Itself A Great Book
Note: This review is based on the unabridged audiobook narrated by Ed Asner.
"Great Books" is itself a great book. The surface plot involves Denby's returning to his alma mater, Columbia University, to revisit (some of) the great books of the Western canon as a middle-aged adult, 30 years after first reading them as a young undergraduate.
But this is no superficial treatment focused on frivolities related to going back to school. Instead, Denby goes deep, thus making the book intellectually elevated in a manner which befits the great books (mixed metaphor intended). He covers a sampling of these books and probes them with sensitivity, thereby giving us insights which are often penetrating and profound, and sometimes even rather original. He didn't say so, but I imagine that his professors were pleased.
An added plus, which is what makes the book uniquely special, is that we get to see the difference between Denby's response to these books as a mature adult versus his younger formative years. For those of us in our own middle years, Denby thus gives us a sense of what we might gain from returning to these books.
I agree with Denby's ultimate conclusion. The primary reason for reading these books isn't that we become trained to (ethnocentrically) value Western culture, but rather that, by wrestling earnestly (and sometimes painfully) with these books, we're stimulated to grow as individuals, but still each on our own path.
Last but not least, Ed Asner did a fabulous job of narrating the book, thereby rendering the audiobook perhaps even superior in some ways to the print version. And this is on top of Denby doing a fabulous job of writing the book itself.
Needless to say, I highly recommend this book to anyone open to the possibility of growing via encounter with the great books (and great books about the great books).
Wonderful book
This is a wonderfully insightful book about the classic books in our western heritage. The author is a
masterful prose stylist.
A Guided Tour of the Classics
Denby's THE GREAT BOOKS reads much like his movie reviews in THE NEW YORKER--intelligent, opinionated, and slightly forced, but almost always profitable. GREAT BOOKS recalls his mid-90s attempt to mediate the debate over the Western Literature canon and its place in the academy. He does this by re-enrolling at Columbia and taking the same core courses he had taken 30 years earlier. Although admittedly a liberal, he avoids the victumization syndrome that he believes the heirs of Nietzsche at the university have ironically created on the Left. The Right, however, also err in putting too much confidence in the canon's ability to raise up culture. Having placed himself in the middle, Denby can jab sometimes at the Left (the absurd attack upon Joseph Conrad) and the Right (feminist criticism did create a place at the table for Virginia Wolff). A hidden strength is his philosophical nuggets, such as the point that Kant's goal was to establish a moral philosophy that was absolute yet did not depend on the word of God.
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