Quite true about point two! So glad you enjoyed it and thank you for teaching that class. Your new students are in for a real treat. I still keep all my books from that class.
I definitely think you'll enjoy CCL. I hope to see a Priory post about it at some point. :)
Those are excellent benchmarks for deciding whether a literary work is good or bad. In answer to your question I'd like to mention "Inverted World" by Christopher Priest. It's part of the SFF genre so it will probably be the kind of thing you'll be interested in; I don't want to give anything away but after reading it I learned something about how complicated it can be to address the difference between objective truth and subjective experience. It's quite a good read, fulfilling all of your three criteria; I hope you get a chance to read it.
I just loved this post. I’ve been working on a post these last couple weeks about absolutism versus subjectivity, and your reflections on those components in literary criticism resonated.
I recently started reading “Everything Sad Is Untrue” by Daniel Nayeri and I feel like in the first chapter. He has already accomplished all three of those things. I know, it’s probably not fair to say so, but I think he set out to show me that people very unlike me are in fact a lot like me, and that their stories are worth listening to and caring about. He has accomplished that beautifully already and I cannot wait to read the rest. In addition, the writing is absolutely delicious, he’s not talking about food, but I think I grinned and licked my lips through the entire chapter.
I'm working on an essay right now about leading a group of readers through a rather lurid dark fantasy novel last year. I almost lost half of them halfway through, but I kept insisting, "There's something to see here. Even if it's in spite of himself, the author is asking something interesting, wait and see, wait and see..."
They did, eventually. I think the collective "Aha!" moment still lives in every one of us as a truly formative experience.
Thing is, I wasn't "right" about the book while they were wrong. A bit part of that process involved me admitting, "Hey, yeah, you might be right, this book is in pretty bad taste. That said, how much do we endure for the sake of discovering something?"
I think this was the first time many of them had asked that question. And because of it, they became present to themselves, their tastes, and even their faith in new ways.
I'm regularly drawn back to a popular post from George Saunders about how taste is just technique waiting to be practiced. Similarly, Bernard Lonergan tried to show how important *feelings* were to cognition; that if we could start asking *why* our tastes trigger in the ways they do, we come one step closer to values. And those values we can share in community, discuss with one another the techniques that manifest those values most effectively. The study of literature can become "scientific," in a way that is unique to the form itself instead of porting in outside values.
How amazing would that be, to actually feel ourselves getting closer to that?
Didn't even know I needed to process all this. Thanks so much for the post!
"How much do we endure for the sake of discovering something?" That quote immediately puts me in mind of reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I had to SUFFER through some of the chapters to get to the end.
Thanks for responding and for these great thoughts. Would love to know what the novel was.
It’s called “Skullsworn”, by my friend Brian Staveley, a stand alone in his Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series. It's very, very good! … Just also very bleak.
I recently read The Old Man and the Sea and from a discussion on a podcast with my friend after, I connected the main character’s journey in that to my own writing. I don’t want to put spoilers on here but I was left in a similar place as the book’s hero. In a good way.
I really enjoyed this piece. I’d love to hear more about books where the authors goal was to tell a good story. I believe both Granddaddy Tolkien and Uncle Jack Lewis would argue their famous fantasy stories started as an attempt to tell a good story and the rest of it all just sort of jumped in and I wonder how that fits your analysis questions, especially the first question.
But I suspect I may have made the fruitless jump to the side of the creation and the author when we’re on the side of the critic reading the created.
Such a good book, right? And I'm not surprised anyone could have a connection with it (even if my wife hates how depressing it is). Thanks for reading and replying.
Honestly, that's a really good question. I think the goal to tell a story well that reflects a moral worldview (or in their case Christian worldview) and that treads into real human situations with care and wisdom is a valuable goal. But I think that both of them had other goals as well when writing their books (the book Planet Narnia is an education in itself), so it's a complicated conversation. As a Christian myself, I'd say that at the very least sub-creation in the steps of God is a worthwhile goal if the work is attended to with care and quality. In the same way that I think it's morally commendable for someone to try to make a really good pizza and work hard at it but that it's not necessarily morally valuable for someone to not care about the quality of the pizza and to just throw something together. But that's where the different perspectives comes in. A pragmatist would only really value the goal if there was an intended valuable result. A Marxist theorist would only value it if it highlighted class inequality, etc. We all think we're right, but we've still got to have a conversation.
