Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wrath of the Swarm" data-source="post: 1337294" data-attributes="member: 16402">You have objective criteria for "literary greatness"?  Present them.  And once you've done so, explain to me exactly why I should care about the concept you've just defined.Some works are famous because they altered the entire climate around them.  Most of them are tedious, banal, and uninteresting to modern readers, but that's because they had such a tremendous effect that they redefined the baseline, changing the way later works were made.Some works are famous because they might actually reflect aesthetic preferences common to many different people.  That just means that lots of people will tend to find them worthwhile - it says nothing about whether any particular person should find them worthwhile.  What means would you use to do so?  Average all people across time?  Average all people at one moment of time?And some works are famous for the same reason everyone admired the Emperor's new clothes.To be perfectly blunt, I am amazed at the quality of intellect in a person who both believes that people need to culture the proper mindset to appreciate certain works AND that artistic quality isn't subjective.Reality check:  for any work, there's going to be a mindset that considers it to be good.  Of course you can change your perspective to that certain works you think you *should* like seem interesting to you.  That's true of anything out there.  The problem is that you've only ever tried it with things you've been told, by authorities you consider valuable, that you should like.To paraphrase what was said in this thread regarding Fight Club:  the death of self is one of the steps necessary for enlightenment.  I would add the death of the delusion of good taste to that list.</blockquote>

Verification