Rating: 
Summary: Not Merely a Shopping List
Review: I have to admit I approached this book with some trepidation. I learned from the jacket liner that Denby was a film critic for New York Magazine (I vaguely remember reading some of his reviews) who had returned to the same Lit classes at Columbia he had attended in the late sixties. What was a film critic going to tell me about the classics that I didn't already know? I've read every classic I could get my hands on since I was 13. I expected something along the lines of Adler or Van Doren (brief accounts of the hundred or so "greatest books of all time"). I'm glad now that I gave Denby the benefit of the doubt. Like Denby, I returned to college as an older student and felt a blend of exhiliration and disorientation similar to his. He's particularly adroit in conveying how politics have changed the nature of classroom discourse. There's no need here to get into a debate over the neo-relativist, agenda-driven camp on one side of academia, vs. the liberal, canonical "traditionalists," although much of the book revolves around these arguements. What I'd like to comment on primarily is Denby's authentic love of literature and the power that it holds to shape lives. This is an old saw, but is still relevant and is eloquently expressed and demonstrated by the author. He argues that "great" literature is not primarily aimed at making us feel good about ourselves. On the contrary, growth usually comes about only after a period of some discomfort and anxiety. The message of great fiction is not that we or our society or culture are superior to other peoples or societies or cultures. In fact, the message is usually the opposite. I have to admit that I found some of Denby's recounting of his private life digressive and not especially engaging. His reading of King Lear, juxtaposed with his memories of his mother's final years, was heartfelt, but didn't quite come off in the final analysis. It seemed that the parallels he drew (friction between generations, the weakening of the intellect as one grows older, etc.) didn't seem particularly relevant or insightful. The chapter on Conrad was, for me, the crowning moment of the book. Denby covers a lot of ground in this chapter, particularly in light of what just proceeded in the chapter on deBeauvoir. He nails down the essence of the scholarly debate, while at the same time giving us a vivid picture of the response a highly-charged piece of fiction can provoke in dispirate readers. As I lover of "the classics" myself, I might be biased as to which side of the debate I stand on, but I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read and think at the same time.
Rating:
Summary: Education "lite" -- inspired me to read the classics again.
Review: I loved this book. It changed my life. Like Denby, I was tired of reading bestsellers and seeing bad movies and yet couldn't seem to find time to read difficult books, including the classics. This book inspired me. I'm now reading Faulkner's "Light In August" and loving it.
Rating: 
Summary: propagandist and misogynist
Review: I took up this book with no preconceptions, just positive review from people I knew, as a book that might help me find a way to personally rediscover classic book reading in adulthood. I ended up enrolling for the first time in my life in a class on feminism. Female readers: please make sure that you have "fallen off of Daddy's lap" (p. 386) before you read this. Those readers who would like a less bigoted, more normal approach to reading classics in adulthood would be better advised to check out Samuel Pickering's book, A Continuing Education. This book is strictly a self-indulgent piece of propaganda for the so-called "Culture Wars." Sad, very sad.
Rating: 
Summary: Magnificent, inspiring, life-changing. Read it!
Review: I won't echo what other have said - just a couple of personal reactions: I've always read more books than anybody I know, but Denby humbled me. Not only did he "live the fantasy" of going back to school, he did it in the real world, too. No ivory tower, no luxury life - he truly did it in medias res, with kids bounding around the house, ongoing obligations at his job as a freelance writer, and all this in the midst of that barely controlled chaos called Manhattan. Yeah, yeah, he took on a tough task ... but the insights! the freshness of his point of view! This is a book to treasure, and re-read. It made me go back to the classics and read them with new eyes. And, yes, I *still* have that go-back-to-school fantasy in spades. I'll do it, someday, I swear, I'll really do it, even if I have to wait until I'm retired. In the meantime, if you're hugely pressed for time, get Ian McKellen's audiobook reading of Robert Fagles' translation of Homer's Odyssey. It'll keep your spirits up until you can live the fantasy, too. It's doing it for me, right now. Thanks, David Denby, for sharing your journey with us.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent, inspiring, life-changing. Read it!
Review: I won't echo what other have said - just a couple of personal reactions: I've always read more books than anybody I know, but Denby humbled me. Not only did he "live the fantasy" of going back to school, he did it in the real world, too. No ivory tower, no luxury life - he truly did it in medias res, with kids bounding around the house, ongoing obligations at his job as a freelance writer, and all this in the midst of that barely controlled chaos called Manhattan. Yeah, yeah, he took on a tough task ... but the insights! the freshness of his point of view! This is a book to treasure, and re-read. It made me go back to the classics and read them with new eyes. And, yes, I *still* have that go-back-to-school fantasy in spades. I'll do it, someday, I swear, I'll really do it, even if I have to wait until I'm retired. In the meantime, if you're hugely pressed for time, get Ian McKellen's audiobook reading of Robert Fagles' translation of Homer's Odyssey. It'll keep your spirits up until you can live the fantasy, too. It's doing it for me, right now. Thanks, David Denby, for sharing your journey with us.
Rating:
Summary: The Quick Way to the Classics.
Review: I work in a public library. I'll be honest, I bought this for the library, knowing it would go out like crazy when students had papers. A quick and dirty way to the classics. If you are really into the classics, skip this. You probably wont like it. If you are not into the classics, but want to read this first before checking out certain things, do so.
Rating:
Summary: Required for discerning readers
Review: In, 1994 Harlod Bloom's The Western Canon "ventured a modest
prophesy as to the survival possibilities of the canon," producing an intellectual dilemna of dramatic scope: what reprecussions would our fractured society face if we were to lose the canon, and could we withstand such a profound loss? As the advancing forces of modern society continue to marginalize aesthetic values and ignite fervid culture wars, the need to answer these questions becomes increasingly urgent. In Great Books, film critic David Denby invites us to experience the pleasures of actually reading the great works of literature that at once "dispel the crudities and irrelevancies of the culture wars." Great Books is an inspired rally to Harold Bloom's late cry, "do not yeild to the lie that what we oppose is adventure and new interpretation."
Great books is an invigorating book which excites and opens the mind to the power of great works, to their ability to disturb, provoke, and offer intellectual pleasure that greets the readeron the path toward sorting out and understanding one's relation to literature.
Denby offers an inspired defense of the classics of Western
literature by applying the great works and the issues they confront to contemporary problems in America while insisting aesthetic evidence, experienced as pleasure in reading, establishes a given text within the body of essential literature known as the canon. He builds his argument with
an array of strategies that suggest an reflect the interpenetrating relations between method, aesthetic, pathos,
structure, and critique that ultimatley answers the question,
Why does one read great literature?
Rating:
Summary: My boyfriend at P.S.35: (Pat Noland now Trish Schiesser,auth
Review: Magnificent book. Saw David on television when this book published. I read the book. Any intelligent reader can see how Denby has presented his love of literature in this book. Inner dialogue influences one to delve more deeply into the works themselves! Those who do not like this book are clearly suffering from sour grapes! The publishing world wants unique works...well here's one! Should be required reading in all Universities and High Schools. Clearly Denby has exposed himself to ridicule, we all do in our writings, but his book deserves kudos for Denby's point of view, love and inspiration of the classics.
Rating:
Summary: Great Writing about Great Books
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A sensible step in the right direction
Review: 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.
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