Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life

By Michael Dirda

A Pulitzer Prize-winning critic's often surprising meditation on those places where life and books intersect and what might be learned from both

Once out of school, most of us read for pleasure. Yet there is another equally important, though often overlooked, reason that we read: to learn how to live. Though books have always been understood as life-teachers, the exact way in which they instruct, cajole, and convince remains a subject of some mystery. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer prize-winning critic Michael Dirda shows how the wit, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word can inform and enrich nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to love and death.

Organized by significant life events and abounding with quotations from great writers and thinkers, Book by Book showcases Dirda's considerable knowledge, which he wears lightly. Favoring showing rather than telling, Dirda draws the reader deeper into the classics, as well as lesser-known works of literature, history, and philosophy, always with an eye to what is relevant to how we might better understand our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Apr 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781429900287

Michael Dirda

Michael Dirda, a longtime staff writer for The Washington Post Book World, received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. A popular lecturer and commencement speaker, he lives with his family in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Book preview

Preface

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. Storytelling 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 comparative literature, and since 1978 as a professional reviewer and columnist for the Washington Post Book World.

During these past three decades the Post has kindly allowed me to write about nearly any sort of book that caught my fancy, and my fancy can be quite promiscuous—ancient classics one week, science fiction and fantasy the next. Despite all these hours of turning pages, I don’t view myself as a bookworm, one of those bald-pated Daumier scarecrows peering through bottle-top spectacles at some tattered, leather-bound volume. There’s more to life than reading. I’ve also fallen in love and married, spent Saturdays ferrying noisy offspring to soccer games, mowed grass, folded laundry, and suffered my share of what Shakespeare called the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

A normal enough life, then. Yet even as a kid back in working-class Lorain, Ohio, I decided that what I wanted most of all was— how shall I put this?—to feel at home in the world, which meant to know something of the best that has been thought, believed, and created by the great minds of the past and present.

In some ways, that ambition must sound odd, even slightly romantic. But let me explain. About the age of twelve or thirteen, I grew enamored of the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. Suave, cosmopolitan, wealthy, charismatic, the count actually starts life as a naive young sailor named Edmond Dantès, betrayed by those he trusted and imprisoned on the Château d’If for a crime he never committed. At first he despairs. But one day he hears a quiet scraping noise coming from inside his cell wall—tunneling—and in due course meets the learned Abbé Faria, who eventually teaches him everything an accomplished man of the world should know. The young sailor studies, practices, learns, remembers. And so when, after many years, he is finally able to escape and seek a reckoning with those who wronged him, Edmond Dantès has transformed himself into the urbane and accomplished Count of Monte Cristo.

Alexandre Dumas’s novel remains a great parable about the power of learning and education and calls to mind one of our most fundamental American convictions: that any of us may, through hard work, fashion a new and better life for himself. As Henry David Thoreau long ago observed, If a man advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

In childhood and early youth most of us naturally read for escape, pleasure, and inspiration; as young adults we use our school texts to learn a profession or trade; and then as full-fledged grown-ups we add yet another, perhaps deeper purpose to our reading: We turn to books in the hope of better understanding our selves and better engaging with the meaning of our experiences. Let me say, right off, that I believe a work of art is primarily concerned with the creation of beauty, whether through words, colors, shapes, sounds, or movement. But it is impossible to read serious novels, poetry, essays, and biographies without also growing convinced that they gradually enlarge our minds, refine our spirits, make us more sensitive and understanding. In this way, the humanities encourage the development of our own humanity. They are instruments of self-exploration.

For Book by Book, I’ve set down some of what I’ve learned about life from my reading. In its character the result is a florilegium: a bouquet of insightful or provocative quotations from favorite authors, surrounded by some of my own observations, several lists, the occasional anecdote, and a series of mini-essays on aspects of life, love, work, education, art, the self, death. There’s even, occasionally, a bit of out-and-out advice.