In the end, I think whatever the answer to question one is, question two will be what causes it to matter.
A fun and engaging read, Clifford. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insight on the topic! Chaim Potok's "The Chosen" hooked me and left me a fuller, richer person after reading it. The storyline follows two drastically different Jewish boys during the 1940s growing up in Brooklyn, NY. Potok was able to weave a fascinating story that provides intriguing character development and strong emotional pulls throughout the narrative. I'll add that the sequel, "The Promise" is also quite captivating.
It’s kinda interesting to me to note how similar your points 1 and 2 are to the rubric suggested by J. Evans Pritchard in Dead Poet’s Society. I always thought that Mr Keating was a little bit dismissive of what seemed to me like a pretty reasonable way to think about literature.
That's HILARIOUS! I didn't realize it, but you're completely right. Sounds like I need to write a post called "What J. Evans Pritchard, PhD Got Right."
Obviously, the mathematical application is crap, but those questions from a critical perspective are intensely necessary. And criticism is necessary to hold a genre accountable and to educate readers, which all hopefully leads not to snobbery or arbitrary ratings but to guiding readers to literature that fills their hearts and elevates their minds. I don't think JEP was after that--I'd guess he wanted to put poems in boxes so he could ignore ones he didn't like--but on the flip side, John Keating's romanticization has rampant problems. It took me a year or two to break his spell after I watched the movie the first time.
Thank you very much for this comment. That was an excellent observation.
I've often thought that the best way of evaluating the quality of a work of literature is to ask whether it suggests new possibilities for science. Does the depiction of a character's psychology, for example, suggest new avenues for psychological research? Does the depiction of class conflict in a novel suggest a new sociological theory?
I loved this! I appreciate the questions you posed to assess whether or not a book is a “good” or “bad” book. I am going to share them with my co-host on The Reader and The Writer. I am reading Cloud Cuckoo Land right now for our podcast and I adore it. I haven’t finished the book, but so far it inspires me to be a better teacher. It inspires me to teach my students how to tell their stories. I have a question for you. Do you think there is a difference between literature and a good story?
Great comment--thanks for the response and the kind words.
I think literature can also include non-narrative items like poetry and the like. Are all good stories literature? That's a tough one. How would you define literature? Like stories that make it to the level of "art"?
I think for a story to be "good literature" (ironically feels more definably), I'll borrow from C. S. Lewis and my next essay: it needs to be first entertaining (otherwise why would we bother?) and it needs to elevate us and leave us fuller richer people.
I agree; it is a tough question that I honestly did not have an answer. My friend and I were discussing this same question. I am a middle school English teacher and I was telling her that YA books are often good stories, but they don't always reach the "good literature" mark. I was unable to articulate my thoughts on the subject matter as eloquently as you stated above. We were talking about Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I mentioned it reminds me of the author Alan Gratz, only Doerr is much better. Gratz's books are GREAT stories, but I wouldn't quite say they are great literature. I do not mean that as slight to Gratz, at all. He is writing for an 11 year old audience.
I think you nailed it when you stated "stories that make it to the level of "art". I believe making it to "art" level requires the use of beautiful language. Well, that and something to stay that sticks to your insides. Rolls around and long after reading rears its head unexpectedly. If that even makes sense.
It starts to get so subjective, right? Definitions matter a lot, but those are battlegrounds for scholars and readers alike.
Whatever our belief, I think it's awesome that you're on the front lines of teaching kids that questions like this matter. I firmly believe English teachers have the most power to reach kids and change their lives of any teachers. The subject material makes it so easy. Fight the good fight! I love that someone who's thinking this way is one of the people in the classroom.
I actually just started reading Cloud Cuckoo Land yesterday! And very much enjoying it so far.
Looking back on the books I've read this year and last year, it strikes me that the ones that really stand out in memory are the ones that have that effect. I've mentioned The Sparrow and The Children of God by Mary Doria Russell to people a couple of times recently - I found them (reading together as a single story) powerful because they had me thinking about suffering, theodicy, the purposes of God, vocation, cross-cultural blunders and beauty.
I also want to mention Life and Fate (1959) by the Ukrainian Jewish author Vasily Grossman (English trans. Robert Chandler). It's a complex story of life for ordinary Soviet citizens during WW2. It grieves with the families losing sons. It goes to the front in Stalingrad and shows people getting on with life in the midst of war. It goes into the concentration camps with captured Ukrainian Jews. It ponders the role of learning and science, and how individuals respond to the demands of totalitarian regimes. It's sometimes incredibly difficult to read (in terms of the content, what happens to people, not the language - the translation is excellent) but very much worth it.
