Still daydreaming: Delve into the mind of Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Dirda

Michael Dirda

Photo: Michael Dirda, an esteemed writer and book reviewer, now works at the Washington Post.

Michael Dirda, an esteemed writer and book reviewer, now works at the Washington Post. Photo courtesy of Louis Tinsley.

It’s 2004 and the younger, yet highly-esteemed writer Michael Dirda sits in suspense with a crowd of prestigious academia, writers, and journalists. He’s attending the Los Angeles Times Book Award ceremony as both a guest and nominee. He describes the event as “a big production,” where media producers and readers alike play the event up as the “Academy Awards” of the book world. 

Dirda has been nominated for the best book on current affairs, an odd selection considering he didn’t think the book said all that much about the subject. He reclines and watches, knowing he has no chance of winning. 

But moments later, his name is called. Introducing him as the winner is Michael Kinsley, another famed writer of a similar era. The crowd sits in suspense as Kinsley calls his name and says something that Dirda still remembers, something he still has as a blurb on some of his books. 

“Dirda is the best-read man in America.” 

That description has been used to introduce Dirda ever since – and rightly so. He’s won a Pulitzer Prize for his journalistic work in 1993 along with writing numerous award-winning books. And for more than thirty years, Dirda’s been a book critic for the Washington Post.

Despite all of these achievements, Dirda doesn’t like being called the “best-read man in America.” He still sees himself more as he did in his debut memoir An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland – a daydreamer. “I have always been a… dreamy kid, somebody who lives in a kind of world of his own,” Dirda says. “I've always enjoyed thinking, thinking about things every morning. Even now, I get up in the morning, I have a cup of coffee, and I sit in a particular chair and I just sort of let my mind feel free to think about the past.” 

Dirda says that this love for thinking was one of the major reasons why he fell in love with reading and writing. “That [curiosity] grew through books, which sort of took up that imaginative space,” he says. 

Growing up in a blue collar family from rural Ohio, reading and writing helped Dirda “escape” reality. “I'm from a working-class family,” Dirda recalls, “and I know that the people I admire are not people like myself, I have uncles who could build your house from the ground up, they could lay the foundation, they could do the plumbing, they could put in the electric, they could do the roofing, they could do it all. Those are the men I grew up admiring.” These role models encouraged him to work on what he was good at – school – and helped him foster his imagination skills. 

“Best-read man”

Instead of thinking of himself as the prestigious writer or “best-read man in America,” Dirda likes to call himself simply “another reader.” “I dislike reviewers, and I can name some, but I won't,” Dirda remarks. “Many of them are basically show-offs. When they win awards, they want to show us how much they know, or how smart they are, or how much smarter they are than you are. I've never approached things that way. My feeling is that I'm a reader, you are a reader. I want to share my pleasure, enthusiasm and affection for these books with you, in hopes that you might want to try it.” 

Another way Dirda described himself throughout his illustrious career was as an advocate for books in the modern world. “I think of myself as an appreciator, or a kind of cheerleader for books, especially older ones,” Dirda says. “There are so many wonderful books and such wonderful writers, but I want to remind people about them and tell them that these books should not be neglected, they should not be forgotten, and that they will give you wonderful experiences that could change your life if you give them a shot.” 

The writing process

While Dirda prides himself in being a “cheerleader” for books, he has an unusual approach to reading and writing book reviews. Dirda often sits at his desk for up to six hours on end with nothing in front of him except for his computer and a blank wall. “Maybe I'll spend six hours at my desk before I leave the desk,” he says. “I mean, I read and write, basically every day. I may spend some time gardening and helping my wife haul mulch and cut grass and things like that, [but] leisure doesn't come easy to me. I don't really understand it very well.” 

Another ironic part of Dirda’s process is his apparent inability to read for pleasure. “That's the other problem of being a professional literary journalist,” Dirda says. “Other people read for pleasure, but I don't read for pleasure. I get pleasure from what I read, [but] just reading for fun without having a writing project in mind is pretty alien to me.”

Dirda says he enjoys more than anything the simple, yet tedious process of fiddling with his writing.“My writing is very much kind of an intellectual exercise,” he says. “'l’ll read the first sentence that I write, then the second I start the next sentence I go back and read the first sentence again. And then in the third sentence I do the same thing. I read the first, the second, the third. And so I go through the piece by creation and repetition.”

Dirda’s presence

Ron Charles, a Washington Post book critic who has worked alongside Dirda for over 20 years, has glowing praise for his impact on books in general.“One of the great pleasures of being at The Post over the last two decades has been editing and reading Michael's work,” Charles says. “I think it's fair to say that no one has taught me more about literature. He’s always ready with a bit of encouragement and a witty story of some past literary encounter. ”

Advice for young readers

The ever-charming Dirda, of course, has some recommendations for the younger audience who might not be as into reading as he is. “Everybody has some interest,” he says. “If a kid, for example, loves baseball, I would encourage you to surround him with sports magazines or biographies about great baseball players.”

Dirda says that he doesn’t want anyone to become as obsessed with books as he is, only that they find how books can fit into their lives. For him, books are the connector that led him from the rural plains of Ohio to the prestigious academic stages.“If you look at my autobiography, books are the thread that runs through it,” he says. “So I actually took them to heart, they shaped my life, they helped me become who I am, for good or ill.”

In the end, this lifelong and almost fate-driven obsession with books is the reason many still call Dirda “the best-read man in America.”