Though my emphasis clearly remains on books as life-teachers, readers searching for any definitive answers or gurulike pronouncements won’t find them here. Soon enough one learns that there are no straightforward solutions to most of life’s perplexities. Great fiction, in particular, eschews the reductionist and obviously didactic, instead reveling in complication, pointing out options, at most revealing the consequences of one course of action over another. Contradiction, not consistency, second thoughts, rather than dogmatic certitude, lie at the heart of humane understanding, and all those who try to simplify experience 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 interpreter of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, yet he made occasional fumbles 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 World. Above all, I hope the resuit is, to echo the poet Horace’s old formula, duke et utile— enjoyable and useful—a book to read slowly, to browse in, and return to.

For just this reason you might want to keep a pencil nearby to mark favorite quotations or to scribble in the margins and on the endpapers. These are the sort of pages that demand to be personalized, amplified, and enriched with your own reflections, made uniquely yours. Perhaps Book by Book may even encourage you to start creating a reader’s guide of your own.

N.B.—Some of the authors cited use the generic man or the pronoun he to refer to the totality of humankind. The female half of the population will, I trust, make allowances for this largely outmoded convention.

Quotations are usually identified simply by author; uncredited material is my own.

BOOK BY BOOK

One

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 commonplace. 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

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.—Joseph Conrad

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense. —Thomas Hobbes

Remember that every life is a special problem, which is not yours but another’s; and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own.—Henry James

What others criticize you for, cultivate: It is you.—Jean Cocteau

Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment that you have experienced.—Hugo von

Reviews for Book by Book

[carltonc_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A vastly enjoyable read for book lovers.I have added so many books to my TBR pile, agreed with many of his assessments and disagreed with a few. Dirda's objective, which I thought that he achieves:We turn to books in the hope of better understanding our selves and better engaging with the meaning of our experiences. Let me say, right off, that I believe a work of art is primarily concerned with the creation of beauty, whether through words, colors, shapes, sounds, or movement. But it is impossible to read serious novels, poetry, essays, and biographies without also growing convinced that they gradually enlarge our minds, refine our spirits, make us more sensitive and understanding.Full of great quotes of which possibly my favourite is:The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.. . . Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our mind, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired, which we are forced to make use of.—Simone Weil

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A brief divergence from the historical/political books this week (I read the latest John Dunning mystery and Gregory Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister over the weekend), to comment on book critic Michael Dirda's newest work, Book by Book. A useful little collection of quotes, short essays, lists and commentary, this book will find a happy home on my shelves, and I look forward to re-reading it many times in the future.Dirda, a longtime writer for the Washington Post's book review, has compiled a sort of literary hodgepodge, an interesting and witty blend of advice column, self-help manual, book review, and critique of modern society's obsession with best-sellers and video games (not the same segment of society, necessarily). While some of his comments ("brush and floss") seem a bit misplaced, I fully appreciate his views on reading (particularly reading to children, piquing and allowing their interests to flourish).

[dturk1000 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed reading Book by Book though it constantly reminded me of how little a dent I have made in pursuit of a basic appreciation of literature. It shall serve as a good reference on my bookshelf.

[vsonathi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Easy flowing style and introduces many books that one would not otherwise hear of. He places the books in context and creates enough curiosity to explore further.

[kslade-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good little book on lifetime reading, philosophy, etc. Makes you think about why you are reading.

[Jasmin James · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some of the most insightful commentary on classic literature, touching and heartfelt- a treasure trove for the modern readers book list