As a writer, I don’t sit down and purposely think I want to convey a particular theme to my readers. I just want to write something that I like, and hope they will as well. Basically, I write to entertain myself. That being said, I’ve never been able to categorize my writing. I have a couple of serials I’m working on and have behind my paywall, simply because the few readers I have that are paying, deserve something. The stories I write, and that matter to me, I put out on Sundays, for free. I tend to write long pieces that are more novella length than novels (except for my serials), and are stories that interest me—and I have a lot of interests. I’d like to think that most writers do the same. If you don’t write something that tests you, interests you, and challenges you, what are you writing, and why are you writing?
I’ve never thought that anything I might write would be critiqued, but some of the comments I get leave me absolutely gob-smacked. People see things in my writing that I fail to see myself. They pull out little snippets and say they like this or that turn of phrase. I love that they do this, of course, but the turn of phrase they pull up as examples mean nothing to me, because most of the time I don’t even remember writing this or that line.
I enjoy reading your take on literary criticism, because as a reader, I don’t look at writing the same way you do. I don’t have a post-secondary education. I was a blue collar worker and everything I’ve learned in life, I’ve learned the hard way. I’m self-taught as far as writing goes, so I’ve readily accepted that I’ll never be considered a great writer. I tend to see myself as adequate. But as I’m now in the sunset years of my life, I accept that. I don’t know if any of my stories will survive me, no one can know that about their own writing. I’m never going to win any prizes or high praise, and I’m okay with that, too.
I look at writing as a challenge to myself, not that I want to win anything with it, but that I can look at it in twenty years from now and say that I didn’t embarrass myself. That I’m not a hack.
"If you don’t write something that tests you, interests you, and challenges you, what are you writing, and why are you writing?" Preach!
"I don’t know if any of my stories will survive me, no one can know that about their own writing. I’m never going to win any prizes or high praise, and I’m okay with that, too." You're probably one of the happiest writers out there.
What I theorize is that how you live your life will always be a more important legacy than your writing. And in your case, your writing is part of how you live your life, so it's all tied up in there. When I'm your age, I hope I'm as content and confident as you are. Right now, I've got the young-man-need-to-prove-myself. Thankfully it's slowed a little since my early 20's. And while I'm going to capitalize on that energy while I can, I look forward to getting older and hopefully becoming a little healthier internally. haha
Oh, and blue collar/self-taught/grad school doesn't mean much at least in my case. I took a fiction writing class, and I BOMBED it. I can't believe the prof didn't fail me. Looking back at what I wrote, I feel like reaching into the past and punching myself. Like no concept or plot or them or self-respect. Haha
What I've learned about writing well (if I have learned anything) I've learned probably like you: from reading good books.
I am fascinated by your comments about the objectivity and subjectivity in determining a book's worth.
First, you say that "we cannot escape the subjective in this first question." However, what if we approach this question from an objective moral framework? If there an objective basis of right and wrong, and we use that basis for analyzing the goal of a piece, that objective moral framework can determine if the goal of the piece is valuable. Therefore, I would argue that there is a way of escaping the subjectivity. What are your thoughts on that?
Second, your third question brings up the question of where meaning lies. Is the meaning of a piece contained in what the author intended it to mean or in what the reader interprets it to mean? Is there a way of saying that a piece should have had an impact on a reader and didn't, but that indicates a flaw in the reader rather than a flaw in the work itself?
It’s a very fair point especially if your interlocutors all share the same moral framework, there will be a lot of assessment here that is very easy to process.
And in your second point, I feel as though I've been caught. Indeed, this question is intensely important to this whole discussion and was one I didn't think I had time to get into in what was already a pretty long essay. But I think we have to acknowledge that meaning is created in both situations. And like Lewis asks in AEIC, why not both? Too many readers and scholars want to emphasize Reader Response while other hold tightly to authorial intent. I think we can have a richer experience if we allow for both and reject the binary.
Sounds like a really valuable book. Thanks for the suggestion!
How fun to read this just before I begin teaching Poetics as a weeklong intensive today!
This is a great post, Clifford! I actually recently bought Cloud Cuckoo and can’t wait to read it.
I will add that your point 2 actually is quite objective—well done! But of course, as you mention, none of it is really entirely subjective.
