Customer Reviews

Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I didn't read the book for the classics, I'm not much interested in them. But I was very interested in the experience of going back to university and if his real-world experiences / age would make a difference of how he perceives university education (both in form and content).

We only get very little of this in the 5 page epilogue. I think that should have been the main focus of the bow. It's like the film critic forgot (or was unable to) to criticize (that is: evaluate, look for different perspective) and not just carbon copying his reading of books.

The book is a very personal book, almost a diary. The author writes his personal thoughts about (some of) the books they are reading. We hear about the other students only when it's relevant for his reading/understanding, but nothing else. I thus don't get insight from reading Great Books, just a story, and very simple introduction to the books.

The book didn't help me to become interested in Great Old Books, nor gave it me any understanding of them. It's nice talk for people already interested in them, and already knowing the stuff he writes, but he doesn't enable readers to learn.

Every objection to the list of books by other students are dismissed without much thought. Every teacher is perfect (he surely doesn't criticize them). It's like it so important for him that the year back at university is his nirvana, that it disables him from seeing anything negative, from performing criticism. So I think the book is a tribute to the books of Great White Men, what he surely denies because that wouldn't be politically correct...

A great book which defends the classics and succeeds in warding off the oxidantly deconstructive lefty creeps dedicated to trashing the western canon (since they have nothing original themselves to offer). A hot topic with me considering I live in PC Minnesota where a plethora of mediocre, pseudo liberal thugs have taken over the universities causing curriculum mutations of a very nightmarish variety (Andrea Dworkin's Menacme 101). The author re-enrolled in a literature class at Columbia University, having first taken it back in the early 60's and describes the sorry changes over the last thirty years. A must read for anyone disillusioned by the left and what they've tried to do the classics. Long live Dead White European Males!

Jaye Beldo: Netnous@Aol.Com

David Denby's "Great Books" proves that even if we knew then what we know now, our academic struggles would still be up-hill.

Denby gives us essentially a travelogue of his journey through the "great works of Western literature" at Columbia University, where he has returned to revisit the course material. Unsurprisingly, Denby gives brief descriptions of the works on the syllabus, paying particular attention to particular passages that struck his fancy. More surprisingly, Denby also brings us into the classroom, discussing the professors in detail while relating the other students' efforts to master the material.

These exchanges are fascinating because Denby refuses to patronize the students, who seem to be a genuinely scholarly bunch, capable of digesting and reacting personally to the material. Sure, there are some low points, such as when the students run up against Dante and the eternal damnation of the "Inferno," which the students seem to reject as "so non-20th century"(!). On other works, the students are as engaged and insightful as Denby, even though they lack his life experience. Denby avoids looking down on the students for their inexperience, and he tries to see the works from their perspective as well as his own.

Perhaps unexpectedly for Denby, his perspective isn't all that different from the students' in one critical regard -- he is reminded how difficult it is to keep up with the reading. In some of the more humorous passages in a surprisingly funny book (not slapstick, mind you), Denby laments falling behind in his reading, or struggling to find a quiet place in Manhattan to read, or finding moments of solitude during the daily pell-mell of parenting. In a refreshingly candid book, we are not force-fed another "education is wasted on the young" tirade.

Denby's various synopses of the books on the syllabus hit and miss -- of course, he is writing as much about his reaction to the books as the books themselves, and it's a bit frustrating when Denby doesn't fall in love with one of our favorites. Denby's less-than-ecstatic reaction to the aforementioned "Inferno" is one chapter where I found myself shaking my head, disgreeing with Denby. And one wishes that a few of Denby's chapters were longer -- but hey, if you are wishing for more, that's got to be the sign of a good book, right?

First off, I should admit that I'm of the age of the college students Denby studied with and not a Boomer. That's probably why I'm not as dismissive of polictical-correctness and believe that it has some positive benefits to today's education. I don't believe examining the classics through the eyes of today's students - as opposed to Columbia in the 1950's when the student body consisted of mainly Caucasian boys - is all that detrimental to the "great works" themselves. Perhaps the author would have been less likely to forget the books from his youth had they been discussed from a less-reverent viewpoint.

I don't think reading should be a kind of therapy first and foremost. But I do think women, and other minorities do have the right to study their culture (however, "marginalized" or unimportant) it is considered in relation to "Western" one. At times, Denby seemed to imply political correctness was only some trendy fad and did not have any roots in real discontent. That was a mistake.

Anyway, I do admire anyone who goes back and actually grapples with such authors as Hegel, Dante and Conrad, and has the humility to expose his struggles in a book. If I had a quarter for everyone who has said to me, "Someday, I'm gonna read the classics again..." but never actually did, I'd be rich.

On a personal level, I did go back and read some of the books I'd missed in college, but not as many as I'd planned while reading "Great Books." Still, I would recommend that readers sample some of those classics themselves.

