Do we need a literary canon?

"Jonathan Sacks is right that we need a common culture, but wrong to think it should be based on a canon. Forcing young people to read the Bible won't foster a sense of belonging. Shared references must evolve more organically"

-Richard Jenkyns, Prospect Magazine, December 2007

 

 

The Daily Orange, an independent student newspaper published in Syracuse, New York, takes a look at Shimer College .

For the next month, New York Times' Reading Room bloggers will discuss the new translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Knopf). Mr. Pevear has a recent  essay int the NYT Book Review about the new translation.

On the Uses of a Liberal Education (Part 2: As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor) (pdf)

Earl Shorris, Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1997

 

(Apparent companion piece to Mark Edmundson's.)