a kind of pure intellect and the books themselves evoke this gas lit London where we all feel cozy, we’d all like to be sitting before a fire while the, you know, rain, you know, comes down in buckets. Tarzan is – is sort of the noble savage for the 20th century and in fact he is noble. He really is Lord Greystoke. And the books are about courage, about self-sacrifice. Unfortunately they also contain of the – for the time - sexist and ethnic stereotypes. MR. WATTENBERG: Wait – wait. MR. DIRDA: Those we have to deal with. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me come to that. Tarzan allegedly is the child of an Englishmen and an ape. And he swings from vine to vine in the jungle and... MR. DIRDA: Well, yes. He’s – he is the child, of course, of an English couple who’ve crashed into Africa and he’s brought up after they’re killed - or die - by an ape who has lost her own child and so raises this pale, white human baby as her own. And he consequently grows up strong and knowing all the skills of the apes and eventually is able to... MR. WATTENBERG: The great – great... MR. DIRDA: ... go on to become the hero that we know from books and movies. MR. WATTENBERG: Did the role in the movie – and many of the books you mention here - became movies. I mean... MR. DIRDA: Well... MR. WATTENBERG: You mention – it’s King Solomon’s Mines and Forrest Gump, and there’s a bunch of them in here. So they really have narrative context... MR. DIRDA: Oh, they’re – they’re – I mean the Tarzan books are – certainly they’re very gripping. . . MR. WATTENBERG: Johnny Weissmuller made those famous. MR. DIRDA: Well as – but they were famous beforehand. MR. WATTENBERG: As movies. MR. DIRDA: Oh, yes, Edgar Rice Burroughs is an incredible writing machine. He used to say 'it’s a great life if you don’t weaken' ’cause he could just crank this stuff out. He also wrote the John Carter books about Mars, important in the development of science fiction; he wrote about a civilization inside the earth, called Pellucidar; he was a man important in many fields. MR. WATTENBERG: Some of these writers you write about wrote fifty books, sixty books, seventy books. I mean they were... MR. DIRDA: Writing – writing is –- when you’re a certain kind of genius - think of Shakespeare or Victor Hugo - it’s a glorious excess. The kind of careful, costive writer who just does, you know, six poems in his or her life or just one narrow, slender book, those are rare. If you’ve got genius it all kind of spills it, like Dickens. And sometimes there’s no single great masterpiece but it’s the collective works themselves that reflect this exuberance, this energy, this imagination that is unique to you or that you bring as, you know, as a writer. Like Shaw, or any number of -- George Bernard Shaw. MR. WATTENBERG: George Bernard Shaw. Right. Now about Edgar Rice Burroughs, you say that he regards Africans as barbaric; he hates Germans; he hates Japanese; he hates race mixing; he loves eugenics, which is, I mean... MR. DIRDA: The idea of eugenics. Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: Yes. The idea of eugenics. MR. DIRDA: Of improving the race. MR. WATTENBERG: He’s a militarist, and yet you say he is attractive. Now, if, I mean, what is that theory called? Presentism? That you regard somebody by present day standards; by what they –- I mean, is that what you’re trying to get at in terms of Burroughs? MR. DIRDA: I think that, you know, certainly some of that is true. I mean, that we can account for his prejudices that way doesn’t necessarily mean we would excuse them. But to understand that this – these were not uncommon at the time; that eugenics was a scientific notion that people were exploring... MR. WATTENBERG: That some races were superior. MR. DIRDA: Yes, and it was – it was – it was, you know, many people would have believed that. In the case of Burroughs, his hard work is admirable; the fact that he did create somewhat like Tarzan - who is noble for the most part. He does tell a good story. There are aspects of his life that are inspiring and that – for someone of, you know, a certain age - the fact that he didn’t discover his vocation until well into middle age. He tried out all sorts of other jobs before he, you know, found that he could write. MR. WATTENBERG: We’re talking about Burroughs? MR. DIRDA: Burroughs. Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: Yes. MR. DIRDA: But I – but, yes; the things that you list are certainly regrettable. MR. WATTENBERG: And the title of the book you’re reviewing is Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan. So again, it’s a biography of a writer. If you want to read an actual book by Burroughs, what should you read? MR. DIRDA: Tarzan of the Apes. MR. WATTENBERG: Tarzan of the Apes. MR. DIRDA: And The Return of Tarzan. They’re kind of a pair. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Let’s go on to two other books. MR. DIRDA: Okay. MR. WATTENBERG: I asked you to pick your two favorites and you picked a book whose page number I cannot find here or whose title I cannot find here, but it’s here... by a man named Constantine. MR. DIRDA: Yes. KC Constantine. MR. WATTENBERG: And what’s the name of the book? MR. DIRDA: The book I reviewed and use as a way of talking a bit about Constantine’s work is called Grievance. MR. WATTENBERG: Grieve...right. MR. DIRDA: Constantine is a pseudonym for a guy whose been writing a series of mysteries - police novels - set in Rocksburg, Pennsylvania, which is a classic rustbelt steel town in Pennsylvania. And as I say in my... MR. WATTENBERG: And you identify with it as... MR. DIRDA: Well, as I say in – you know, that if you ask people to talk about, you know, important novels about adultery or about the, oh, African-American experience or the Jewish