Free PDF Great Books, by David Denby
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Great Books, by David Denby
Free PDF Great Books, by David Denby
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Amazon.com Review
David Denby, New York city movie critic and journalist, entered Columbia University in 1991 to take the university's famous course in "Great Books." This is the course that, in preserving the notion of the western canon without apology to multiculturalists and feminists, has been an unlikely focus of America's culture war in recent years. Where other universities have caved in and revised or enlarged the canon, Columbia's course has remained intact. Denby's intention as a writer and protagonist in the culture war was to record the experience and the personal impact of the course. He has produced a cry from the heart in favor of the classics of western civilization, relaying with infectious enthusiasm how literature touched his soul.
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From Publishers Weekly
Does a great books canon exist? Left-wing critics denounce the notion of a canon, while right-wingers often use it to assert unquestioned Western supremacy. This superb book suggests an answer. Denby, the film critic for New York magazine, returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, after 30 years to retake the two core curriculum courses, grapple with the world's classics and regenerate his own lapsed reading habit. It is a heartening portrait of (elite) American education and a substantial?sometimes enthralling?read. His teachers are committed pedagogues, the students a diverse (religious faith separates more than does ethnicity) and thoughtful lot. But the students are young, and the book's richest moments are when the mature Denby engages with the texts. Reading the tragedy of Oedipus Rex, he feels anxious, recognizing the ironic truth "[W]hat we avoid, we become." Hobbes's comments on the state of nature lead Denby to muse on insider trading and the time he was mugged. He contrasts Beauvoir's call for female liberty with the "Take Back the Night" antirape march on campus. Denby steps aside to interview academics and analyze the debate about the canon; he acknowledges that white male critics too long ignored the likes of Virginia Woolf, but resolutely argues for the seeking out of all great books, not merely ones that represent excluded groups. Why? Because the "Western classics were at war with each other," and learning to read Hegel and Marx, or the Bible and Nietzsche, is no lesson in indoctrination but the beginning of "an ethically strenuous education" and "a set of bracing intellectual habits." Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product details
Hardcover: 496 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (September 9, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0684809753
ISBN-13: 978-0684809755
Product Dimensions:
6.8 x 1.2 x 9.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.1 out of 5 stars
57 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#673,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This book is about the experience of reading and thinking about the Great Books, so it is not merely a summary of the Great Books. The author does provide in the front of the book a list of the books in the Great Books courses at Columbia, (1) Literature Humanities and (2) Contemporary Civilization. At the end of the book he provides samples of previous reading lists. The author personalized the experience of reading and thinking about the Great Books. I particularly appreciated how on pages 203-205 (Interlude 5)a professor from Europe expressed disagreement over the use of such a course. The professor's point was that the great books were read in high school in Europe, and therefore was not suitable material for college. The European professor also disparaged the reading skills of American students. The author pointed out that it is exactly because American high schools neglect the Great Books that they should be studied in college, which helps improve the students' reading skills.We really should consider whether all colleges would benefit their students by making a similar Great Books course mandatory. It's a shame the Great Books are not studied in high school.
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).
I also returned to school to take undergraduate English classes as a man in my 40's. My reasons were different than Denby's, and my classes at our state university were not always high quality. I found his book almost like returning to Columbia. He shares the great wisdom and insight of his professors, while including sharp and relevant observations of his own. These "Great Books" are difficult, and having Denby and his professor put them in context is more than a little helpful. The whole post-structuralist movement has, in my opinion, been a trip down a dead-end road and Denby gives great--maybe not original--insight into where these theorists went wrong. He and others who share his views seem to have lost the battle from a 2011 perspective, and we are all worse off because of it.
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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