Ranking the Classics: Week Three of the 60 in 60
When I'm not blogging for Omnivoracious, I'm primarily a fiction writer and anthology editor. This year, with an incredibly busy schedule, I decided to more or less go offline for six months to finish my latest novel, Finch. No personal blogging at my Ecstatic Days site, just guest bloggers. For my return, I thought it might be nice to give myself a little challenge, so I wrote to my friend Colin Brush at Penguin Books UK and said, "If you'll send me the 60 books in your Great Ideas series, I'll review one a day for 60 days." These beautifully designed little books are usually abridgments of longer works. Authors include the likes of Jonathan Swift, Karl Marx, and Virginia Woolf.
Brush replied that he liked the idea and sent me the books. So for the past three weeks I've started in on what has been called by at least one friend "foolish" and by another "the endeavor of a madman." Penguin's own blog questioned my sanity. Yet, I have persevered to the end of the third week, and my 60 in 60 audacity has been rewarded by attention from, among others, the Guardian (as book site of the week) and the Harvard University Press, which urged its readers to emulate my craziness.
Every Saturday, then, I will report back to Omnivoracious readers on the prior week's reading, ranking each book I've read and turning a spotlight on the best. You can read the entire series of reviews on a special thread of my blog.
This week was an easy one, in terms of selecting a favorite, having had allergic reactions to both Freud and Nietzsche...
1 - John Ruskin's On Art and Life - I love John Ruskin’s writings. Whenever I read Ruskin’s work I always feel like I am safe, in that I’m going to read something that has a reverence for specific details but can also provide a wider context and framework for universal understanding. Ruskin builds his theories and observations on foundations as solid and yet fanciful as the architecture or art under discussion. He also often takes a comfortably conversational tone with the reader, even while talking about very “formal” elements of architecture. The Penguin text consists of two essays, “The Nature of Gothic” and “The Work of Iron,” and the book itself, appropriately enough, is one of the most beautiful in the series (this specific design by David Pearson). Available from Amazon here.
2 - George Orwell's Why I Write - A collection of Orwell’s timeless, pragmatic, and uncompromising essays, including the title essay, “The Lion and the Unicorn,” “A Hanging,” and “Politics and the English Language.” George Orwell was able to bring transparency to the language of deception because he learned to be transparent and straightforward in both his prose and his opinions. Available from Amazon here.
3 - Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own - I read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in my first year of college, more than twenty years ago. Woolf shares some similarities with Proust, and thus my memories of the book faded almost as soon as I finished it, except for some specific descriptive details and ideas. Woolf’s prose seems to float, and the meaning of her work exists often in the sentence, in the paragraph. Like Proust, you live in it for a time, immerse yourself in it, and when you are done you disengage as if from a dream.
4 - Charles Darwin's On Natural Selection - The world-changing book that provided the basic framework for and defense of the theory of evolution. This scientific text has had social and political relevance ever since publication in 1859. This extract includes “Struggle for Existence,” “Natural Selection,” “Difficulties on Theory,” and “Conclusion.” Available from Amazon here.
5 - Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Suffering of the World - While reading the title piece in this collection of essays,* I began to think that maybe masochists are on to something. After all, this is Schopenhauer’s thesis: We know we’re alive not when we are happy, but when we are in pain: “…we never really become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind. On the other hand, all that opposes, frustrates, and resists our will, that is to say all that is unpleasant and painful, impresses itself upon us instantly, directly, and with great clarity. Just as we are conscious not of the healthiness of our whole body but only of the little place where the shoe pinches, so we think not of the totality of our successful activities but of some insignificant trifle or other which continues to vex us.”
6 - Friedrich Nietzsche's Why I Am So Wise - Outrageously iconoclastic ideas about religion and morality, including the infamous theory of the “superman.” I did not expect to find Nietzsche funny, having encountered him in quotation only, but I did find him funny–at times hilarious, if in a bombastic way. Available from Amazon here.
7 - Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents - Freud’s thoughts on guilt and the self, here expressed in the context of society in general, formed the foundation for psychoanalysis.
Lawrence J. Clark Author on January 03, 2009 at 09:19 AM
I applaud you on your endeavors to complete 60 books in 60 days. You must be an enthusiast and part zealot to take on such a task. Please take time to savor the contents of these masterpieces.
I hope for a brief interlude you may savior over mine and tell me what you think. I am a first time author and savor the classics also.
Sincerely,
Lawrence J. Clark
Author
"The War Within"