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Overview
This is not your father’s list of classics. In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world’s most entertaining books.
Writing with affection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as epics, history, essay, and children’s literature. Organized thematically, these are works that have shaped our imaginations. "Love’s Mysteries" moves from Sappho and Arthurian romance to Sören Kierkegaard and Georgette Heyer. In other categories Dirda discusses not only Dracula and Sherlock Holmes but also the Tao Te Ching and Icelandic sagas, Frederick Douglass and Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Whether writing about Petronius or Perelman, Dirda makes literature come alive. Classics for Pleasure is a perfect companion for any reading group or lover of books.
Synopsis
Classics for pleasure? To some readers this may seem an oxymoron. Aren't classics supposed to be difficult, esoteric, and probably a little boring? . . . I sympathize with this common view, even if it is largely wrong. Classics are classics not because they are educational, but because people have found them worth reading, generation after generation, century after century. More than anything else, great books speak to us of our own all-too-real feelings, confusions and daydreams
This is not, your father's—or your mother's—list of classics. In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world's most entertaining books. Writing with affection as well as authority, Dirda covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as of biography and history, poetry and children's literature. Organized thematically, these are the works that have shaped our imaginations and inspired our dreams and adventures. Here are Sappho's yearnings and the Arthurian romances, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the ghost stories of M. R. James, the classic fairy tales and the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer.
Dirda approaches each of his chosen titles as a passionate reader rather than as a critic or scholar. He points us to new authors, less familiar classics, and genre titles often excluded from the canon. Whether writing about Petronius or S. J. Perelman, H. P. Lovecraft or the Icelandic sagas, Michael Dirda makes literature come alive. Full of surprises and wit, Classics for Pleasure is a perfect companion for any reading group or lover of books.
The Barnes & Noble Review
Washington Post book critic and Pultizer Prize winner Michael Dirda states his intention plainly: He wants to introduce readers to great works of literature that will give them pleasure. And in this aptly titled book he does so with great gusto and aplomb. That alone separates him from most academic writers, while his sense of "classic" is also a far cry from what you might expect, since Dirda displays a genuine love of so-called genre fiction -- the everyday magic of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the cracked visions of Philip K. Dick, and the creepy forebodings of M. R. James. A self-confessed "passionate reader," as he's demonstrated in a number of previous books as well, Dirda once again surveys an amazing range of literary works: from poets (Pope, Pound, Ovid) to philosophers (Heraclitus, Spinoza, Kierkegaard), with a few playwrights (Marlowe and Webster) thrown in for good measure. Dirda's breadth of vision will humble even the most voracious readers, who are certain to meet some unfamiliar faces in this crowd, which includes Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette, and Girolamo Cardano, to name just a few. Better yet, Dirda reminds us of why we treasure the authors we do -- he celebrates the "civilized amusements" of Max Beerbohm, the "heartbreakingly pure voice" of Sappho, and the "grave and august power" of the Beowulf poet. Dirda's generous aesthetic spans writers as different as the genial Erasmus and the misanthropic Louis-Ferdinand Céline: he admires both the complex prose of Cicero and the clean narratives of Dashiell Hammett. In short, Dirda's a critic of Whitmanic proportions: He contains multitudes. --Thomas DePietro
Editorials
Michael Korda
Let it be said at once that Dirda writes brilliantly, concisely and even convincingly about his choices, odd as they may seem. But he has a distinct agenda in mind, which is to subvert or overthrow the "standard" definition of the classics, as taught in colleges and universities …Dirda certainly makes literature come alive, but one wonders if people will really be drawn to the classics by being told that the popular books they've been reading all along deserve to be in that category (as in the case of such perennial favorites as Agatha Christie), and whether his book ought not to have been called My Favorite Books, rather than Classics for Pleasure. In any event, he himself is a pleasure to read.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
In this casually brilliant collection of "great book" recommendations, Dirda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for the Washington Post Book World,discusses titles ranging from well-known favorites such as Sherlock Holmes and Beowulfto more obscure writers such as Jaroslav Hasek and John Masefield. Dirda is a charming and exceedingly well-read host, erudite without slipping into pretension. He is more generous and less canonical than Harold Bloom, to whose work Dirda owes a debt in style and substance. The book creates a pleasurable but somewhat maddening sensation in the committed reader, who will be tempted to read most of Dirda's selections based on his brief summations. The complete works of Christopher Marlowe are summed up in five eventful pages, and Dirda makes Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empiresound so essential over the course of three pages that one forgets it would take the better part of a year to actually read. Dirda's greatest accomplishment, however, is rescuing many formerly illustrious masters from the dustbin of our culture's pitifully short memory: James Agee, G.K. Chesterton and Ernst Junger are just three who benefit from their inclusion in this indispensable volume. (Nov.)
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