[danatdtms · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed reading Book by Book though it constantly reminded me of how little a dent I have made in pursuit of a basic appreciation of literature. It shall serve as a good reference on my bookshelf.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For some writers, blogs serve as contemporary versions of commonplace books. The classic is Auden's A Certain World which was the first commonplace book that I discovered almost forty years ago. It was a very personal anthology that included adages, short excerpts, poems, and more. Auden organized it alphabetically by categories with his own comments included in some, always brief, as a record of his own thoughts.My favorite commonplace book is Michael Dirda's own contribution, Book By Book. It is a book-lover's delight and has led me down many trails that I visit and revisit. He shares his personal thoughts about books in a topical way with chapters on "Work and Leisure", "The Book of Love", "Matters of the Spirit", and "Last Things". My favorite sections include "The Interior Library" where he recommends an eclectic mix of reading aimed at getting you away from the bestseller list (never a problem for me) and into a wide variety of books including fantasy fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and intellectual history (the last is a favorite of mine). I also enjoyed "The Pleasures of Learning" where he discusses a foundation of great books (Homer, et. al.) and both books and methods of education. He even includes a chapter, "Sight s and Sounds", that focuses on art and music. It is likely his personal music recommendations include a few of your favorites. Through all his recommendations he includes valuable pithy sayings on which you may choose to meditate. While Dirda recommends Auden, of course and Cyril Connolly's An Unquiet Grave; I have taken up the challenge of one of my favorite authors, D. J. Enright. So it is with delight that I am exploring, slowly savoring, his own " kind of a commonplace book", Interplay. It is here that I will be able to meditate on the pleasures of reading, mulling both thoughts and words - perhaps cogitating some new ones of my own.

[sriemann_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book immensely, for the lists and recommendations and finding out about all kinds of authors I hadn't heard of before. In fact, there are so many nice lists and recommendations, that I am going to buy a copy of the book. (when one uses more than 20 paper bits to mark a page to go back to for referral, I think it means one should own the book)

[dorritt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You've heard the aphorism: "Based solely on the books in your library, I knew we were going to be best friends"? Michael Dirda's a Pulitzer Prize winning Book Critic who I've never met except through his frequent contributions to the Washington Post's Book World, but based on this short memoir, we'd definitely hit it off. Reading this felt like hanging out with a group of old college friends, exchanging ideas and anecdotes about life, religion, art, and literature. Not in a wine and cheese way, but in a beer and chips way, with everyone interrupting each other, quotes from famous books/authors offered as supporting evidence, raised voices, lots of gesticulating, and plenty of anecdotes and digressions. ("They made us read Mary Wollencraft in college - ugh!"; "I went from Nancy Drew straight to Agatha Christie, but my next stop definitely wasn't Crime & Punishment!";"Where's Poe? How can you compile a list of the greatest horror stories without a single Poe?")The book is a collection of reflective essays, quotes, and lists, and is definitely best read with a pencil at hand, because half the fun is interacting with the text: agreeing, disagreeing, making connections, marking off books already read and books to add to your reading list, etc. Only alert I'll issue to potential readers is that the author does presume a good grounding in European/American humanities. If you've attended a decent US/European liberal arts college or are an autodidact, however, you should be fine.If you're ever in Virginia, Michael Dirda, my college buddies and will have a beer standing by with your name on it!

[bohemima · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this rambling but engaging set of short essays on the most varied of topics, written like a well-edited commonplace book, Dirda again shows us that reading can be the greatest of pleasures, both a device to expand the imagination and a tool to help us discover how to deal with life. Not a book to read once and forget about, this is a resource to be consulted often, if only for the refreshment Dirda himself provides.

[matke-261098 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this rambling but engaging set of short essays on the most varied of topics, written like a well-edited commonplace book, Dirda again shows us that reading can be the greatest of pleasures, both a device to expand the imagination and a tool to help us discover how to deal with life. Not a book to read once and forget about, this is a resource to be consulted often, if only for the refreshment Dirda himself provides.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A disappointing jumble of quotations, impressions, lists and advice. In his prologue, Dirda speaks of world literature but solely dwells on a Western (white male) anglo-centric corpus. Each chapter, representing a theme, contains his book choices but with little explanation for each, other than jejune adjectives as "dazzling" or "unfairly ignored" - the same adjectives that he condemns as being too general in critiques. Finally some of his points of view are startlingly naive, namely his admonition that one should take the media at face-value to understand the world (where's the critical thinking behind that statement?). There are a few nuggets of wisdom, but they are hard to find!

[damcg63 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mr Dirda leads us on a wonderful tour of the books that are the building blocks of the enlightened life. It is an interesting read that is organized by the stages and events of our lives. It is supplemented by pages full of quotes and lists - the stuff of delight for a reader. This is one to keep close to your reading chair or on the nightstand in your guest room. A book to come back to several times.