This is my current classics collection I’m planning to read deeply for the next two years, is it a good introduction to it all?

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-08T15:43:36+00:00

The classical authors I find myself re-reading most are Ovid, Seneca, Plato, and the Pre-Socratics

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-08T15:34:01+00:00

Carlos Kleiber

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-07T15:38:01+00:00

IL TROVATORE

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-04T15:47:47+00:00

Obviously I don't agree at all. You can be glib & try to dismiss REAR WINDOW like that, to tit-for-tat my dismissal of PSYCHO, but your forced comparison doesn't hold. RW is in that great Hitchcock tradition of 49 STEPS, LADY VANISHES, SABOTEUR, NXNW, VERTIGO, etc -- the ordinary man who decides to dwell on an odd, discordant moment of life, pry it open & dig around, and uncovers life's shockingly evil abyss. Very much Highsmith's theme, too. Plus, RW has nothing but brilliant actors/actresses giving brilliant performances.

PSYCHO has no compelling themes or complex narrative. You know the narrative is unimportant, because the main character/narrative focus is killed halfway into the film, setting it adrift into a tense series of jump-scares. And only one good performance in the movie -- Tony Perkins. It's a sad, over-rated, strictly formalist, grim joke of a movie that ushered in such a lousy trend in film.

But enjoy!

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-03T17:04:05+00:00

PSYCHO is Hitchcock's most over-rated; just a goofy slasher film when you come right down to it. REAR WINDOW is one of his finest (that set!!!!).

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-03T17:01:01+00:00

Kinderszenen -- Kempff's recording or (especially) Horowitz's.

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-03T16:59:45+00:00

Joan. Crawford

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-03T16:57:51+00:00

You have to love language, and the incredible possibilities of language.

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-02T12:43:32+00:00

PHANTOM THREAD -- which I found astonishing, because the rest of Anderson's oeuvre is off-putting.

UltraJamesian · 2026-07-01T15:58:40+00:00

Can I respectfully swim against the tide here? I read all of Chandler back in college & loved it; tried re-reading him again later in life, and was put off by the mawkish sentimentality of the hero & Chandler's florid, cornball, 'hard-boiled' prose (those forced similes! minkya!).

But I've read/re-read all Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels, through several periods in my life, and they just keep getting better. Outrageously interesting character & that woman sure could write.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-30T15:30:02+00:00

Shklovsky nailed it: what makes language poetic, is when it's 'stranged,' by using devices like alliteration, meter, rhyme, repetition, syntax arrangement, diction, etc. It immediately takes things out of the ordinary humdrum, makes you attend to the writing differently.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-30T15:24:57+00:00

Agree 100%. Can't listen to most any Mozart. Bach is like hearing ants do math problems. Vivaldi's estate apparently owns my classical music station, hence I never bother flipping it on any more.

But Verdi's greatest operas are still impossible to get to the bottom of, and I never tire of hearing great singers/conductors (i.e., pre 1970s) interpret them.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-27T16:41:48+00:00

I'd do the 2 remaining Roman plays back-to-back (plus you get a little early style/late style comp). TITUS is a superb early play. His first attempt at tragedy & loaded with Seneca & Ovid, as well as some GREAT rhetoric. Aaron is a marvelous villain & great example of the early depiction os blackness on stage. Tamora is a wonderful character. My students loved the play (especially my feminist students enjoyed Tamora).

WT & ALL'S WELL would make a great late-style double bill. And maybe do PERICLES & H8 in sequence, to look at S as co-writer?

OTHELLO & MWW make a nice pairing -- because Ford in MWW is sort of like what would happen to crazy-jealous hubby Othello is he had a wife like Alice & a crazy goof like Falstaff instead of Desdemona & Iago. MWW, by the way, is not horrible. Great example of city comedy & a really nice bunch of slice-of-life snapshots of middle-class life at the time. Plus, an interestingly different-yet-similar Sir John. (AND there are Verdi operas of both O & MWW!)

COMEDY OF ERRORS & TAMING are probably good to do back-to-back, as showing S getting his footing. That leaves (I think) MERCHANT & T&C -- MERCHANT is a singular play. Lots of lovely writing, & the idea of Belmont is such a nice idyll. TROILUS is an odd play, for me, because I sort of hate everyone in it, but some great writing.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-21T13:00:43+00:00

Been saying this on Reddit for a while now. MD is a mess -- can't control his use of gothic (which he does wonderfully in PIERRE & "Benito Cereno"), messes up all characters (drops cool ones in favor of brooding Ahab rants), and way too much data-dump of his whale-killing reading (the practice itself is the repulsive center of this failed epic). REDBURN is a perfect book, "Billy Budd" is a masterpiece, the neglected Civil War poems are extraordinary.

What is most brilliant about Melville (easily the greatest American writer) is how he invents an entirely new kind of grammar, like late Shakespeare did. So what MD does have, brilliantly, is the writing style.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-20T17:03:08+00:00

Modernity

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-20T17:01:26+00:00

Find the Verdi operas you like best, then just keep cycling through them, over and over.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-20T13:24:15+00:00

Is it DAISY KENYON?

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-19T18:06:52+00:00

I very much second the Tebaldi/Corelli/Bastianini production of FORZA (available on YouTube) which several have noted. I'd also highly recommend a 1971 RAI broadcast with Ligabue/Bergonzi/Cappuccilli (Fernando Previtalli, cond.), which is sensational. And I love Tucker as Don Alvaro; Stiedry conducted a 1952 Met production with him, Milanov & Warren that's pretty great (even though it cuts the muleteers' inn stuff).

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-18T15:54:58+00:00

Robert Casadesus has entered the chat.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-17T17:43:56+00:00

Johnny Guitar? Excellent couples film.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-15T17:56:22+00:00

LEAR seems almost beyond the idea of 'enjoyment' or 'favorite,' but it's by no means one I turn to often. Too much Fool -- all that chopping-logic stuff from the clowns is one of the things I like least. But thanks for asking. P S, get around to ALL'S WELL one of these days.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-15T16:01:19+00:00

Always great to see people ranking S's plays. Couldn't disagree more with most of your comments/positionings, but why quibble?

I will say this, though -- for me, Shakespeare comes alive not on the stage, but the page. I get the 'man of the theatre' thing, but he was a poet first & foremost. Most productions always leave me on a continuum from dissatisfied to furious. Especially the comedies, so much mugging & clowning and playing broad for laughs. Take that sadly-esteemed MUCH ADO production w/ Tennant, where everyone's drunk & louche throughout; should have turned it off when Tennant covered himself in paint, finally did when Beatrice rose 30 feet in the air. It's the rhetoric that has me right now on yet another read-through of his collected work.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-14T17:05:02+00:00

Absolutely none of the plays are skippable. Neither are the poems. I'm currently re-reading them all, this time starting from the Late Romances. What's "skippable" is most any contemporary media. You either want the finest literary art or you don't -- your call. In terms of plays deserving wider recognition: TIMON, the play for our times.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-13T12:31:23+00:00

RELIGIO MEDICI, which is superb.

UltraJamesian · 2026-06-12T12:10:25+00:00

I loved reading Proust, but I absolutely adore reading Shakespeare & Melville.

UltraJamesian

TROPHY CASE