Neglected Canon From 'Dracula' to Ovid

[Dave Monroe]

Author Q&A
Michael Dirda Offers Fresh Look
At Some Unconventional Classics
Neglected Canon From 'Dracula' to Ovid
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
November 30, 2007 10:29 p.m.

Critic Michael Dirda has put his own personal spin on the classics in
"Classics for Pleasure," published by Harcourt, Inc. Many of his
choices may surprise.

"Classics are classics not because they are educational, but because
people have found them worth reading, generation after generation,
century after century," he writes. "More than anything else, great
books speak to us of our own very real feelings and failings, of our
all-too-human daydreams and confusions."

That's why readers will find short essays about French novelist
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, poet Ezra
Pound and science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Here, too, are pieces
on Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's "Diary of a Seducer," and
Bram Stoker's "Dracula." Mr. Dirda, who won a 1993 Pulitzer Prize for
literary criticism, spoke to The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey A.
Trachtenberg by telephone.

The Wall Street Journal Online: What was your intent here?

Michael Dirda: To encourage people to read older books, titles besides
those on the best-seller lists.

WSJ.com: How does fantasist H.P. Lovecraft end up in the same volume
as Lucian and Emile Zola?

Mr. Dirda: That's the point. I wanted to include newly appreciated
classics. And I wanted to mix in the key works of genre literature:
mystery, horror, suspense and adventure. So I included pieces about
the ghost stories of M. R. James; Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes;" Bram Stoker's "Dracula," and the work of Philip
K. Dick. I mixed them up with Ovid and Petronius, the more obvious
classics, because I want people to realize that these books have
shaped our inner worlds, our imaginations and our understanding as
much as any of the more obvious canonical titles. These are archetypal
works for us. They start and establish genres, and they are pivotal
points in our literary world, although not always acknowledged as
such.

WSJ.com: Dashiell Hammett over Raymond Chandler?

Mr. Dirda: Two reasons. I've written about Chandler in an earlier
book, "Readings." Second, Chandler gets all the press these days. But
it seemed to me that Hammett is really the crucial figure, the
pioneer. He stands for the hardboiled detective story, much as
Hemingway does for the modern short story. Chandler is a softie; you
don't have Hammett's sense of realism.

Chandler writes romances about knights in the modern world. Hammett
writes about criminals, real people, detectives who are rather cruel
and base. Sam Spade isn't an admirable guy. Chandler has wonderful
similes, and his lyricism goes on and on. But Hammett's style is more
complex.

WSJ.com: Which book caused you the most pain to leave on the cutting room floor?

Mr. Dirda: Stendhal's "The Life of Henry Brulard." This is Stendhal's
autobiography of his youth through his late teenage years. It's a true
memoir, although he calls himself Henry Brulard. It's a wonderful book
and the subject of my dissertation, so I know it very well. But I left
it out because I've mentioned Stendhal a lot over the years.

WSJ.com: What do these choices have in common?

Mr. Dirda: They aren't the familiar classics that people might expect.
I intended to write about the neglected canonical titles, obvious
classics but ones that have become more important recently. For
example, I include the Icelandic family sagas, "Beowulf," and the
Arthurian romances. The northern epics have become more interesting to
us lately, largely because of Tolkien. I compare the Icelandic sagas
to spaghetti westerns on ice, revenge stories with swords instead of
six guns. The Arthurian romances have been particularly neglected. We
know about King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. But I discuss
"Yvain," "Tristan," and "Parzifal." They all look at different aspects
of love, including neglected wives and adulterous passion.


WSJ.com: Some of these authors, such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, E. Nesbit and
Prosper Merimee, seem remarkably obscure. Was that part of the fun of
putting this book together?

Mr. Dirda: I wanted many to be unfamiliar. I wanted to say, here are
these wonderful writers, some of whom you may not know. And I'm going
to tell you why you should give them a chance. These books may not be
on the best-seller lists, and you may not have learned about them in
college. But you'll find them rewarding. All were chosen because I
like them, not from a sense of obligation.

WSJ.com: Do you think you'll succeed in introducing modern readers to
such books as Jacob Burckhardt's "The Civilization of the Renaissance
in Italy," published in 1860, which you make sound irresistible?

Mr. Dirda: That book was influential for a long time. Just because
we've lost touch with it doesn't mean the book isn't good. Whether
people will listen to me, who is to say? My intent is to remind people
of the pleasures of earlier books and to show them why they are
entertaining. Then it's up to the reader to decide if they want to
give the book a chance.

WSJ.com: Why include H.W. Fowler, author of "A Dictionary of Modern
English Usage," a book which many have received as gifts but probably
few have actually read, while excluding John Cheever and Thomas
Pynchon?

Mr. Dirda: There are a lot of classics I would have included if I
hadn't written about them before. I decided to only include dead
people, so that deals with Thomas Pynchon. I thought about John
Cheever, but I didn't want to overload the book with contemporary
figures. I wanted to focus on writers before my time. These are the
people who need help. As for Fowler, he teaches us how to use language
properly. That book was important to me. Also, he had a dry style and
he led a saintly life.

WSJ.com: If there were only three books in this volume that you would
urge Journal readers to try, what would they be and why?

Mr. Dirda: I would pick Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy"
and Edward Gibbon's "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire." Both are big fat books that you could read for a long time.
Burton is full of odd bits of learning and lore, and Gibbon has a
delicious style full of irony and low key wit. For the third one,
probably I'd take the ghost stories of M.R. James. He is to ghost
stories what Sherlock Holmes is to detective stories.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119635938818108226.html