Masterpieces of World Literature, Philosophy and Science

[Gary Childress]

WARNING: POSSIBLY SPOILERS!!

This is a thread to discuss all things pertaining to great works of world literature, philosophy and science.

So I bought two books last week, both used hardcover and over 600 pages each for a good bit less than $10.00 a piece (compare at 30.00+ each new). Both are in excellent shape. One book is titled: Masterpieces of World Philosophy and the other Masterpieces of World Literature. Both are edited by Frank N. Magill. Between the two books they contain short summaries of probably over 250 great works of literature and philosophy.

Over the years I've read a good bit of stuff of and about great works of philosophy and literature and I have forgotten much of what I read. So I'm thinking these two books might be good refreshers and help me recapture a little of what I once knew plus help me learn new things I did not know before.

I've started off with Masterpieces of World Literature and have read the first two summaries. They are in alpha by title. The first one was Absolom, Absolom! by William Faulkner and the second The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

I've seen Absolom, Absolom! god knows how many times in used book stores but never bothered to buy nor read it so that was a new one for me. Huck Finn I've read a couple times in high school and college. Who hasn't? But it was a nice refresher. Coincidentally to recent news, both initial books covered center a great deal around the issue of the American South and Slavery.

According to the summary Absolom, Absolom! carries the theme that slavery was the undoing of the South, a plague that destroyed every soul it touched including the plantation owners. For Huck Finn the book makes big of a recurring theme of the river being a kind of place of safety and serenity compared to society. Every time Huck and Jim land on the banks and encounter society, they encounter all sort of hypocrisy and mayhem until they retreat again to the safety and sanctuary of the river.

So I hope to do more reading but I'm not going to push myself to read on a regular basis, only when I feel like it. Otherwise I tend to get discouraged when I don't meet projections.

Thoughts, comments? Anyone else here familiar with Absolom, Absolom! or Twain's Huck Finn? Also feel free to discuss other "masterpieces" of world literature, philosophy or science.

 

[bhavv]

I don't think you can have masterpieces of sciences though as all research is outdated by newer research and such.

But you could say that the work of an individual scientist was a masterpiece maybe?

But then, its not like Mozart.

 

[Gary Childress]

I don't think you can have masterpieces of sciences though as all research is outdated by newer research and such.

But you could say that the work of an individual scientist was a masterpiece maybe?

Hmm. You have a good point. I changed the title to exclude science.

EDIT: OK Changed the title back to include "science" after seeing Valka's comment.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I haven't read Huckleberry Finn or Absolom, so I can't really comment.

I'm not quite finished with The Trial by Franz Kafka. Honestly I don't really know what to make of it. The easy interpretation is that the judicial system is messed up and makes things worse, but I have a feeling there has to be more to it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This is a thread to discuss all things pertaining to great works of world literature and philosophy.

So I bought two books last week, both used hardcover and over 600 pages each for a good bit less than $10.00 a piece (compare at 30.00+ each new). Both are in excellent shape. One book is titled: Masterpieces of World Philosophy and the other Masterpieces of World Literature. Both are edited by Frank N. Magill. Between the two books they contain short summaries of probably over 250 great works of literature and philosophy.

Over the years I've read a good bit of stuff of and about great works of philosophy and literature and I have forgotten much of what I read. So I'm thinking these two books might be good refreshers and help me recapture a little of what I once knew plus help me learn new things I did not know before.

I've started off with Masterpieces of World Literature and have read the first two summaries. They are in alpha by title. The first one was Absolom, Absolom! by William Faulkner and the second The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

I've seen Absolom, Absolom! god knows how many times in used book stores but never bothered to buy nor read it so that was a new one for me. Huck Finn I've read a couple times in high school and college. Who hasn't? But it was a nice refresher. Coincidentally to recent news, both initial books covered center a great deal around the issue of the American South and Slavery.

According to the summary Absolom, Absolom! carries the theme that slavery was the undoing of the South, a plague that destroyed every soul it touched including the plantation owners. For Huck Finn the book makes big of a recurring theme of the river being a kind of place of safety and serenity compared to society. Every time Huck and Jim land on the banks and encounter society, they encounter all sort of hypocrisy and mayhem until they retreat again to the safety and sanctuary of the river.

So I hope to do more reading but I'm not going to push myself to read on a regular basis, only when I feel like it. Otherwise I tend to get discouraged when I don't meet projections.

