Great Books by David Denby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Attempting to cover a 4,000 year period in less than 500 pages is no mean feat, but Denby rises to the challenge of framing classical literature as instructional for all of life. His defense of the classics is occasionally weak, but its strong points lie in explaining why a) the liberal critiques of "Great Books" (a Western Canon) as tools of white hegemony and b) the conservative ideas that Great Books are a unified voice which give equal meaning to everyone are both silly in their own way. In Denby's mind, these books are great because they challenge us where we are and force us to examine our lives. There were certainly high and low points in this book. Discussions on Virgil, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Hegel (yes, Hegel!) and Beauvoir were particularly strong, but the remainder of the book, particularly discussions on race through Conrad's Heart of Darkness, did not contribute meaningfully to the broader goals of this book. View all my reviews
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