A Hero of Literary Heights

 by

Lauren Roberts

Michael Dirda, former editor of the Washington Post Book World (where he still contributes a weekly column) and host of their weekly online chat, Dirda on Books, is my hero.

To have someone whose work does not involve a basketball, Mt. Everest, a concert tour, starving orphans or Hollywood as a hero is unusual, but I have always been attracted to the brain rather than the body. And with the publication of his second book in 2003, I fell hard for Dirda’s brain. So might you with An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland (Norton). It is his admittedly not new but worthy coming-of-age memoir set in the 1950s and 1960s, and of the books that defined his relationships with his family, teachers, friends and himself. As the son of a frustrated blue-collar worker and the product of a small Midwestern factory town, Dirda, through virtue of being what today would be called a book nerd, transcended his preordained future in the town’s steel mill to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic.

In alternating gritty and tender scenes, he knits a fascinating journey of his literary education, interweaving these with his own life’s adventures. Dirda’s memories range from cuddly to painful, a substantial portion of which is rooted in the difficult relationship between himself and his late father, a man whose frustration with his steel mill job, his disappointment in his pudgy, bookish son—"’All that kid wants to do is stick his nose in a book,’ said my father with disgust"—and his rare periods of sensitivity are laid out in painfully honest, sensitively rendered scenes.

"One night at two in the morning," he writes, "I found myself high up on an exterior gantry, staring out the expansive vista of National Tube through my grit-mottled prescription work glasses. White smoke poured from the stacks, orange fires burned off excess gas, dimly perceived workers far below me scurried by and in the distance wound the river, the Black River. A vision of Hell or of Mordor. And to finish that tableau, in the background I could hear the steady pounding of the rolling mill, like the beating heart of the damned.

"I don’t exaggerate. That summer, I forgave my father everything. He could be overbearing and worse, but his soul-deadening labor gave me the time to read and to know that my life would be privileged compared to his. When writers talk about the ‘dark, satanic mills,’ I know they’re not just being poetical."

It is a truth that the best memoirs transcend their authors and even their own stories to explore both collective and intimate issues. That universality of experience is what allows us as readers to become one with someone else’s life. Dirda has accomplished that difficult task while exploring the role of books in the making of this literary hero. Although no book is discussed for more than a few lines, Dirda is such an extraordinary storyteller that each title and its impact seems to flow and merge with his experiences. While grade school gangs and college politics might seem distant realms from the printed page, in the hands of this master they merge with grace and dignity.

Though it was the first one I read, An Open Book wasn’t his first. Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments (Indiana University Press), published in 2000, was a compilation of his personal essays written in a style he calls "playful journalism," meaning serious issues written about in a lighthearted way.

I am so fond of books about books that I have an entire section of my library devoted to them. I am particularly drawn to the essay format, which—perhaps not surprisingly—caused me to begin greedily gulping each essay down in a mad if enjoyable first rush through the book. Reading one or two wasn’t enough; I wanted them all—and I wanted them now.

But the fact is these essays are too good to gobble. Doing so makes them act as literary carbohydrates: a quick rush that ends too quickly and leaves little behind it. But take them slowly, savor them and your fine literary experience will stay for a long time. Dirda is protein for the brain, and should be enjoyed as such.

In 2005, Dirda released yet another compilation of his columns: Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education (Norton) that he terms "old-fashioned appreciations, a fan’s notes, good talk" about writers and books. A more sober volume than Readings, this book explores serious literature with perceptive thoughts about the influence of the authors and works. In one of the essays entitled "Crime and Punishment," Dirda explores the story anew in a newly translated edition that, as he notes, aims "for an especially faithful re-creation of Dostoevsky’s rough-edged prose, jerky with a coiled-spring kinetic energy." He succeeds by moving between the parallels of the author’s life, meanings of the characters, settings and storyline, and history.

Both books encompass the range of "literary-ness" that defines passionate readers from the fun of discovering a desired book to the influence of and ideas behind classical masterpieces. Dirda’s power as a literary theorist derives from his entire bibliophilic life, and we readers of his essays (even if we haven’t read the some of the books to which he refers) are fortunate beneficiaries of his personal inquiries and astute perceptions.

What most drew me to these three books is not only the quality of writing but the spirit of self embedded deeply in them. Though different formats—the first being essays, the second a memoir, the third literary criticism—each effectively illuminates the emotive bonds between books and self, reading and life, desperation and contentment. The fact that each book has only sold about 10,000 copies seems shameful. These are books worthy of any reader’s time and attention. I want to shout that though he is not the ultimate authority on books—no one person or entity is or should be—his knowledge is astonishing, and his opinions creditable. He is a writer to whom serious attention should be paid.

An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland 

ISBN 0-393-05756-9, $24.95 (hardcover) 

ISBN 0-393-32614-4, $14.95 (trade paperback)

Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments

ISBN 0-253-33824-7, $24.95 (hardcover)

ISBN 0-393-32489-3 $13.95 (trade paperback)

Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education

ISBN 0-393-05757-7 (hardcover)

Since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren  has been giving her opinion on books to almost anyone who will listen. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at