It was a gift to have you as a student!
Quite true about point two! So glad you enjoyed it and thank you for teaching that class. Your new students are in for a real treat. I still keep all my books from that class.
I definitely think you'll enjoy CCL. I hope to see a Priory post about it at some point. :)
Those are excellent benchmarks for deciding whether a literary work is good or bad. In answer to your question I'd like to mention "Inverted World" by Christopher Priest. It's part of the SFF genre so it will probably be the kind of thing you'll be interested in; I don't want to give anything away but after reading it I learned something about how complicated it can be to address the difference between objective truth and subjective experience. It's quite a good read, fulfilling all of your three criteria; I hope you get a chance to read it.
Adding it to my ThriftBooks account! Thank you, William!
I just loved this post. I’ve been working on a post these last couple weeks about absolutism versus subjectivity, and your reflections on those components in literary criticism resonated.
I recently started reading “Everything Sad Is Untrue” by Daniel Nayeri and I feel like in the first chapter. He has already accomplished all three of those things. I know, it’s probably not fair to say so, but I think he set out to show me that people very unlike me are in fact a lot like me, and that their stories are worth listening to and caring about. He has accomplished that beautifully already and I cannot wait to read the rest. In addition, the writing is absolutely delicious, he’s not talking about food, but I think I grinned and licked my lips through the entire chapter.
That sounds amazing. I'm glad you've found such a good book. I've added it to my ThriftBooks list and will check it out further! :)
*re-reads comment and notices that dictation typing did not work beautifully - ugh.
I'm working on an essay right now about leading a group of readers through a rather lurid dark fantasy novel last year. I almost lost half of them halfway through, but I kept insisting, "There's something to see here. Even if it's in spite of himself, the author is asking something interesting, wait and see, wait and see..."
They did, eventually. I think the collective "Aha!" moment still lives in every one of us as a truly formative experience.
Thing is, I wasn't "right" about the book while they were wrong. A bit part of that process involved me admitting, "Hey, yeah, you might be right, this book is in pretty bad taste. That said, how much do we endure for the sake of discovering something?"
I think this was the first time many of them had asked that question. And because of it, they became present to themselves, their tastes, and even their faith in new ways.
I'm regularly drawn back to a popular post from George Saunders about how taste is just technique waiting to be practiced. Similarly, Bernard Lonergan tried to show how important *feelings* were to cognition; that if we could start asking *why* our tastes trigger in the ways they do, we come one step closer to values. And those values we can share in community, discuss with one another the techniques that manifest those values most effectively. The study of literature can become "scientific," in a way that is unique to the form itself instead of porting in outside values.
How amazing would that be, to actually feel ourselves getting closer to that?
Didn't even know I needed to process all this. Thanks so much for the post!
"How much do we endure for the sake of discovering something?" That quote immediately puts me in mind of reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I had to SUFFER through some of the chapters to get to the end.
Thanks for responding and for these great thoughts. Would love to know what the novel was.
It’s called “Skullsworn”, by my friend Brian Staveley, a stand alone in his Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series. It's very, very good! … Just also very bleak.
Oh, I love that series!
I recently read The Old Man and the Sea and from a discussion on a podcast with my friend after, I connected the main character’s journey in that to my own writing. I don’t want to put spoilers on here but I was left in a similar place as the book’s hero. In a good way.
I really enjoyed this piece. I’d love to hear more about books where the authors goal was to tell a good story. I believe both Granddaddy Tolkien and Uncle Jack Lewis would argue their famous fantasy stories started as an attempt to tell a good story and the rest of it all just sort of jumped in and I wonder how that fits your analysis questions, especially the first question.
But I suspect I may have made the fruitless jump to the side of the creation and the author when we’re on the side of the critic reading the created.
Such a good book, right? And I'm not surprised anyone could have a connection with it (even if my wife hates how depressing it is). Thanks for reading and replying.
Honestly, that's a really good question. I think the goal to tell a story well that reflects a moral worldview (or in their case Christian worldview) and that treads into real human situations with care and wisdom is a valuable goal. But I think that both of them had other goals as well when writing their books (the book Planet Narnia is an education in itself), so it's a complicated conversation. As a Christian myself, I'd say that at the very least sub-creation in the steps of God is a worthwhile goal if the work is attended to with care and quality. In the same way that I think it's morally commendable for someone to try to make a really good pizza and work hard at it but that it's not necessarily morally valuable for someone to not care about the quality of the pizza and to just throw something together. But that's where the different perspectives comes in. A pragmatist would only really value the goal if there was an intended valuable result. A Marxist theorist would only value it if it highlighted class inequality, etc. We all think we're right, but we've still got to have a conversation.
