Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life

95 Pages·2007·6.88 MB·English

by  Michael Dirda

"Brilliant."
- TUE TIMEs LITERARI' SUnLEMENT
NOTES N READING AND LIFE
MICHAEL IRDA

P
IN ER OF THE PULITZER RTZE FOR CRITICISM
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ALSO BY MICHAEL DIRDA
Bound to Please: Essays on Great Writers and Their Books
An Open Book: Chapters from a Reader's Life ~

Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments
NOTES ON READING AND LIFE
MICHAEL DIRDA
A HOLT PAPERBACK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW YORK
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Distributee! in (:anacla by H. R. Fenn and Company Ltd.

"Book I" by William Carlos Williams, from Patterson, copyright © 1946 by William

Carlos Williams. Reprinteo by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

"Sappho" (excerpt) by Guy Davenport from 7 Gneks, copyright © 1995 by

Guy Davenport. Reprinteo by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DinJa, Michael.

Book by book: notes on reaoing anolife / Michael Dirda.-Ist ed.

p.cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8338-5

ISBN-IO: 0-8050-8338-3

1. Books ano reading. 2. Dirda, Michael-Books and reading. 3. Best books.
4. Reading-Social aspects. 5. Commonplace-books. T. Title.

Z1003.D5752006

028.9-dc22 2005055451

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First Holt Paperbacks Eoition 2007
Illustrations © Elvis Swift
Printeo in the United States of America

5 7 9 10 8 6 4
The main interest in life and work is to become someone
else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when
you began a book what you would say at the end, do you
think that you would have the courage to write it? What is
true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for
life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what
will be the end.
- MICHEL FOUCAULT
CONTENTS
PREFACE: At Home in the World XIll
ONE: Life Lines
TWO: The Pleasures of Learning 4
THREE: Work and Leisure 22
F0 LJ R: The Books of Love 45
FIVE: Bringing It All Back Home 69
SIX: Living in the World 86
Iii SEVEN: Sights and Sounds 98
:1 1 EIGHT: The Interior Library ] If>
III ,
NINE: Matters of the Spirit 1.35
III
~ TEN: Last Things 14f>