experience in America, there are lots of novels. We have Saul Bellow; we have Toni Morrison. But you talk –- to talk about working class life among Italians and Polls and African-Americans - the kind of working class life that I knew growing up - it’s harder to find those books. But no one does a better job of evoking the world of steel mills and crumbling factory towns and rustbelts and people who go to work with metal lunch buckets and who have to take showers to get the dirt off before they’re able to come home and carry their clothes around in paper sacks, than Constantine. He uses that world as the backdrop for his mysteries. I say at one point he has – in Grievance he has a list of eight suspects. There’s a murder, of course; it’s a mystery. And the – the last names are things like Bobowitz and Swaboda and Vusavitch. These are not the kind of typical names you see in American novels... MR. WATTENBERG: You have a... MR. DIRDA: ... but they are the names that I grew up with. MR. WATTENBERG: You have a photographic memory? I mean, you can recall the character’s names? MR. DIRDA: I have a good memory. I don’t have a photographic memory, but I can remember a lot of things... MR. WATTENBERG: Now is the Constantine book, Grievances, does that have a good narrative flow to it? Is that something that people would enjoy? MR. DIRDA: Yes, I mean it’s got – not only does it have the plot of the mystery story; it’s got a love story built into it with the younger detective, that is usual, named Carlucci. But it’s also got this wonderful use of language. He’s just a marvel at reflecting the way real people talk. As a result a lot of that sentences can’t be quoted on in the newspaper or on television because of the use of common vulgarisms. But the rhythms of those sentences and the poetry of that language is just amazing. He’s got a terrific ear. Just as George V. Higgins did, the late Boston writer, in the books like The Friends of Eddie Coyle. A marvelous sense of how criminals and ordinary people talk. MR. WATTENBERG: Do you get the feeling that contemporary fiction has gone away from the narrative and into extreme introspection, sort of examining the author’s own belly button? Is that – I mean I get that feeling, right. I can’t find – seem to find a good novel to read. Is that just ’cause I am not tuned in or that I’m too lazy to work at reading a book? MR. DIRDA: Well, no; I mean there is – there’s probably some movement afoot of late to try to be, as you say, introspective. But there are so many books being published. There are – there are books where a plot is all-important. Maybe what you need to do is to look more at the serious examples, really good examples, of genre fiction. Science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, thrillers, suspense. Take a... MR. WATTENBERG: I don’t read mysteries... MR. DIDRA: Take a – take a crime novel like The Last Good Kiss. A heartbreaking... MR. WATTENBERG: By? By? MR. DIRDA: ... wonderful, American book by James Crumley. This is, you know, is a mystery of sorts. The novels of Ursula Le Guin, the early ones; say, The Left Hand of Darkness. Examines questions about politics and sexuality in very interesting ways. But they’re beautifully written in a kind of grey prose that she’s one of the great masters of. The plot if you’re going to be a genre writer -- or even - I once wrote a piece on Harlequin romances where I said that – the lead sentence was, 'This is where I lose all credibility as a critic'. Because I said they were good books: they tell their stories well; they were witty; they were funny; they had the happy ending that was part of the genre; there was nothing to deride about them. They weren’t ambitious books. But what they did they did well and plot is all- important to genre fiction so you can return to those things. MR. WATTENBERG: Give me the names of two books – we won’t talk about them at length – of two books that you want to tell our readers to go out and either buy or go to a library or whatever. MR. DIRDA: Just two of my favorite books? MR. WATTENBERG: Yes. And that you think may be their favorite books, whoever they are. That they may not have heard of but they would really enjoy. MR. DIRDA: Well, this is one of those – I – I do a chat online called Dirda On Books on Washington’s... MR. WATTENBERG: Online. My God... MR. DIRDA: Yes. I do every – for six/seven years I’ve done it for an hour on the computer where people ask these sorts of questions. I would probably - if you – a beautifully written novel about the breakup of a marriage where the prose is exquisite but also very much influenced by Hemingway, James Salter’s book Light Years. MR. WATTENBERG: Spell the... MR. DIRDA: Salter. S-a-l-t-e-r. Light Years. Just a beautifully written book. Gorgeous. MR. WATTENBERG: And a second – a second one. MR. DIRDA: The second book, one of my favorite writers, I have a piece on him in this book, who is perennially amusing, to read his books always makes you feel happy: PG Woodhouse. And of his books I would probably suggest Right Ho, Jeeves, or one of the – an earlier novel called Leave it to Psmith; Psmith spelled P-s-m-i-t-h. Woodhouse was the great master of similes. He could just dash off similes with the greatest – he drank coffee with the air of a man who regretted it was not hemlock. You know, he could do that all the time. And so he’s – this shows you his style, why style makes the difference. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. On that note, Michael Dirda, thank you very much for joining us on Think Tank and enlightening not only our audience but me. So thank you. And thank you. Please, remember to send us your comments via email. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. 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