# Michael Dirda Discusses "Classics for Pleasure"

"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." Thus Pulitzer prize-winning critic Michael Dirda introduces his new book, "Classics for Pleasure," a volume of short essays that "point readers to new authors and less obvious classics." "Classics for Pleasure" is divided into 11 sections, each with seven to eight essays. The sections, with two examples cited from each, are: Playful Imaginations, S. J. Perelman and Edward Gorey; Heroes of Their Time, "Beowulf" and James Agee; Love's Mysteries, Arthurian romances and C. P. Cavafy; Words from the Wise, Lao-tse and Samuel Johnson; Everyday Magic, the classic fairy tales and Walter de le Mare; Lives of Consequence, Plutarch and Frederick Douglass; The Dark Side, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker; Traveler's Tales, Jules Verne and Isak Dinesen; The Way We Live Now, Anton Chekhov and Zora Neale Hurston; Realms of Adventure, H. Rider Haggard and Agatha Christie; and Encyclopedic Visions, Robert Burton and Philip K. Dick.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2008
- By: Library Of Congress. Center For The Book
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687937/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021687937?play=1)