: A Selective and Idiosyncratic Who's Who 155
III Acknowledgments ]f>9
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AT HOME IN THE WORLD
Live-and-let-live over stand-or-die, high spirits over low, ... love
over charity, irreplaceable over interchangeable, divergence over
concurrence, principle over interest, people over principle.
-MARVIN MUDRICK
Over the past fifty years I've spent a lot of time-some might say
!
an inordinate amount of time-in the company of books. Story­
telling has always enchanted me, and early on I found myself
reading Just about anything that came my way, from Green
Lantern comics to the great classics of world literature. My
memoir, An Open Book, recounts a young life unexpectedly
shaped by this omnivorous and indiscriminate reading. After
childhood, though, I ceased being a purely "amateur" reader,
only to become a professional one, first as a graduate student in
Preface I Xl'
xiv I PrefMe
comparative literature, and since 1<J7H as a professional reviewer know. The young sailor studies, practices, learns, remembers. And
and columnist for the f1Ias!Jington Post Book VVOrld. so when, after many years, he is finally able to escape and seek a
During these past three decades the Post has kindly allowed me reckoning with those who wronged him, Edmond Dantes has
to write about nearly any sort of book that caught my fancy, and transformed himself into the urbane and accomplished Count of
my fancy can be quite promiscuous-ancient classics one week, Monte Cristo.
science fiction and fantasy the next. Despite all these hours of Alexandre Dumas's novel remains a great parable about the
turning- pages, I don't view myself as a bookworm, one of those power of learning and education and calls to mind one of our
bald-pated Daumier scarecrows peering through bottle-top spec­ most fundamental American convictions: that any of us may,
tacles at some tattered, leather-bound volume. There's more to through hard work, fashion a new and better life for himself. As
life than reading. I've also fallen in love and married, spent Satur­ Henry David Thoreau long ago observed, "If a man advances
days ferrying noisy offspring to soccer games, mowed grass, confIdently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live
folded laundry, and suffered my share of what Shakespeare called the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unex­
"the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." pected in common hours."
A normal enough life, then. Yet even as a kid back in working­ In childhood and early youth most of us naturally read for es­
class Lorain, Ohio, 1 decided that what I wanted most of all was­ cape, pleasure, and inspiration; as young adults we use our school
how shall I put this?-to feel at home in the world, which meant texts to learn a profession or trade; and then as full-fledged
to know something of the best that has been thought, believed, grown-ups we add yet another, perhaps deeper purpose to our
and created by the great minds of the past and present. reading: We turn to books in the hope of better understanding
In some ways, that ambition must sound odd, even slightly ro­ our selves and better engaging with the meaning of our experi­
mantic. But let me explain. About the age of twelve or thirteen, 1 ences. Let me say, right off, that I believe a work of art is prima­
grew enamored of the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. Suave, rily concerned with the creation of beauty, whether through
cosmopolitan, wealthy, charismatic, the COllnt actually starts life as words, colors, shapes, sounds, or movement. But it is impossible
a naive young sailor named Edmond Dantes, betrayed by those he to read seJious novels, poetry, essays, and biographies without also
trusted and imprisoned on the Chateau d'If for a crime he never growing convinced that they gradually enlarge our minds, refine
committed. At first he despairs. But one day he hears a quiet our spirits, make us more sensitive and understanding. In this way,
scraping noise coming from inside his cell wall-tunneling-and the humanities encourage the development of our own humanity.
in due course meets the learned Abbe Faria, who eventually They are instruments of self-exploration.
teaches him everything an accomplished man of the world should For Book by Book, I've set down some of what I've learned abol1t
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Preface I xvii
xv; I Prefll&e
suIt is, to echo the poet Horace's old formula, dulce et utile­
life from my reading. In its character the result is a florilegium: a
enjoyable and useful-a book to read slowly, to browse in, and re­
"bouquet" of insightful or provocative quotations from favorite
turn to.
authors, surrounded by some of my own observations, several
For just this reason you might want to keep a pencil nearby to
lists, the occasional anecdote, and a series of mini-essays on as­
mark favorite quotations or to scribble in the margins and on the
pects of life, love, work, education, art, the self, death. There's
endpapers. These are the sort of pages that demand to be "per­
even, occasionally, a bit of out-and-out advice.
sonalized," amplified, and enriched with your own reflections,
Though my emphasis clearly remains on books as life-teachers,
made uniquely yours. Perhaps Book by Book may even encourage
readers searching for any definitive answers or gurulike pro­
you to start creating a reader's guide of your own.
nouncements won't find them here. Soon enough one learns that
there are no straightforward solutions to most of life's perplexi­
ties. Great fiction, in particular, eschews the reductionist and ob­
N.B.-Some of the authors cited use the generic "man" or the
viously didactic, instead reveling in complication, pointing out
pronoun "he" to refer to the totality of humankind. The female
options, at most revealing the consequences of one course of ac­
half of the population will, I trust, make allowances for this
tion over another. Contradiction, not consistency, second
largely outmoded convention.
thoughts, rather than dogmatic certitude, lie at the heart of hu­
Quotations are usually identified simply by author; uncredited
mane understanding, and all those who try to simplify experience
material is my own.
usually only succeed in narrowing it. To my mind, life should be
complex, packed with questioning, full of misdirection and
wasted effort-a certain number of mistakes is, after all, the price
for "living large." Arthur Schnabel remains the nonpareil inter­
preter of Beethoven's piano sonatas, yet he made occasional fum­
bles in his fingering. But to play such music as it should be played
required the pianist to push himself to his limits. Schnabel's
motto was that of all great souls: "Safety last."
As I assembled these pages, my intention was to produce a book
that could stand, however sheepishly, on the same shelf as Cyril
Connolly's The Unquiet Grave, Robertson Davies's A VOice from the
Attic, and W H. Auden's A Certain U70rld. Above all, I hope the re-

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LIFE LINES
Much of Book by Book has been gleaned from a small notebook
into which I have copied striking quotations and passages from
my reading. Such volumes are typically called commonplace
books, though their contents tend to be anything but common­
place. What follows are a number of general axioms about life, a
few well known and some contradictory, but all of them worth
carrying around in your head for their insight, solace, and counsel.
Character is fate.-Heracleitus
I
I A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the
sea.-Joseph Conrad
IIII
There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind, while we
live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be
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