Thoughts, comments? Anyone else here familiar with Absolom, Absolom! or Twain's Huck Finn? Also feel free to discuss other "masterpieces" of world literature, philosophy or science.

I read Huckleberry Finn in Grade 6. I never heard of the other one you mention.

I don't think you can have masterpieces of sciences though as all research is outdated by newer research and such.

But you could say that the work of an individual scientist was a masterpiece maybe?

But then, its not like Mozart.

Of course you can have masterpieces of science, as long as you treat them as historical documents of their time rather than as current knowledge.

 

[Gary Childress]

I haven't read Huckleberry Finn or Absolom, so I can't really comment.

I'm not quite finished with The Trial by Franz Kafka. Honestly I don't really know what to make of it. The easy interpretation is that the judicial system is messed up and makes things worse, but I have a feeling there has to be more to it.

IIRC (what I've heard) The Trial, as a story, is sort of a metaphor for modern bureaucracy and how impersonal and uncaring it can be, to the extent that the lead character in the story isn't even aware of what his crime is or anything.

...or something along those lines. It's been awhile since I read it but it's in this book I just purchased. So hopefully I'll get to it.

 

[Gary Childress]

According to the book I'm reading, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (first published in 1876)is not quite the literary masterpiece that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is. I read the book many moons ago for school assignments. So this is review again for me.

Huck Finn seems to be more steeped in social commentary I think, especially concerning slavery. Tom Sawyer (to me) portrays growing up on the Mississippi river prior to the Civil War almost as idyllically as a Thomas Kinkaid painting.

The critical evaluation section draws some parallel between the relationship of Tom (the idealistic dreamer) to Huck (more down to earth) and the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. In the last paragraph the reviewer says, "It was Twain's genius to understand that the games Quixote played out of 'madness' were, in fact, those played by children with deadly seriousness." The critical review notes that Tom Sawyer is a book for adults who have passed beyond childhood. So that's an interesting parallel for me to think about. Perhaps Twain had something like Don Quixote in mind when he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I don't know.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Do you think Huckleberry Finn lives up to its reputation?

I honestly have no idea, as I haven't read it.

 

[Gary Childress]

Do you think Huckleberry Finn lives up to its reputation?

I honestly have no idea, as I haven't read it.

I don't know. I'm not much of a literary type. I'm more into philosophy because philosophy tends to spell things out more plainly and deliberately. I sometimes wonder what all the hype is about Shakespeare (for example). But I will admit that Twain's writing does sort of hit a soft spot in me, as an American. I never lived in the kind of America portrayed in Twain's writings but I do sort of have a romantic vision of pre-Civil War America in that way.

And I do remember as a kid having a very active imagination, making bamboo spears and bows and arrows and other things with my friends down near the creek in the subdivision we lived in. God only knows what a suburban kid needs spears, bows and arrows for but we made them regardless.

Childhood was a really magical time for me and Twain's writings sort of remind me of some of my own escapades a little bit (even though they were much, much less grand). I guess that's why the reviewer says the story is more for adults, sort of a way of vicariously reliving childhood or something I guess.

 

[Wrymouth3]

I read Huckleberry Finn in Grade 6. I never heard of the other one you mention.

I assume they had mentioned or made you guys read something by Faulkner? I wonder though, do schools instead assign readings by Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood because they are Canadian?

 

[Gary Childress]

One more section for this evening. Selection # 4 is Virgil's Aeneid.

I've never read the Aeneid but have heard of it. Apparently it's divided into two parts, the first sort of like Homer's Odyssey dealing with the hero Aeneid's departure from Troy and subsequent wanderings and the second part resembling the Iliad with a battle for the land that would one day become Rome.

I guess the most obvious thing about the Aeneid is that it is a "rip-off" of the Greek epic tales of the fall of Troy and the subsequent wanderings of the Greek heroes afterwards. (I guess there were no international copyright laws back then)

Back in the day you just weren't a nation worth anything if you didn't have an epic national poem telling of the greatness of your people. Although I sort of wonder why the Romans chose the Trojans (the losers) as their forefathers.

It is sort of interesting the apparent differences discussed between the Aeneid and the Homeric tales. The Homeric tales seem to make much over being courageous and brave and setting a fine example in battle. The Aeneid is apparently a bit more nuanced such as when Aeneid gets involved with the Queen of Carthage, he feels badly about breaking off his love affair with her in order to accomplish his prophesized destiny of founding Rome. The critical review mentions the appearance of pity on the behalf of Aeneid toward his enemies.

