{"id":26707,"date":"2020-03-13T10:26:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T14:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=26707"},"modified":"2020-03-13T10:29:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T14:29:30","slug":"michael-dirda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2020\/03\/13\/michael-dirda\/","title":{"rendered":"Chow down on crab cakes with Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda on Episode 117 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early this week, before it occurred to me that leaving the house to break bread might not be the wisest thing to do considering the times in which we live, I headed to Silver Spring, Maryland for lunch with Michael Dirda<\/a> at All Set<\/a> restaurant. Luckily, you won’t have to risk contagion from the coronavirus to take a seat at the table and eavesdrop on our conversation.<\/p>\n

Michael is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World<\/em> with a special love for genre fiction. He’s the author of the memoir An Open Book<\/em>, plus four collections of essays: Readings<\/em>, Bound to Please<\/em>, Book by Book<\/em> and Classics for Pleasure<\/em>. Since 2002, he’s been a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, and his book On Conan Doyle<\/em> was awarded the 2012 Edgar Award in the Best Critical\/Biographical category. He’s currently at work on The Great Age of Storytelling<\/em>, an appreciation of British popular fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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We discussed the convention at which he thought he was about to be punched out by Harlan Ellison, the book he wants to write but which he realizes he could probably never publish, how discovering E. F. Bleiler’s Guide to Supernatural Fiction<\/em> opened a whole new world for him, whether he faced judgment from his peers for believing Georgette Heyer is as important as George Eliot, why he wants to be buried with a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo<\/em>, how Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins<\/em> is like a Proustian madeleine, the way he navigates the tricky act of reviewing the fiction of friends, the word he used which annoyed Gene Wolfe, and much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> \u2014 where I hope you’ll be tempted to download a few of the 116 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Listen using the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or check it out via the embed below.<\/p>\n