I always wonder at the wisdom of including specific books/authors/characters in the titles of books about books. In case you’re thinking “Simon, surely that doesn’t happen very often”, I can think of a few other examples – Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch, Dear Farenheit 451 by Annie Spence, Nabokov’s Butterfly by Rick Gekoksi. I have actually read all of those, and particularly loved Sankovitch’s book, but I did have to get over the barrier that I’m not particularly interested in Tolstoy. As it turns out, he only gets a brief mention – the book is really about reading a book a day for a year, to process grief. Anybody who read it because they love Tolstoy would probably be disappointed.
Why do people keep doing these titles? I don’t know. But Celia Blue Johnson’s book Dancing With Mrs Dalloway (2011) is another example – the subtitle, ‘stories of the inspiration behind great works of literature’, is a far more accurate representation of what’s in the book. Mrs Dalloway is just one of the 50 books that Johnson discusses, in short chapters that look at the genesis of the works in question.
It’s a fascinating premise for a collection, and there has obviously been an awful lot of research – or at least an awful lot of opening an author’s biography and paraphrasing a section from it. She has divided them into fairly meaningless categories (“in the telling”, “catch me if you can”, etc.), but basically it’s a random order. They range significantly, from authors who fictionalised people they knew to those who ‘saw’ the story in a dream. The prosaic truth is that most authors just have an idea and then slog away at it, but Johnson does an excellent job at making the book really interesting, even from the less promising accounts. I think it’s probably because the sections are short – we don’t have time to get bored.
The selection of books is a good range of classics, and a who’s who of books I should probably have already read (I’ve only read 20 of the 50). It maybe leans a little towards American literature, but there is a good international showing – I suspect nobody would feel short-changed about what’s included. And if any of the tid-bits particularly catch your eye, then there are further reading suggestions at the end. Basically, what’s not to like?