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Why Read the Classics? Martin L. McLaughlin translator. From the internationally acclaimed author of some of this century's most breathtakingly original novels comes this posthumous collection of thirty-six literary essays that will make any fortunate reader view the old classics in a dazzling new light. Learn why Lara, not Zhivago, is the center of Pasternak's masterpiece, Dr. Zhivago , and why Cyrano de Bergerac is the forerunn From the internationally acclaimed author of some of this century's most breathtakingly original novels comes this posthumous collection of thirty-six literary essays that will make any fortunate reader view the old classics in a dazzling new light.
Zhivago , and why Cyrano de Bergerac is the forerunner of modern-day science-fiction writers. Learn how many odysseys The Odyssey contains, and why Hemingway's Nick Adams stories are a pinnacle of twentieth-century literature. From Ovid to Pavese, Xenophon to Dickens, Galileo to Gadda, Calvino covers the classics he has loved most with essays that are fresh, accessible and wise. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. Published January 16th by Vintage first published More Details Original Title.
Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Why Read the Classics? Are there any classics mentioned in this book that were written by women or are the classics mentioned written by men only? Delia Mascellani Al classics are written by men, but this is not surprising: Italo Calvino was normally a misogynist like many of his contemporaries, and did not perce …more Al classics are written by men, but this is not surprising: Italo Calvino was normally a misogynist like many of his contemporaries, and did not perceive the slightest problem in being so.
However, he initially mentions Jane Austin among the classics, and writes that he loves her because he does not read it, while he loves males for various reasons, and of course he reads them. In short, he only quotes one woman besides Mansfield just to tell us that he doesn't read her, but he is glad that she exists.
Misogynist and happy to let the world know. See 1 question about Why Read the Classics? Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3.
Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Why Read the Classics? Mar 06, Riku Sayuj rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , books-about-books , r-r-rs , literary-theory , lit-crit. You do this mainly to get to know a wonderful list of classics to tackle, of the thoughts of a loved author, and to know of how to approach these sometimes daunting works. You put off the book many times over the year but eventually get back to it.
So you quickly buy the books as Calvino talks of them. Of course, you know that you would have to read the essays before you read your new acquisitions and then again a month after the reading is past just to compare experiences with Calvino, which as you already know is great fun.
You also begin to discern a few jarring notes… but they do not put you off - a reading life is not complete without an explanation of the spirit that animates the reading quest. And, sometimes to your disappointment, he examines many of the authors primarily from the lens of how they tried to invent history and their own conceptions of it - slightly distorting his analysis in the process but with a distinct purpose.
To you, some of these extrapolations seem like inventions but, it becomes difficult to draw the line between serious experiment and play. In the end, you scribble a quick one line review before moving eagerly to the heady pile of books that Calvino has collected for you on your desk: This book is a treasure.
A Goodreads Corollary: Classics are those books which when you rate them, you only rate yourselves. View all 43 comments. Mar 30, Steven Godin rated it really liked it Shelves: essays , italy , non-fiction. From Homer, Ovid, Xenophon, Stendhal, and Balzac, to Defoe, Dickens, Conrad, Pasternak, and Hemingway, Calvino, with fascinating insight gives, his take on these writers, among others, as to why their 'classics' are precisely just that: classics.
Calvino resounds with a deep sense of wonder, and writes wholeheartedly in a chirpy unpretentious manner, of which, it's clear to see just what his favourite classics meant to him. He lays out his reasoning in fourteen key points at the start of the book From Homer, Ovid, Xenophon, Stendhal, and Balzac, to Defoe, Dickens, Conrad, Pasternak, and Hemingway, Calvino, with fascinating insight gives, his take on these writers, among others, as to why their 'classics' are precisely just that: classics.
He lays out his reasoning in fourteen key points at the start of the book before we actually get to writers. It maybe didn't help that I hadn't read some of the famous classics he was referring to. There is a good chance they won't ever end up there either. As who in their right mind can say they've read every single classic on the planet! These literary essays were thought-provoking, invigorating, and a real pleasure to read, but I'm going for four stars over five because some of them were simply just too short.
View all 17 comments. Sep 04, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: writing , criticism , classics , literature , 20th-century , essay , non-fiction , italian. Zhivago, and why Cyrano de Bergerac is the forerunner of modern-day science-fiction writers. From Ovid to Pavese, Xenophon to Dickens, Galileo to Gadda, Calvino covers the classics he has loved most with essays that are fresh, accessible, and wise.
May 05, Silvia Cachia rated it it was amazing Shelves: re-read , books-on-books. Italo Calvino, in his Why Read the Classics? In a classic we sometimes discover something we have always known or thought we knew , but without knowing that this author said it first, or at least is associated with it in a special way. And this, too, is a surprise that gives a lot of pleasure, such as we always gain from the discovery of an origin, a relationship, an affinity. From all this we may derive a definition of this type: 9 The classics are books that we find all the more new, fresh, and unexpected upon reading, the more we thought we knew them from hearing them talked about.
Naturally, this only happens when a classic really works as such—that is, when it establishes a personal rapport with the reader. Except at school.
And school should enable you to know, either well or badly, a certain number of classics among which—or in reference to which—you can then choose your classics. School is obliged to give you the instruments needed to make a choice, but the choices that count are those that occur outside and after school. View 1 comment. A bundle full of love for literature, but at times quite hermetic and jarringly focussed on works from men 4 Every rereading of a classic is as much a voyage of discovery as the first reading.
A collection of essays on literature from Italo Calvino. Especially the first 14 statements on what a classic read should or could be is brilliant. Interestingly enough in this essay Calvino already notes that literature has it hard versus the buzz of modern life in a tv age and before the internet.
