Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education: Essays on Great Writers and their Books

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Among the most enjoyable of literary critics, Michael Dirda combines erudition with enthusiasm, a taste for the outré and the forgotten, and a playful, understated wit. Like George Orwell or Gore Vidal, Dirda delights in popular genres, such as the detective novel and the ghost story, without neglecting the deeper satisfactions of sometimes-overlooked classics. This new work features scores of Dirda's most engaging essays, never previously collected in book form, all intended to introduce readers to wonderful ...

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2005 Hard cover First edition. Illustrated. New in new dust jacket. 525 p. Essays on great writers and their books. An extraordinary one-volume literary education.

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More About This Book

Overview

Among the most enjoyable of literary critics, Michael Dirda combines erudition with enthusiasm, a taste for the outré and the forgotten, and a playful, understated wit. Like George Orwell or Gore Vidal, Dirda delights in popular genres, such as the detective novel and the ghost story, without neglecting the deeper satisfactions of sometimes-overlooked classics. This new work features scores of Dirda's most engaging essays, never previously collected in book form, all intended to introduce readers to wonderful writers, from the anecdotal Herodotus and James Boswell to the sensuous Colette and Steven Millhauser to such European masters as Joseph Roth, Flann O'Brien, and Penelope Fitzgerald. With his trademark enthusiasm, Dirda also explores The Arabian Nights, the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, the crime novels of Chester Himes and K. C. Constantine, and the worlds of Tarzan, Cormac McCarthy, and Proust. Bound to Please is a glorious celebration of just how much fun reading can be.

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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
A Pulitzer Prize-winning critic at the Washington Post Book World, Dirda here talks about authors he likes, ranging from Herodotus to Colette to Cormac McCarthy. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The Washington Post's Pulitzer-winning reviewer, critic, and essayist (An Open Book, 2003, etc.) dares to deliver on his subtitle's outrageous claim. Perhaps it's the persistent feeling of shared joy in the discovery of moving and majestic literary moments that allows readers to be less picky with Dirda than he often is with the authors he dissects. For instance, introducing himself as a writer who eschews simile wherever possible, he goes on to say that reading Rabelais is "a lot like going to a Slovak or Ukrainian wedding in an Ohio steel town, where you pay a dollar to dance with the bride, eat way too much kielbasa and stuffed cabbage [and] drink yourself silly . . . fun, but a little goes a long way." Then, in stressing that it's not what you read but what you read first, the author (on Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose) pins readers to the wall with medieval monasticisms, demanding that they grasp "patristic exegesis" and both the "anagogical and eschatological levels" of meaning in biblical symbolism in a single paragraph. No surprise later when Dirda celebrates the "lip-smacking vocabulary" of Anthony Burgess on Christopher Marlowe. Verbosity aside, it's his ability to dive in and extract themes, patterns, and even sweeping contexts that grip-along with bushels of literary quotes and epigrams, all keepers, such as Jean Cocteau's "Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo." In Western fiction, Dirda notes, "love is a destructive passion," and our romantic mythology celebrates adultery, perfectly justifying a reading adventure in great, reasonably seamy literature. In addition to the classics, Dirda nominates lots of little-known or underappreciated gems, e.g., theAmerican novelist Djuna Barnes, a handful of post-Revolutionary Russians, and Terry Pratchett, a bestselling author in pre-Rowling Britain but not here. The main text is followed by concise, useful recommendations in Renaissance works, science fiction, and other genres. Tough at times, but well worth it, with manifold rewards for any serious reader. Agents: Glen Hartley, Lynn Chu/Writers' Representatives
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780393057577
  • Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
  • Publication date: 12/28/2004
  • Pages: 525
  • Product dimensions: 6.70 (w) x 9.60 (h) x 1.70 (d)

Meet the Author

Michael Dirda

Michael Dirda, who won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism at the Washington Post Book World, is the author of An Open Book, Bound to Please, and Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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Sort by: Showing 1 Customer Review

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 7, 2005

    DIRDA DOES DO IT

    The cover says it all, 'an extraordinary one-volume literary education.' Mr. Dirda has written a marvellous book of essays on books that opened my eyes to a new world of literature, mostly books I had never heard of and I thought I was a bibliophile. I am a rank amateur!

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