Sure, Denby's preaching to the choir, but oh, what a lovely song! The reader likely to get the most out of this book is one who has read a few of the 'Canon' books covered-- Jane Austen and King Lear, say-- but is happy to be remined that she hasn't picked up the 'Decameron' yet. Thoughtful visits with old friends and inspiring introductions to new ones, the perfect bedside reading for 'bookish' people. Not that Denby is 'cute' at all, this is a more soul-searching work than the rather similar "Ex Libris" by Anne Fadiman.

With other reviewers, I should add that this is more of a travelogue than a travel guide-- these aren't Cole's Notes!

Anyone calling this book a 'polemic' is too used to reading nothing but. Of course, anyone whose politics are capable of overcoming their love of books will probably not enjoy this one.

David Denby is a good writer. I don't say that lightly. His command of the English language, his ability to describe things vividly, his way of expressing his thoughts ought to bring to delight to every reader. I'm thrilled by his writing style. With regard to the content, the book is very satisfying when read on its own terms. If you approach the text expecting, or demanding, that Denby do all the hard work for you--so that you don't have to read the Great Books yourself, then you might get mad and decide to scapegoat him. But if you will just be there with him and listen to his journey, there's a lot to be gained from the book. I appreciate his vulnerability as well as his moderation. He's neither too liberal nor too conservative. I think he's just plain sensible. Thus in my opinion, he makes a compelling case for reading Western classics.

Mr. Denby's book is not a tour de force of literary analysis, ala Harold Bloom, nor a provocative reinterpretation of the role western thought in education. It is a thoughtful, and at times very personal reexploration of what good literature means to those who read it.

Denby's journey of reexploration is set with a map and compass. He goes expecting to find what he found before, but with years of experience and perspective on contemporary issues. He doesn't go expecting to encounter some great profundity (and doesn't) but instead reexamines his own understanding.

Much of his experience has come as a critic and magazine journalist and the book shows this form. It is a string of short pieces - reflections - on the text and his experiences taking the courses.

This creates some occassionally awkward transitions as well as a lack of momentum. This result of his style makes the book somewhat less enjoyable to read, but serves to reinforce his own understanding of the great works.

They provide us with access to, "the greatest range of pleasure and soulfulness and reasoning power that any of us is capable of. The courses in western classics force us to ask all those questions about self and society we no longer address without embarassment."

Mr. Denby relies on personal meaning and personal experience - transcending race, gender, and religion - in his understanding of the significance of these works. It is the power of the work to connect on these levels which should provide a basis without regard to differences of skin color, sex, and faith.

For those of us who treasure literature, and thought, and reading it is a joy to share his experience.

Almost every book that Denby defends so wholeheartedly in this book is worth reading. Still, his exploration of the culture debates seems superficial. He is able to attend these classes and come out with basically the same opinions with which he left, having absorbed nothing of the justifiable rage of groups left out of the "core curriculum", smugly sure that the books he grew up with are the best that are out there. His dismissal of the liberal students' concern as "tragically mistaken" seems glib and self-satisfied, and the book is tainted by the bias of its author, whose purpose (to re-educate himself, to find himself) is defeated from the start by his closed-mindedness.

Denby's "Great Books" is a great book itself insofar as one treats it as a guide to the accepted seminal works of Western literature rather than a thorough investigation of these works. That said, Denby's book is no subtitute at all for a real comprehension and understanding of the books in question nor an appropriate surrogate for the Core Curriculum at Columbia.

The Core is the central subject addressed by the book. In between attempting to serve as a digestion of the works in question, Denby explores the rationale for a body of knowledge which, as Columbia would assert, "every educated person should know". In his search, Denby hits upon a number of notable reasons for the maintenance of the Core and its promotion in society versus the relativist perspective of many liberal students, which he portrays as rather insolent and uninformed reactions. Even faculty objection to the Core is rendered with a certain hostility for such opinion. Denby is writing the book with the clear premise of proving the worth of the Core, rather than the purported search for its relevance. This alone makes "Great Books" a bit of a disappointment.

What really drags down the book, however, is Denby's writing itself. Some books, such as Augustine's "Confessions", are treated merely with an allegorical story related to Denby's incomparably mundane daily life. In fact, most of the book is composed of Denby's rather superficial and sometimes even erroneous interpretations of the works he reads.

I suggest "Great Books" only as a rather cursory overview of the Columbia Core and nothing more- unless one takes a great interest in the autobiography of a mediocre film critic or wishes to garner ideas for a tirade against liberal relativism. "Great Books" at times is little more than a typical neoconservative reaction to nontraditional ideas- ironic, given the dismissal of the students' reactions themselves as clichéd.

I can't overemphasize how much I enjoyed "Great Books". Mr. Denby mingles the human interactions amongst his classmates with the lessons he's learning from the works they're reading in an enjoyable and readable manner. He inspired me to re-read The Illiad and pick up Simone DeBeauvior for the first time.

If you like to read, or are considering taking a literature class, pick up this book. You'll be inspired.