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.
Rating:
Summary: anti-pc polemic or insightful read - you choose
Review: Sure, Denby's preaching to the choir, but oh, what a lovely song! The reader likely to get the most out of this book is one who has read a few of the 'Canon' books covered-- Jane Austen and King Lear, say-- but is happy to be remined that she hasn't picked up the 'Decameron' yet. Thoughtful visits with old friends and inspiring introductions to new ones, the perfect bedside reading for 'bookish' people. Not that Denby is 'cute' at all, this is a more soul-searching work than the rather similar "Ex Libris" by Anne Fadiman. With other reviewers, I should add that this is more of a travelogue than a travel guide-- these aren't Cole's Notes! Anyone calling this book a 'polemic' is too used to reading nothing but. Of course, anyone whose politics are capable of overcoming their love of books will probably not enjoy this one.
Rating:
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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