Imaginative Literature

by Robert Maynard Hutchins (Editor), Mortimer J. Adler (Editor), Clifton Fadiman (Associate Editor)

Genres: Classics

727 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Robert Maynard Hutchins (LL.B., Yale Law School, 1925; B.A., Yale University, 1921) was an educational philosopher, dean of Yale Law School (1927-1929), and president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago.

While he was president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins implemented wide-ranging and controversial reforms of the University, including the elimination of varsity football. The most far-reaching reforms involved the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago, which was retooled into a novel pedagogical system built on Great Books, Socratic dialogue, comprehensive examinations and early entrance to college. Although the substance of this Hutchins Plan was abandoned by the University shortly after Hutchins resigned in 1951, an adapted version of the program survives at Shimer College in Chicago.

Editor-in-Chief of Great Books of the Western World and Gateway to the Great Books; co-editor of The Great Ideas Today; Chairman of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (1943-1974).
He was the husband of novelist Maude Hutchins.

Reviews

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a presumption in the certainty of the sagacity the editor believes these stories represent and he knows that his ethos, pathos and mythos is superior because it is his and his identity is clearly the only identity worth having. That paradox inherent within these selections is what makes these selections marvelous as a whole.

I want to note a couple of points from these stories in particular Mario and the Magician by Thomas Mann was clearly chosen to highlight the dangers of a charismatic fascist leader hypnotizing the masses into a frenzied dream-like state in order to make Italy great again and it was included to show the dangers Il Duce posed and by extension Adolph Hitler soon to hold sway over Germany, and, of course, to act as a warning so that it will never happen in America.

I believe that Mann was wrong in believing it was the Magician hypnotizing the people, as is demonstrated today by Trump and his MAGA hat wearing morons since they are one and the same, there was no hypnotizing of the masses, if anything it was the masses that hypnotize Trump and Fox News.

The morons won’t take vaccines and they boo their non-charismatic leader when he said he took a booster (12/2021), they all just love to hate the same thing and it’s all a performance art to them and neither needs to be shown how to be stupid since they are all willfully ignorant.

Science and truth are the enemy to them and stands between their hate and their ignorant world-view and they are anti-vaccine and believe in the big lie that the election was stolen. Their meaning comes from their ignorance and hate and Mann misleads us today as to the real problem that is going on. There is an obscure side-note regarding Mann I want to note. He wrote an incredibly awful book called Non-Political Man in 1924 that did nothing but channels Oswald Spengler’s even worst instincts that laid the foundation for the Nazis, but by 1929 Mann had walked away from those beliefs and saw the threat the fascist posed to the world albeit thinking the people were hypnotized by charismatic leaders.

They, Trump, Fox News and their mindless MAGA hat supporters are not controlled by the magician, they are the problem in totality. Trump is not charismatic; he is dull but is in sync with their hate and ignorance. There is a myth that Hitler, Il Duce and Trump were charismatic and the people were hypnotized into believing things they didn’t want to. The truth is sadder and worse, Trump’s followers (48%) are morons, willfully ignorant and are unreachable and don’t need to be hypnotized in ordered to hate those who are not them.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some really, really amazing stories in this collection. This is part of a series called the "Gateway to the Great Books" which is an add-on to the "Great Books of the Western World". The "Gateway" contains shorts works instead of the longer works of the "Great Books" series. This specific book contains short stories, and they come from the most eminent authors around.

My favorite stories were "The Apple-Tree" by John Galsworthy (an amazing love story), "First Love" by Ivan Turgenev (the best story I've ever read - very touching), "The Rocking-Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence, and "The Three Hermits" by Leo Tolstoy (an embodiment in prose of what it means to be a Christian). But all of the stories here have been selected because they are at the apex of the craft, and I would recommend this collection (plus the first story collection, GGB #2), to all.

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Here is a full list of the stories in this collection (from Wikipedia):

Volume 3: Imaginative Literature II

Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat"
Herman Melville, "Billy Budd"
Ivan Bunin, "The Gentleman from San Francisco"
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Rappaccini's Daughter"
George Eliot, "The Lifted Veil"
Lucius Apuleius, "Cupid and Psyche" from The Golden Ass
Ivan Turgenev, "First Love"
Fyodor Dostoevsky, "White Nights"
John Galsworthy, "The Apple-Tree"
Gustave Flaubert, "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller"
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
Honoré de Balzac, "A Passion in the Desert"
Anton Chekhov, "The Darling"
Isaac Singer, "The Spinoza of Market Street"
Alexander Pushkin, "The Queen of Spades"
D. H. Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner"
Henry James, "The Pupil"
Thomas Mann, "Mario and the Magician"
Isak Dinesen, "Sorrow-Acre"
Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"; "The Three Hermits"; "What Men Live By"

[Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This heavy tome contains exemplary works from a selected set of authors. As a first read, I focused on authors that I have not yet read and would like to explore their styles and contents for further closer read. I have found that Isaac B. Singer a great story teller with a brisk and lively pace, exploring philosophic ideas and human conditions in his "The Spinoza of Market Street" (I reviewed fully elsewhere), Ivan Bunin with his more elaborate yet still lively depiction of life and its catastrophe ("The Gentleman from San Francisco"). However I fail in full appreciation of Pushkin in his "Queen of Spades", nor Galsworthy's "Apple-Tree". I am delightfully surprised by the otherworldly tone and style in George Eliot's "The Lifted Veil".

There are other authors that I like but will leave their works for future reading (Chekov, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Mann etc).

This is an excellent volume through its introduction of writers of varied styles and contents.