Idiosyncracies abound ...

[Dave Monroe]

Reviews of mostly old books are a surprisingly good
read
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Steve Weinberg
Special to The Plain Dealer

Book reviews tend to be ephemeral because so many
books are quickly forgotten. So you wouldn't think a
collection of reviews, spanning 25 years, would be a
great read.

Writer Michael Dirda of The Washington Post Book World
defies conventional wisdom.

Dirda's weekly reviews often explain books and authors
not of the moment, but from the past, and his reading
of new books tends to grapple with timeless themes. He
is trained as a scholar, uses more words per review
than most of his colleagues and frequently writes
about whatever books he pleases.

And Dirda is unabashedly, openly didactic, albeit with
a light touch.

All of this is the foundation of "Bound to Please," a
volume that aims to fill in gaps in readers'
knowledge. Reviews appear somewhat, but not entirely,
according to the publication dates of books or the
lives of the authors.

"Old Masters" starts with ancient Greek scribe
Herodotus and closes with French scribe Francois
Rabelais. Living authors -- Steven Millhauser, E.
Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy and Don DeLillo --
appear much later.

In between, Dirda offers short courses, for example:
"Professionals at Work" (Samuel Pepys, Boswell's
Johnson); "Romantic Dreamers" (Feodor Dostoevski,
Victor Hugo); "We Moderns" (Marcel Proust, Djuna
Barnes, etc.); "Serious Entertainers" (P.G. Wodehouse,
Charles McCarry); "Lovers, Poets, and Madmen" (Dawn
Powell, John Updike); "Magicians of the Word" (Henry
Green, Gilbert Sorrentino); and "Performing Selves"
(Penelope Fitzgerald, Kingsley Amis).

No literary snob, Dirda even supplies a
science-fiction reading list.

Idiosyncrasies abound. Dirda warns, for instance, that
placing a review of Thomas Pynchon's late-20th-century
novel "Mason & Dixon" in a section grounded in the
18th century might seem strange, but serves a purpose.

[...]

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1102761232230870.xml


		
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