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Oxford University, where a young Reynolds Price spent a memorable three years of the six recounted in his new memoir, "Ardent Spirits."(By Gillian Allen -- Associated Press)

Still, some of these pages do seem to lack punch, mainly because Price scrupulously sticks to just what he can remember. One wishes that he'd kept a diary and recorded the exact words and witticisms of his brilliant teachers and friends. David Cecil, he does tell us, once warned him that the famously ugly and notoriously sharp-witted Cyril Connolly was "not as nice as he looks." Fortunately, Price does offer some typically winning vignettes of W.H. Auden, who was in residence at Oxford as professor of poetry:

"I mentioned my love of Emily Dickinson; he nodded with no enthusiasm -- 'Very little-bitty at times, don't you feel?' . . . He asked for my favorite opera composer. I said Wagner; he grinned, shut his eyes in bliss, tilted his head back: . . . 'I long to direct a production of Tristan und Isolde with two large lesbians -- no man and woman could ever carry on so fervently about one another.' "

When Auden finally left Oxford, the neat and tidy Price was given a glimpse of the poet's living quarters: "I looked round at two rooms in a state of disarray that I'd never before seen generated by any human being. And Wystan had only been in residence for two months. The desk, the floors, the tables, and every other surface were inches -- if not feet -- deep in abandoned books, magazines, clothing, galley proofs, dirty dishes, whatever. My face may have betrayed my literal shock; but Auden only gave a brisk wave above the chaos and said 'If you'd like to come back later and see if there's anything you want, by all means do.' "

Does the fastidious Reynolds Price come back to rummage through the great poet's trash? You'll have to read the very enjoyable "Ardent Spirits" to find out.

Dirda -- mdirda@gmail.com -- writes each Thursday in Style.