THE ENJOYMENT OF LITERATURE

A travel book through literature -- ""so you're going to read the classics"". A long introductory chapter launches the reader into the realm of Powy's own choice of the world's literature, and he is given sign posts which will help him orientate himself, and know why Powys feels that literature and the enjoyment of the best is the highest form of mental development. At times he piles Ossa on Pelion, heaping up his categorical phrases and encomium.... When it comes to the discussion of his chosen landmarks of world literature, he gets away from this tendency to overwrite, and makes a definite contribution to literary criticism. He starts with Homer and travels through to Proust, including in his path the Bible, Greek tragedians, Dante, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervates, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, Dickens, Whitman, Dostolevsky, Melville, Poe, Arnold, Hardy and Nietzche. This is for the market that wants to acquire culture second hand, rather than for those who are seeking the finer type of literary criticism. But it should have intellectual snob appeal.