Customer Reviews

GREAT BOOKS

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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?

David Denby's GREAT BOOKS is a compellingly written, nostalgic joyride of a book proving that in some ways, we can go home again. Home for Denby is his alma mater, Columbia University, where during the 1991-92 academic year he retook the classic western literature courses that welcomed him to college thirty years before. With more than even your average eighteen-year-old's vigor, middle-aged Denby chronicles his own odyssey of sitting back down in the classroom and becoming a student again. The often amusing classroom scenes are interspersed with insightful commentary on the cultural scene of the early 1990s, as well as the movie critic's own musings on how certain of the works were and are tied significantly to moments and themes of his own life.

The book is deeply enriched by Denby's capacity for wonder, and not harmed all that much by his prominent ego. Denby discovers that however much we think of ourselves, the great writers will always teach us humility--or at least the folly of hubris! Those who have also taken such courses and read similar works with serious intent may not agree with all of Denby's critiques, but then examining each other's interpretations is what we do in literature class and in life.

Though some 460 pages, GREAT BOOKS rarely drags, and left me wishing it was even longer. There's no doubt that the author left a part of himself in college that it was killing him to get back, but he's mature enough to realize that attempting such reclamation is a doomed venture. Renewal is what Denby's after, and that's what reading the gargantuan likes of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare gives us. With a frank and friendly tone, Denby does a fresh and impressive job of inspiring this renewal in the reader.

Frankly I'm puzzled by the many negative reviews of this book, since Denby is a wonderfully sane and balanced writer who writes extremely well. His idea of returning to Columbia to retake a course on the 'Great Books' was a masterstroke. The blow-by-blow account of his struggles with the set texts, and of the meaning (or lack of it) which he found in them; the wonderful portraits he gives us of his professors, both male and female, and their varied approaches and teaching styles, and of his fellow students and the conflicts and animosities which were always simmering beneath the surface (and which occasionally broke through); his interesting and even valuable insights into the texts (see for example his masterful account of Boccaccio's Decameron); and his genuine concern with social and cultural issues, and with the meaning that at least some of the Great Books can still have for us today - all these and more held my interest throughout. It's possible that feminists don't like some of the things he said, though what he says about feminists is true enough and may easily be confirmed by a reading of Camille Paglia. It's also possible that some readers may have been misled by the title of the book, and may have overlooked the 'My Adventures With' of the subtitle, words which ought to tell anyone that this is not so much a book about the 'Great Books' as about the author's highly invidual and personal response to them. But for me Denby's book was one of the more interesting books I've read for some time. I only wish I could find more like it. And his piece about Boccaccio should definitely not be missed.

Briefly, Denby seems to find a pagan exuberance in Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh. In contrast to medieval Christianity's loathing of woman we find in Boccaccio what Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccio's celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. So why the hostility to Denby? Could it be partly because he pointed out that Boccaccio's is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (p.248)?

As a former classics major, I have followed the debate over the western canon with a great deal of interest. But after slogging through Harold Bloom's "The Western Canon" for over a year and a half, this book was an absolute delight. David Denby reminds us just why these books are so important--they make you strugle to build a self, which is (or should be, anyway) the true purpose of education. I am also fascinated by how much his perspective has changed in the thirty years since he read many of the books in college. And in the chapter on Shakespeare--focusing on the parallels between King Lear and Denby's own relationship with his mother--the essay itself actually brought me to tears. I have been recommending this book to everyone I know, and now I'll recommend it to everyone I don't know...read it! It's amazing!

Denby's book accomplishes what seems impossible; bringing meaning and life to the "Great Books" in an entertaining and literate way. In "Great Books" Denby, film critic for New York Magazine, describes his adventures as an adult student when he returns to his alma mater, Columbia University to take two "western civ" courses. Over two semesters, he reads works that range from the Iliad and the Odyssey to Plato, Sophocles, the Old and New Testaments, Machiavelli, Dante, Hobbes, Locke, Shakespeare, Austin and Woolf in the company of professors and undergraduate students. Denby relates each work to the text's historical context, to the class, to the other works and, in his most unusual achievement, to his own life and our modern culture by allowing us into his most personal experiences and relationships. You will enjoy this book enormously even if you have never read the "Great Books" and if you have read them, you will probably want to read them all over again. Bravo!

David Denby tells us that our everyday assumptions are arbitrary. He says power justifies itself by pointing to powerlessness as proof of incapacity. Gems of wisdom like these appear throughout this book. "Being examined is one of the things you become an adult to avoid," he writes. "Once you pass twenty-five, you learn how to cover your weaknesses and ignorance and lead with your strengths. Every adult, by definition, is a corner-cutting phony; experience teaches you what to attend to and what to slough off, when to rest and when to go all out." One of my criteria for a great book is finding I dread being finished reading with it. Such was the case with this one. Denby's work is truly inspirational for those who wish to uphold the sanctity of ideas. Highly recommended.

This book could have been called Alma Mater Memoirs. Denby's discussion of various works in the Western Canon is interspersed with recollections of his undergraduate days at Columbia University, and his impressions of his fellow teenaged students as well as the elegant demeanor of his professors ("he spoke the way a good many of the younger teachers spoke, in academic dialect, as if the dangerous subjectivity of language could be tamed by using standard terms, but he had energy and flair"). Denby gives his thoughts on a portion of Columbia's 'Great Books' course, focussing on the likes of Homer(Iliad, Odyssey), Sappho, Plato (the Republic), Sophocles(Oedipus the King), Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare, Conrad (just name a few). He gives us the general theme and focus of each work while subordinating details. If you want in-depth explication of each work you won't find it here. On the other hand, his approach makes the works much more accessible for the average reader. Let's face it, not that many people (including myself) are going to rush out to buy The Republic to take to the beach. His writing style is readable and, at times, entertaining ("Socrates the great teacher seems to flatter his students and friends, praising them extravagantly. Oh yes, they're so wise, so clever, and his own powers are so feeble, so terribly feeble! But he'd just like to ask them some small question: What do they mean by such-and such a word, such-and-such an idea? And then WHAM! he catches them in some contradiction or confusion, and they're knocked sprawling").

As to why Denby wrote the book in the first place, he states as one reason that, despite his desire to read more, movies, magazines and t.v. had made his mind less able to concentrate, less able to keep "vagrant thoughts (from) charging in". This sounds a lot like me. Television has destroyed my ability to patiently graze upon the field of literary nourishment. Instead, I gravitate to quick and furious images, pastiches of petty drama and pretty divas rather than profound thought (of course, I'm also fairy lazy).

So, give a hoot. Read this book.

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.