Assertion

Italo Calvino’s, “Why Read the Classics?” Is about how often people nowadays only read in their comfort zone and don’t open their reading experience to other classic books. He starts by saying how all of us feel some sense of shame for the gaps in our reading in other words that people are ashamed to admit that they have not read a famous book. But he reassures the reader that although of his knowledge on the classics there are still many fundamental books that he has not read himself. He structured his essay in 14 points. “In other words, to read a great book for the first time in one’s maturity is an extraordinary pleasure, different from (though one cannot say greater or lesser than) the pleasure of having read it in one’s youth.” He explains how reading in one’s youth could be unpleasant since in order to fully appreciate the classics maturity plays a role in how you interpret a book and whether you understand it or not. Calvino explains how a classic is formative, in the sense that they give a form to future experiences, terms of comparison, schemes for classification, scales of value if the book is read in a person’s youth more often than not all these points are almost always forgotten. Which is why he encourages the reader that there should be a time in adult life to dedicate to revisit the most important books in our youth.