I guess this is a little different from the outright rage and anger the Greek heroes feel toward the Trojans in the Iliad. For the Greeks it was all honor and bravery and for the Romans it's destiny and pity toward the conquered. Obviously when you need to manage an empire you need your subjects to be cooperative and I suppose running around avenging stolen women is not something that wins converts into the empire.

It's hard to get much in the way of a comparison between the Homeric poems and the Aeneid from just a short summary and some critical notes but I suppose it would make for interesting further study to compare the two epics and how they may differ.

Has anyone else here read both the Homeric Epics and the Aeneid and have any comparative comments regarding them?

 

[Narz]

I'd rather read one 600 masterpiece than a 600 page cliffnotes summery of some dude's selection of the best of them.

Great literature inspires & takes you to other worlds, reading a few pages about such a work doesn't.

It's like a 2-hour mashup of movie highlights. I don't see the value beyond discovering works that sound interesting that I should check out.

 

[Zkribbler]

Do you think Huckleberry Finn lives up to its reputation?

I honestly have no idea, as I haven't read it.

On one hand it does. It portrays Jim as a human being, not a stereotypical slave, which was a huge step forward for literature. Meanwhile Huck is wrestling with his conscience. He's absorbed the racist beliefs of his upbringing, but he finds himself force to choose between what he's always been taught is right and what his heart tells him is right. When he doesn't turn Jim over to the slave hunters, he's deeply ashamed of himself for "doing wrong."

On the other hand, when Huck and Jim realized they've floated passed Cairo in the dark and are headed ever deeper into the South, it never occurs to either of them that they need to turn around and head back north. :wall: This is one of those inexplicably dopey things that writers sometimes have their characters do, like in The Great Gatsby, where on a scalding hot day, everyone decides to leave Long Island and head into the city [in the days before air conditioning].

 

[Gary Childress]

I'd rather read one 600 masterpiece than a 600 page cliffnotes summery of some dude's selection of the best of them.

Great literature inspires & takes you to other worlds, reading a few pages about such a work doesn't.

It's like a 2-hour mashup of movie highlights. I don't see the value beyond discovering works that sound interesting that I should check out.

It doesn't really make that much difference, Narz. At the end of the day we've both read 600 pages. You can accomplish what you want by reading a novel. I'll accomplish what I want by reading summaries of 100 of them.

 

[Perfection]

Why don't you just read the wikipedia pages of all the great works?

 

[Zkribbler]

Don't overlook "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant, and excellent overview of philosophy.

 

[Narz]

It doesn't really make that much difference, Narz. At the end of the day we've both read 600 pages. You can accomplish what you want by reading a novel. I'll accomplish what I want by reading summaries of 100 of them.

Indeed, my opinion is just my opinion.

If it were summaries of technical manuals I'd say don't waste time reading the whole thing but IMO the point of classics is that they are really, really good, if they could be shrunk & still be just as beautiful/amazing they wouldn't be classic but just typical overly-wordy books.

 

[Zkribbler]

I disagree that classics are "really, really good." I don't like Hemingway, but if you go back and compare his works to something like "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or writings of the Bronte sisters, then you can really respect what a huge leap forward his simplification of language was.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are both undeniably classics, but I wouldn't read either for pleasure. I read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire just to brag that I'd read it. The only purpose of Chaucer is to torture university English majors.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I assume they had mentioned or made you guys read something by Faulkner? I wonder though, do schools instead assign readings by Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood because they are Canadian?

I never read any Margaret Atwood until college, and even then I started with her essays. I got into her novels on my own, not as any course requirement.

Actually, the Canadian authors I remember most clearly from high school were Pierre Berton and Farley Mowat. My Grade 10 social studies teacher told us to go to the library, find a book by a Canadian author, read it, and write a review. I ended up reading The Serpent's Coil, by Farley Mowat. Later on, the English teacher gave us a list of novels to choose from - Never Cry Wolf was on that list, so I read it. I found some Farley Mowat novels among my grandmother's books and kept them, so they're around here somewhere. I'll get to them at some point.


@Narz: I think that how you feel about summaries is how I feel about Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Those are okay to get a feel for the book, but they're no fit substitute for the book itself.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I don't think you can have masterpieces of sciences though as all research is outdated by newer research and such.

But you could say that the work of an individual scientist was a masterpiece maybe?

But then, its not like Mozart.

I'd like to think the Principia Mathematica still holds up in 2015.