Why Read the Classics is an essay about, well, why we read the classics. I would say that the thesis is an implicit thesis, mostly because Italo Calvino gives us multiple definitions and we gather what we think the thesis is from these. Because Calvino never clearly states the thesis, it doesn't really have a certain place where it is at. I would say that the thesis is mostly everywhere in this excerpt of the essay, because there are so many definitions shown. The definition that really stuck with me was, "A classic is a work which regulates the noise of the present to a background hum, which at the same time the classics cannot exist without." I think that this is really what reading the classics is about. We need to focus on what is going on in the story instead of getting caught up in our everyday life.
Since the thesis was not stated, I just took what I read and put it towards what I think the thesis is. I think that what Calvino is trying to say is that classics are just that, classic. They never get old because there is always someone or something in the classic that is timeless and is 'reincarnated' into our everyday life. Calvino basically tells us that we must read the classics because they can still relate to us, even in a different time period.
Calvino, Italo. Why Read the Classics? London: Vintage, 2000. Print.
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