Calvino's Essay: Question 4

Something that stood out to me in Calvino's essay was reason fourteen: 14. A classic is a work which persists as background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway. This stuck out to me because it shows Calvino is not telling us JUST to read the classics. He is showing us in this reason that the classics sometimes play the background music to more current books main show. This explains to us that classics are sometimes meant to just make a good foundation for us. A certain passage in the explanation of fourteen also stuck out to me: "All that can be done is for each one of us to invent our own ideal library of our classics; and I would say that one half of it should consist of books we have read and that have meant something for us, and the other half of books which we intend to read and which we suppose might mean something to us. We should also leave a space for surprises and chance discoveries." I like this passage because it's completely true. Especially the last part. We should always be expecting the unexpected. Another part of this essay I did enjoy was his language. It was somewhat sarcastic at times and I have a burning passion for sarcasm.

Calvino, Italo. "Why Read the Classics?" Why Read the Classics? London: Vintage, 2000. Print.