Naomi Kanakia has a new book out called What’s So Great About the Great Books. I’m a huge fan of Naomi’s newsletter, Woman of Letters. I love her way of writing about books and writing and the literary scene. So I knew I would want to read her new book and that I’d enjoy spending time in her company. And I did!
I love the way you break down your review into sections; they show the complexity of Kanakia's book. Just for fun I checked how many I've read on the Fadiman-Major list, so I do indeed like reading the classics. Thanks for recommending her book. Looking forward to reading it. In particular, I'd like to know more about her take on integrity.
That's funny because I looked through the Fadiman-Major list and was surprised by how few I'd read! Even though I feel that I do really like reading the classics! However, The New Lifetime Reading Plan contains a 'Going further' section at the end with 100 twentieth century authors that may still be being read in a hundred years (the jury's still out) and I've read a lot of those (it's also a great list!).
What a lovely, lovable review! I've been sold on the Great Books for a long time, but I would still want to read this book, if only to spend time with Naomi's mind. Thank you!
Yes thank you for sharing this book…I will be seeking it out. Reading widely and finding new authors from the past are part of the delight of my reading experience. This is a most wonderful post and has me looking at my bookshelf, I have collected many second hand ‘classics’ that still await me!
One way a child has of fortifying himself against the torments, real and imagined, of the outside world is to become an inveterate reader. Murray was aware of words at an early age, taking special delight, when he was three, in the phrase, from the Lord’s Prayer, “trespass against us.” (He is a faithful Catholic, dedicating his books “to the glory of God.”) He read Hopkins and Eliot early on and, the biography tells us, devoured the poetry of John Milton in a single weekend. Those three authors govern Murray’s entire career. You hear Hopkins in the homemade compounds and heavy consonants (“Nests of golden porridge shattered in the silky-oak trees, / cobs and crusts of it, their glory box”); you sense Milton behind Murray’s larger-scale works, notably his 1998 verse novel, “Fredy Neptune”; but most of all you detect the presence of Eliot, whose self-monitoring Christianity suggests an inner untidiness too vast to be tamed by ordinary secular means. Murray, who met his wife in a Passion play (they were both students at the University of Sydney; he played Satan, and she was in charge of his wardrobe), seems permanently shaped by a small archive of adolescent mortifications and slights. Flinch-prone and skittish, Murray (again, like Eliot) finds his defense in caricature, generalizing about people from a few details or remarks. His temperament allows for only a beat or two between data and conclusion (synonymous too often for Murray with “condemnation”). - Dan Chiasson
Thank you for sharing this book. I will be checking it out as soon as I'm caught up on some other reading.
I love the way you break down your review into sections; they show the complexity of Kanakia's book. Just for fun I checked how many I've read on the Fadiman-Major list, so I do indeed like reading the classics. Thanks for recommending her book. Looking forward to reading it. In particular, I'd like to know more about her take on integrity.
That's funny because I looked through the Fadiman-Major list and was surprised by how few I'd read! Even though I feel that I do really like reading the classics! However, The New Lifetime Reading Plan contains a 'Going further' section at the end with 100 twentieth century authors that may still be being read in a hundred years (the jury's still out) and I've read a lot of those (it's also a great list!).
ooh I'll look that up.
What a lovely, lovable review! I've been sold on the Great Books for a long time, but I would still want to read this book, if only to spend time with Naomi's mind. Thank you!
Yes thank you for sharing this book…I will be seeking it out. Reading widely and finding new authors from the past are part of the delight of my reading experience. This is a most wonderful post and has me looking at my bookshelf, I have collected many second hand ‘classics’ that still await me!
"Reading widely and finding new authors from the past are part of the delight of my reading experience." Yes exactly - me too!
One way a child has of fortifying himself against the torments, real and imagined, of the outside world is to become an inveterate reader. Murray was aware of words at an early age, taking special delight, when he was three, in the phrase, from the Lord’s Prayer, “trespass against us.” (He is a faithful Catholic, dedicating his books “to the glory of God.”) He read Hopkins and Eliot early on and, the biography tells us, devoured the poetry of John Milton in a single weekend. Those three authors govern Murray’s entire career. You hear Hopkins in the homemade compounds and heavy consonants (“Nests of golden porridge shattered in the silky-oak trees, / cobs and crusts of it, their glory box”); you sense Milton behind Murray’s larger-scale works, notably his 1998 verse novel, “Fredy Neptune”; but most of all you detect the presence of Eliot, whose self-monitoring Christianity suggests an inner untidiness too vast to be tamed by ordinary secular means. Murray, who met his wife in a Passion play (they were both students at the University of Sydney; he played Satan, and she was in charge of his wardrobe), seems permanently shaped by a small archive of adolescent mortifications and slights. Flinch-prone and skittish, Murray (again, like Eliot) finds his defense in caricature, generalizing about people from a few details or remarks. His temperament allows for only a beat or two between data and conclusion (synonymous too often for Murray with “condemnation”). - Dan Chiasson
I confess I haven't read much of Les Murray's poetry but reading that made me want to.
I like that he was into Milton and Eliot.
Yeah, he seems like a kind of romantic/traditional kind of guy in some ways.
Loved this review Tash, I’ll be reading Naomi’s book (as a member of the second category)!