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Summary: Life, the University and Everything
Review: To represent this book as being merely (!) about the debate over the literary canon would be to do it a grave injustice. True, Denby writes about the academic (and not so academic) dispute over core reading courses, but he also tells of the love-hate relationship of the educated and the media, the bemusement of a parent faced with a tide of uncontrollable cultural influences on their children, the gnawing worry a lapsed reader has about being able to tackle "real" books, acknowledging the decline and death of one's parents, suriving a mugging in New York, the emergence of self after adolescence, the bubbling undercurrent of memory, the frustrated teacher in all of us, and most of all - epics, tragedies, poems, bibles, tracts... If you're only ever going to read one more book in your life, read this one.
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Summary: An inspiration
Review: What a trip! If you are a reader who has recently not had the inspiration to pick up anything significant, gie Denby a try. He will revitalize that love that festers in all of us.
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Summary: A Great Story about Experiences
Review: What I liked about "Great Books" was the experience of the author, while reading again those "books". Very honest writing I would say. Thank you, for that inspiration amid these years of pragmatism and technology.
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Summary: Fun for book lovers,let it inspire you to read the originals
Review: What makes some literature great ? Great literature is inspiring and life-changing, taking us to new places and leading us to think in new ways. It brings you not only into the author's mind but into their whole cultural millieu, to a time and place that we wouldn't have otherwise experienced or understood. Western culture is of course just part of the world's vast storehouse of ideas and stories, but it is one of the deepest and profoundest parts. In "Great Books," film critic David Denby unapologetically focuses on his experience at Columbia with some of the classics of Western literature.Denby regales us with his enviable experience of being re-introduced to great literature as an adult, engaging the classics as an enthusiastic and willing observer instead of a bored and cynical youth obsessed with carving their own niche. Unlike his classmates, Denby has the luxury known mostly only to the mature, to actually enjoy the trip rather than using the readings as a springboard to show his own cleverness and garner good grades. His honest enthusiasm shows through as we experience a taste of great literature through his eyes. While this book is somewhat a summary of some of the classics, it would fail on that basis alone, paling in comparison to the Cliff and Monarch notes, just as those notes pale in comparison to the original works. This is not a book to read to understand the classics of Western literature, nor to help with any scholarly pursuit of knowledge. This is a very pleasant and enjoyable excursion through great literature along with someone in the unique position to be an experienced critic, a skilled writer, and an enthusiastic student viewing the subjects as if for the first time. If reading this book and sharing the author's enthusiasm encourages you to read the classics, it has done a wonderful thing. If you read this book to get a condensed version of the originals, a vicarious education through Denby's interpretation, you will be sadly cheated. This is a fun book for lovers of great books, but it is not itself a great book. I hope it inspires more people to understand why some of us love great books.
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Summary: Denby writes what too many of us feel........
Review: Would that we all could embark on such a journey; to revisit our college days and relive the lively discussions, the passionate arguments, and the idealistic strivings toward objective, unencumbered learning. However, while the journey was undertaken with only the purest of motives, the discovery itself will leave anyone determined to live a life of the mind not only cold, but full of sorrow and disgust. Instead of discovering the best that humans have to offer, he stumbled upon a virtual breeding ground of hostility. The students of today, rather than embracing the great books of the past, have been instilled with the unfortunate idea that all works of long ago are to be held in contempt; under suspicion and accused of racism, sexism, exclusion, and deliberate oppression. The philosophers, novelists, and social theorists have become tools of what appears to be (if one believes the P.C. crowd) a patriarchal, Eurocentric, slave-holding, jingoistic elite bent on crushing all minority opinion. Denby's book, which should be read side by side with Harold Bloom, presents the college students of the world for what they are: whining, self-righteous brats with little in mind but an egalitarian revolution where all literature, regardless of merit or talent, is equal; all thoughts, even the most lamebrained and esoteric, are valid and above challenge; and the free exchange of ideas, vital on a college campus, is discarded in favor of a guiding ideology of "bottom-up" virtue. We may have rejected the great books of our Western heritage, but we need them more than ever. Reason, not political grandstanding, must make a comeback.
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