Byline: Michael Dirda
Prize-winning columnist Michael Dirda takes your questions and comments concerning literature, books and the joys of reading.
Submit your questions and comments before or during today's discussion.
Each week Dirda's name appears -- in unmistakably big letters -- on page 15 of The Post's Book World section. If he's not reviewing a hefty literary biography or an ambitious new novel, he's likely to be turning out one of his idiosyncratic essays or rediscovering some minor Victorian classic. Although he earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell, Dirda has somehow managed to retain a myopic 12-year-old's passion for reading. Heparticularly enjoys comic novels, intellectual history, locked-room mysteries, innovative fiction of all sorts.
These days, Dirda says he still spends inordinate amounts of time mourning his lost youth, listening to music (Glenn Gould, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall, The Tallis Scholars), and daydreaming ("my only real hobby"). He claims that the happiest hours of his week are spent sitting in front of a computer, working. His most recent books include "Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments" (Indiana hardcover, 2000; Norton paperback, 2003) and his self-portrait of the reader as a young man, "An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland" (Norton, 2003). In the fall of 2004 Norton will bring out a new collection of his essays and reviews. He is currently working on several other book projects, all shrouded in themost complete secrecy.
Dirda joined The Post in 1978, having grown up in the working-class steel town of Lorain, Ohio and graduated with highest honors in English from Oberlin College. His favorite writers are Stendhal, Chekhov, Jane Austen, Montaigne, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Nabokov, John Dickson Carr, Joseph Mitchell, P.G. Wodehouse and Jack Vance. He thinks the greatest novel of all time is either Murasaki Shikubu's "The Tale of Genji" or Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu." In a just world he would own Watteau's painting "The Embarkation for Cythera." He is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, The Ghost Story Society, and The Wodehouse Society. He enjoys teaching and was once a visiting professor in the Honors College at the University of Central Florida, which he misses to this day.
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Washington, D.C.:
Hello. I am currently investigating and in some ways exhuming the life of Franz Kafka. After reading your article on Reiner Stach's new biography on Kafka, you may be able to help me with a question : Do you think we are experiencing a surging interest in Kafka? (and if it is surging, was there a 'primal' surge?) I cannot assess clearly whether I am only now noticing new biographies because my mind is on Kafka or whether these books have been fluttering about for the last few years before my eyelids. If we are in fact in a new age of exploring Kafkaesque-ness, why now? What is pressing us to illuminate his 'darkness' today?
If you have room for a second question from me, it is this:
Why isn't Kafka's writing taught much in high schools or universities? Why is his writing so untouchable, why he is not a "classic" writer? I am astounded by how little scholarly readers have read of Kafka. It seems like there is a dichotomy: we (Americans at least) seem to be interested in Kafka's life and how his times influenced his work but most people have only read The Metamorphois, if that. If you could offer me any suggestions on answers to these questions, I would greatly appreciate a bit of your knowledge.
Michael Dirda: Welcome to Dirda on Books! I'm back at Book World today, having come downtown for a lunch with my Baker Street Irregular cronies. It's a nice day here in DC, and it's been pleasant to get out of the house,where I've been enconced for weeks,it seems. Anyway, let's turn to this week's questions.
In my review I mention one reason why there's a resurgence of Kafka research--Since Max Brod died, the keeper of the flame is gone and people have been exploring Kafka's life and work in new ways. In German there's been a grand complete works, even including replicatoin of the holograph manuscripts.
I don't think Kafka has ever really gone out of critical favor, but people have perhaps felt they knew all they needed about him. Kafkaesque, after all, is widely used to describe people caught up in overwhelming systems and bureaucracies.
Also, some of his work is now out of copyright and new translatoins are starting to come out, either through his old publishers or new ones. So there's been a certain amount of publishing activity too.
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down on the corner: greetings! How does one get to be an editor? At publishing houses, do they actually proof manuscripts or just act as 'stewards' for writers. Maybe I'm combining editor and agent. thanks.
Michael Dirda: People start off as assistants to editors, and then work hard or get lucky, or both. An editorial assistant usually needs a good education, some understanding of grammar, and a willingness to do clerical work.
Sometimes editors become agents because they can make bigger bucks. Once you learn how publishing works, you can represent people--especially if you have a partner who understands how to write contracts.
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Bethesda, Md.: Mr. Dirda:
If you do not know a foreign language, how do you tell which is the best translation of a work? How do you tell which translation gets closer to the experience of the original? I am thinking of Tolstoy and Kafka.
Thanks
Michael Dirda: I usually look at a couple of things: 1) the publisher--you can be sure that the translation is at least reliable when it comes from, say, Penguin or Oxford; 2) the blurbs on the jacket, the scholar who introduced the book, all the editorial apparatus that appears or doesn't appear. Norton Critical Editions, for instance, is an established and respected series, so its translations will be good too. 3) You read a paragraph or a page and see if the English works for you. 4) You look for reviews by scholars who do know the language.
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Minnetonka, Minn.: Michael, What is your opinion of magazine fiction. It seems that most best sellers start in book form and it is unusual to have a story start in a magazine as in the past. Do you read any magazine for fiction?
Michael Dirda: I don't generally read much magazine fiction, apart from the occasional short story by a favorite writer. Nonfiction certainly gets its start in magazines, and a hot story in the new Yorker can draw a publisher's attention to a new writer. But most novels don't start off as short stories any more--with the exception of science fiction and fantasy novels. There is a long tradition in these fields of expanding a short story or novella into a novel, or combining a couple of stories into a novel. There's even a term for this "fix-up."
By the way, this keyboard is a little idiosyncratic and I'm finding it hard to get a good rhythm going on it--I seem to type faster than the letters register on the screen. So I apologize for the stiffness of my prose this week. Most annoying.
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Fantasyland, Calif.: Hi Michael,Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. I snuck off from my duties preparing the meal to read the end of "I am Legend" by Richard Matheson. I loved the premise, but it seemed like he got bogged down trying to explain it long after I had agree to accept it.
I've picked up Perdido Street Station based on your suggestion and am enjoying the first few chapters, but it's making me wonder: Why books of fantasy are so bloody long compared to other types of fiction? I love reading, but time is tight and I'm daunted by the prospect of some of these giant tomes.
Thoughts?
Michael Dirda: Well, "Legend" isn't that long a novel to begin with, but yes, I suppose it does explain a little too much near the end. But I really can't remember it all too well, since I read the book about 40 years ago.
Novels are long because world-building is a major aspect of fantasy. You couldn't get much sense of Middle Earth in a 30 page short story. Also, people do like to lose themselves in these longer stories. But I share your sighs at the sight ofan 800 page epic. Certainly, recent fantasies like Jonathan Norrell and The Historian felt at least a couple of hundred pages longer than would have been ideal.
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