Great Books

Success! I just came across (or, rather, was directed to) a set of The Great Books of the Western World. First seen, by me, in Nim Cohen's closet, I've coveted this set despite the miniscule font and generally unreadble printing. Now, for the pittance I won off the Rose Bowl this year (the set retails for a cool grand on Amazon...heaven knows what it would cost at the old brick 'n mortar), I have made the collection my own. Here's a little from the wiki on the collection:

The project got its start at the University of Chicago. University president Robert Hutchins collaborated with Mortimer Adler to develop a course, generally aimed at businessmen, for the purpose of filling in gaps in education, to make one more well-rounded and familiar with the "Great Books" and ideas of the past three millennia. Among the original students was William Benton, future US Senator and then CEO of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was he who proposed a series of books presenting the greatest works of the canon, complete and unabridged, to be edited by Hutchins and Adler and published by Encyclopædia Britannica. Hutchins was wary, fearing that the works would be sold and treated as encyclopedias, cheapening the great books they were. Nevertheless, he was persuaded to agree to the project and pay $60,000 for it.

Not a bad concept, eh? Of course, there have been dissenters. The more vociferous trot out the "dead, white males" line (which, in my very early youth, I misunderstood for years as some kind of strange reference to maladdressed correspondence); no women, no minorities, blah, blah, blah (hrm, hope that doesn't sound insensitive). But I take seriously some of the other lines of attack:

Others thought that while the selected authors were worthy, there was too much emphasis on the complete works of a single author (even less notable ones) rather than a wider selection of authors and representative works (for instance, all of Shakespeare's plays are included, but no Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson.) Defenders of the set have pointed out that any reasonable number of volumes cannot possibly represent all authors or works that some readers might find desirable, and that any selection of authors and works is bound to be controversial to some extent. The second edition of the set already contains 130 authors and 517 individual works. Ironically, the inclusion of so many writers and so much material has led to complaints of cramped typography. The editors point out that the guides to additional reading for each topic in the Syntopicon refer the interested reader to many more authors—including, incidentally, Marlowe and Jonson.

That defense sounds like a serious cop out to me. Let's face. I love the Bard as much as the next guy, but a complete collection of his work includes more mediocre works than you can shake a spear at (thank you, thank you)...or at least I'm told by the Claremont Shakespeare Club, which has seen fit to never invite me to their august gatherings. Apparently, they're plugging through all of Bill's works, without exception. Upon hearing that, I decided not to take exception to my exclusion.

But this is all neither here nor there. I concur heartily with any critic who cries loudly for Johnson or Marlowe to join this canon, if it means culling the fat from the Shakespeare list.

Whoof. Anyway, I should be getting back to work, which is why I'm in the library to begin with.