favorite piece of classical literature? why? or what did you learn from it?

[RebeccaFog]

Rebecca, have you seen the film A Scanner, Darkly (from the Phil K Dick story Through A Scanner, Darkly)?

No Ma'am, I haven't

[Pica Pica]

Rebecca, have you seen the film A Scanner, Darkly (from the Phil K Dick story Through A Scanner, Darkly)?

No Ma'am, I haven't

I've seen scanners though, when his head blows in...brilliant!

[The Middle Way]

I woke up and I was a giant ant.

I hate it when that happens.

[Ell]

A Confederacy of Dunces, anyone?

i started it, but couldn't get interested. though, i've heard some say it was the funniest thing they've ever read.

[RebeccaFog]

A Confederacy of Dunces, anyone?

i started it, but couldn't get interested. though, i've heard some say it was the funniest thing they've ever read.

   It is seriously hilarious. The writing is beautiful too somehow.

[Pica Pica]

A Confederacy of Dunces, anyone?

i started it, but couldn't get interested. though, i've heard some say it was the funniest thing they've ever read.

   It is seriously hilarious. The writing is beautiful too somehow.

I started it too, found the lead character too irritating to continue.

[RebeccaFog]

A Confederacy of Dunces, anyone?

i started it, but couldn't get interested. though, i've heard some say it was the funniest thing they've ever read.

   It is seriously hilarious. The writing is beautiful too somehow.

I started it too, found the lead character too irritating to continue.

   The book revolves around a self centered & selfish fool whose point of view concerning the world is that everyone else is beneath him.  As you read on, the circumstances surrounding his perspective become as silly as the Marx Brothers in 'Monkey Business'.

[Chaunte]

Wow...  THis is hard.

I would have to add Henry V.  If for no other reason than for two quotes:

The sum of our answer is but this:  We would not seek battle such as we are.  And yet, such as we are, we will not shun it.

Harold.  Save thee thy labors, gentle harold.  Come no more for ransom.  You shall have none save these my joints!  WHICH, if they be as I leave them, shall yield ... little.

Chaunte

[ChildOfTheLight]

I like Metamorphosis by Kafka. I like the fact that the author strenuously denied that it was metaphorical; it's about a guy, woke up one day as a bug, period.

I like authors who write and think that way.  J.R.R. Tolkien and Vladimir Nabokov, two of my triumvirate of favorite authors (the third is Ayn Rand), said similar things about their work.

My favorite classic?  Among books that are widely considered such, 1984 by Orwell, Moby Dick by Melville, and Invitation to a Beheading by Nabokov.

1984 scared the hell out of me at 14, and probably was the first push at really getting me into politics, although my basic views were the same then as they were as long as I've had political views, and as they are now.

I learned absolutely nothing from Moby Dick -- it was just a great story, even if Melville did feel compelled to insert a lot of essays on whales.

My two favorite books, though, are ones which are probably not considered classics by most academics, but which will outlast their critics: The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien and Atlas Shrugged by Rand.  They (along with all Tolkien's other work, in his case, for it is all connected) are drawn on two of the greatest scales ever conceived in literature.  The stakes are the same: ultimate victory against ultimate defeat.  Both make clear, among many other things, the terrible danger of seeking power over others, even with intent to do good.

What I learned from both is too long to type right now.  I'll leave you with two quotes, the first from LoTR, the second from AS, that say so much more than is apparent at first about each -- and if you want to know the whole story, you'll have to read them -- which I highly recommend you do (read Anthem by Rand before Atlas Shrugged, though.)

"Many that live deserve death.  And some that die deserve life.  Can you give that to them?  Then do not be too quick to deal out death in judgment.  For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?  Have you ever asked what is the root of money?"

[NicholeW.]

Hmm, classics. How about Mahabharata and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice? I always love rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude and Vargas Llosa's War at the End of the World.