The 30 odd essays that follow are on classics as defined by Calvino. The pieces, introductions, commentaries in newspapers and obituaries, are put in a chronologic order and range from Homer to Cesare Pavese , with special fondness for French and Italian authors. Jarringly, despite a nod to Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf , not one female writer comes back in an essay, and besides one Persian author, the same goes for none Western writers.
The pieces are highly cerebral and often insightful. The Odyssee for instance is presented as a tale of restoration, a tale not unlike the abandoned princesses who turn into stepdaughters, before being made once more into a princess in fairytales. The unreliability of Odysseus, and how his tale can just be a story to explain away in an acceptable manner his absence, is an other perspective brought up by Calvino.
The essays put behind each other shows a kind of progression in literature till about Stendhal and can serve as a good intro to Western literature development till that point. Orlando Furioso triggered my interest, and Galileo Galilei dissing Acrimboldo is also a new thing for me.
In general it is nice to get some background on the setting of the writers and how this influenced their books. The bundle is sometimes not very inviting at times, maybe also because Italian poetry is not my thing.
The love for literature is however clearly present and I can imagine myself returning to this bundle when I end up picking up some of the books Calvino writes about in Why Read the Classics? I am in debt to my old university housemate who bought and gifted me this. Despite wracking my brain for a Calvino related anecdote involving us, I cannot think of one.
The only thing that comes to mind is reading my first ever Calvino, Invisible Cities , whilst lying on my bed in our old house in Chichester. So can give only th book of So can give only my thanks; it was worth it. We should also leave a section of empty spaces for surprises and chance discoveries. Calvino writes with grace in both his fictions and his essays. He is a fantastic writer in the fact I believe he is quite multifaceted, and by that I also mean that my own view of him is multifaceted.
In some cases, I would agree. I am in awe of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler , but my enjoyment when reading it is another matter entirely. Any iciness, postmodernist-ness, is void here — what is left is Calvino at his intelligent and most graceful self. He proposes 14 definitions, headings, and then further expansion into several; my favourite headings are: 5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.
A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers. Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them. After the title essay, in a further 35 essays, Calvino journeys through many essays on a number of writers and novels.
The essays are dated between the 60s and the 80s. Of course, the most interesting essays for me were about writers I care for and read: Hemingway, Borges, Twain, Conrad, etc. The essays that surprised me the most were on Gadda and Pliny. View all 4 comments. Jun 11, Karen Witzler rated it really liked it Shelves: calvino-classics. I did not read every word of this book about books as I have not read more than a few of the classics discussed The first chapter is Calvino's fourteen point definition of a "classic" with elaborations after each point.
I copied it out word for word including that wonderful word "pulviscular" into my own Notebook of Books it has manatees on the cover so that I can read this perfect rendering of all I have ever felt for all of literature over and over again in my own I did not read every word of this book about books as I have not read more than a few of the classics discussed I copied it out word for word including that wonderful word "pulviscular" into my own Notebook of Books it has manatees on the cover so that I can read this perfect rendering of all I have ever felt for all of literature over and over again in my own hand.
Then, in thirty-five short essays, Calvino shares his thoughts on the classics that he himself, holds dear. I'm making a Goodreads shelf of his selections. No women. Calvino loves Dr. No Shakespeare, no Dante, no religious texts, and as I said no women -- but still all a pleasure.
Aug 17, W. At their best these essays make you long to rush out and read those writers that Calvino is dealing with and considers to be his personal "classics" e.
But as this this a collection assembled after the author's death, and anyhow like any selection of occasional essays from across four decades of a career, there are also i At their best these essays make you long to rush out and read those writers that Calvino is dealing with and considers to be his personal "classics" e.
But as this this a collection assembled after the author's death, and anyhow like any selection of occasional essays from across four decades of a career, there are also included here those essays which are a bit of a chore to read, which require you to have already read the writers, or read them recently in order to really "get" the pieces e. A very good innings, then, all in all, and now I long to also revisit the maestro's own fiction, which I haven't done for some years May 23, Jonathan rated it really liked it.
Flicking through I am reminded why I recalled it so fondly. Excellent pieces on Tirant lo Blanc which i still need to read! Recommended to any and all book lovers. View 2 comments. I was prescribed this book for an MA I am about to start this September, though this was actually very convient for me as I have been meaning to read this for a while.
Essentially, this collection of essays are calvino espousing what he loves about some of his favourite authors and works of fiction. It's organised in a general chronological order of when an author was active Homer before Hemingway. The real joy that comes from reading this collection is the the unbridled enthusiasm Calvino has f I was prescribed this book for an MA I am about to start this September, though this was actually very convient for me as I have been meaning to read this for a while.
The real joy that comes from reading this collection is the the unbridled enthusiasm Calvino has for the works he is reviewing. This collection has really opened me up to authors I never had a interest in reading, or even knew existed.
One shortcoming is that the collection is entirely filled with male authors unless I seriously missed something , however I'd most likely put that down to history being unkind to female writers, also this collection was not organised by him as its publication was posthumous.
Jul 09, Laura rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Kim, Dagny. Shelves: read , mtbr-challenge , kindle , e-books , italian-literature , viciados-em-livros , literary-criticism , non-fiction , books-on-books. View all 14 comments. Calvino is not only a brilliant author but also an enigmatic bookworm. Can you help donate a copy? When you buy books using these links the Internet Archive may earn a small commission.
Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive , a c 3 non-profit. See more about this book on Archive. Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? Here--spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism--are thirty-six immediately relevant, elegantly written, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.
At a time when the Western canon and the very notion of "literary greatness" have come under increasing disparagement by the vanguard of so-called multiculturalism, Why Read the Classics?
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