Classics

[qos]

Which "classics" have you read that actually made a strong impression on you, and/or had a significant influence on you? Which do you keep in your library because you truly want to have them at your fingertips to read -- or at least dip into -- again and again?


ETA: Lists are great, folks -- but what I'm really interested in is why and/or how these books touched you in such an important way.

Comments

[athenian-abroad.livejournal.com]

Well....

Autobiography of John Stuart Mill: traces the development of one of the most extraordinary intellects of the 19th century, beginning with an incredibly exacting education at the hands of his father (James Mill, a formidable intellect in his own right), his ensuing depression and recovery (by means of the healing power of poetry, no less), and his adult career as a writer/editor/economist/public intellectual. The Autobiography is also a document of the day-to-day mechanics of the intellectual life of the period -- what did one actually do? (Answer: collaborative study circles...think Bible study groups, but with tomes of political economy instead of epistles and psalms; also, setting up and running lots of little, marginally funded periodicals.)

The Fire Next Time: A recent discovery for me -- as in, I read it last week, but I'm already inclined to add it to my "permanent list." I'm not sure I know how to write about this book yet, other than to say the obvious, that it is about race in America. Except that what it is really about is James Baldwin. That is, the authorial voice and personality, the presence is what makes the book memorable.

Slaughterhouse Five: Vonnegut is the cynics' romantic. And this is his best work. (Though I can see a case for Galapagos, Cat's Cradle, and Bluebeard.)

Breakfast of Champions: More Vonnegut, but for a very specific reason. There is a sort of internal quarrel going on in Vonnegut's novels, and Breakfast of Champions is the only one of his novels that I know of in which this quarrel breaks out into the open. The quarrel is between two competing theories of human nature: the "rubbery test-tube full of chemicals" theory and the "shining beam of light" theory. Vonnegut, as befits the cynics' romantic, alternates between these views depending, approximately, on how depressed he is when he writes a particular chapter. Breakfast is one of the most relentlessly "rubbery test-tube"-centric of Vonnegut's novels...until one of the minor characters (to Vonnegut's surprise, if I recall correctly) pounds on a table and says, "no!" to the whole construct, insisting that it's the artist's job to point out the shining beam of light concealed in the meat-sack.

The Peloponnesian War: I'm going to cheat and link to my own journal on this one.