Michael Dirda

1 week ago | washingtonpost.com | Michael Dirda

Disillusioned by politics, I read these books to get out of my slump (washingtonpost.com) Disillusioned by politics, I read these books to get out of my slump By Michael Dirda 2025050816000000 For the first six weeks after Jan. 20, I didn't read a book. I moped instead.

2 months ago | nybooks.com | Michael Dirda

Ford Madox Ford’s 1915 novel, The Good Soldier, opens with one of the most arresting first sentences in twentieth-century fiction: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” The paragraph that follows, however, almost immediately undercuts it with a series of irresolute, contradictory statements:We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy—or rather, with an acquaintance as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove’s with your hand.

2 months ago | roanoke.com | Michael Dirda

As an author and artist, Maurice Sendak enriched the world with two of our most beloved picture books, “Where the Wild Things Are” (1963) and “In the Night Kitchen” (1970). Yet Sendak’s creative energy also spilled over into more commercial projects, and he often illustrated the work of others, usually favorite writers.

Jan 26, 2025 | pressherald.com | Michael Dirda

With the possible exceptions of pickleball and gossip, the habitual reading of obituaries may be the favorite sport of older people. After a certain age, we begin to wonder how others have spent their time in what Melville, in “Moby-Dick,” summed up as “this strange mixed affair we call life.” Did they, as Melville went on to say, feel “this whole universe [to be] a vast practical joke” at nobody’s expense but their own? Were they true to the dreams of youth?

Jan 16, 2025 | washingtonpost.com | Michael Dirda

With the possible exceptions of pickleball and gossip, the habitual reading of obituaries may be the favorite sport of older people. After a certain age, we begin to wonder how others have spent their time in what Melville, in “Moby-Dick,” summed up as “this strange mixed affair we call life.” Did they, as Melville went on to say, feel “this whole universe [to be] a vast practical joke” at nobody’s expense but their own? Were they true to the dreams of youth?