All of Patricia McKillip's fantasies as well as those of Ursula LeGuin. I recall my first read of The Left Hand of Darkness totally astounded me. A world where people lived normally molting gender every-so-often.

[katia]

Hmm, classics. How about Mahabharata

do you think there could have been a pre-historic nuclear war or maybe something extraterrestrial hit the earth?

Gurkha,
flying a swift and powerful vimana
hurled a single projectile
Charged with all the power of the Universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and flame
As bright as the thousand suns
Rose in all its splendour...
a perpendicular explosion
with its billowing smoke clouds...
...the cloud of smoke
rising after its first explosion
formed into expanding round circles
like the opening of giant parasols...
..it was an unknown weapon,
An iron thunderbolt,
A gigantic messenger of death,
Which reduced to ashes
The entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.
...The corpses were so burned
As to be unrecognizable.
The hair and nails fell out;
Pottery broke without apparent cause,
And the birds turned white.
After a few hours
All foodstuffs were infected...
...to escape from this fire
The soldiers threw themselves in streams
To wash themselves and their equipment

the description sounds to me that a large meteorite had hit the earth at the time of the battle, which by that ancient culture, would have been perceived as a projectile sent from a "god" to exterminate all involved and would also be considered a punishment. If you look at the topography of the map in India and to the east and north east of the country you will notice a "hole" of sorts where a possible impact may have happened in the 14th c BCE. If a meteorite did fall and cause the described catastrophe, it would look like a nuclear blast with radiation destroying most living organisms within a 100 to 500 mile radius of the impact and causing sickness and bleaching of land animals and landscapes in the area. i believe that is what they witnessed.

[NicholeW.]

do you think there could have been a pre-historic nuclear war or maybe something extraterrestrial hit the earth?

It's been said that nothing new exists "under the sun." Perhaps. Although the things I like in Mahabharata really are not the battling. I prefer the interplay of the characters.

Draupadi was my favorite. She's strong and capable. And had a harem of the strongest and manliest men in India!! haha 

As for the guys. I suppose I should prefer Arjuna, except that I was attracted to Karna, his nemesis.

In Ts terms I would still go with Left Hand of Darkness. I read it when it came out in '69 or '70 and was simply astounded that the people on Winter were ambisexual, partook of either human sex alternately. I remember just being very desirous of having at least been born that way instead of the frustrating way I was born. A real eye-opener for a pre-college TS. 

[tekla]

Louise May Allcott's Little Women.  Jo March was everything I aspired to be, including a girl.
--- what I learned - you can play with gender and still get what you want

Will's top plays - R&J, Hamlet, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew
-- I learned a lot about what it is to be human

Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States
-- I learned the Golden Rule, those that have the gold, get to make the rules

Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass
-- Turns out I'm not the only one lost down a rabbit hole

George Orwell, Animal Farm and 1984
- All animals are equal, some are just more equal than others.  In other news, 1984 was NOT supposed to be the instruction manual many in power seem to view it as.

Other Thoughts:

A Confederacy of Dunces - good, but not a classic.  (not yet at least)

Tolkin was a highly respected academic, a true scholor.  He was an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon language from 1925 to 1945, and Merton Professor of English language and literature from 1945 to 1959.  I don't know anyone who dismisses LotR.

Ayn Rand has trouble in academic circles, largely because even if you agree with her political conclusions,  her arguments do not justify them.  A big problem for those who would defend her.  Moreover, I think her take on the strength of America being one of rational egoism and individualism is a mis-reading of the notion of 'enlightened self-interest' stressed by the Founding Fathers.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?  Have you ever asked what is the root of money?"
-- largely, its imagination and a collective agreement that its real, when in fact, its not.

[Ayana]

  Beowulf is one of my favorites, although a slow read. I find it interesting to look through the eyes of someone with a narrow understanding. To see monsters and heros only because one does not have the perspective to see reality and embrace it.
  But to force me to pick just one 'classic', now that's just rude  .