In the end, I think whatever the answer to question one is, question two will be what causes it to matter.
A fun and engaging read, Clifford. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insight on the topic! Chaim Potok's "The Chosen" hooked me and left me a fuller, richer person after reading it. The storyline follows two drastically different Jewish boys during the 1940s growing up in Brooklyn, NY. Potok was able to weave a fascinating story that provides intriguing character development and strong emotional pulls throughout the narrative. I'll add that the sequel, "The Promise" is also quite captivating.
Totally agreed. Such a good book. No one can deny how powerful that book is.
It’s kinda interesting to me to note how similar your points 1 and 2 are to the rubric suggested by J. Evans Pritchard in Dead Poet’s Society. I always thought that Mr Keating was a little bit dismissive of what seemed to me like a pretty reasonable way to think about literature.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8x0COtH4Vrw
That's HILARIOUS! I didn't realize it, but you're completely right. Sounds like I need to write a post called "What J. Evans Pritchard, PhD Got Right."
Obviously, the mathematical application is crap, but those questions from a critical perspective are intensely necessary. And criticism is necessary to hold a genre accountable and to educate readers, which all hopefully leads not to snobbery or arbitrary ratings but to guiding readers to literature that fills their hearts and elevates their minds. I don't think JEP was after that--I'd guess he wanted to put poems in boxes so he could ignore ones he didn't like--but on the flip side, John Keating's romanticization has rampant problems. It took me a year or two to break his spell after I watched the movie the first time.
Thank you very much for this comment. That was an excellent observation.
Maybe my third question marries Keating's philosophy into the analysis?
I've often thought that the best way of evaluating the quality of a work of literature is to ask whether it suggests new possibilities for science. Does the depiction of a character's psychology, for example, suggest new avenues for psychological research? Does the depiction of class conflict in a novel suggest a new sociological theory?
I've had that on the bookshelf for a while - maybe I'll finally read it now
I loved this! I appreciate the questions you posed to assess whether or not a book is a “good” or “bad” book. I am going to share them with my co-host on The Reader and The Writer. I am reading Cloud Cuckoo Land right now for our podcast and I adore it. I haven’t finished the book, but so far it inspires me to be a better teacher. It inspires me to teach my students how to tell their stories. I have a question for you. Do you think there is a difference between literature and a good story?
Great comment--thanks for the response and the kind words.
I think literature can also include non-narrative items like poetry and the like. Are all good stories literature? That's a tough one. How would you define literature? Like stories that make it to the level of "art"?
I think for a story to be "good literature" (ironically feels more definably), I'll borrow from C. S. Lewis and my next essay: it needs to be first entertaining (otherwise why would we bother?) and it needs to elevate us and leave us fuller richer people.
How would you respond to that?
I agree; it is a tough question that I honestly did not have an answer. My friend and I were discussing this same question. I am a middle school English teacher and I was telling her that YA books are often good stories, but they don't always reach the "good literature" mark. I was unable to articulate my thoughts on the subject matter as eloquently as you stated above. We were talking about Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I mentioned it reminds me of the author Alan Gratz, only Doerr is much better. Gratz's books are GREAT stories, but I wouldn't quite say they are great literature. I do not mean that as slight to Gratz, at all. He is writing for an 11 year old audience.
I think you nailed it when you stated "stories that make it to the level of "art". I believe making it to "art" level requires the use of beautiful language. Well, that and something to stay that sticks to your insides. Rolls around and long after reading rears its head unexpectedly. If that even makes sense.
It starts to get so subjective, right? Definitions matter a lot, but those are battlegrounds for scholars and readers alike.
Whatever our belief, I think it's awesome that you're on the front lines of teaching kids that questions like this matter. I firmly believe English teachers have the most power to reach kids and change their lives of any teachers. The subject material makes it so easy. Fight the good fight! I love that someone who's thinking this way is one of the people in the classroom.
Late to the party, but oh well.
"Cry, The Beloved County" by Alan Paton. It follows a black South African minister as he tries to heal his family and village.
Thanks!
I actually just started reading Cloud Cuckoo Land yesterday! And very much enjoying it so far.
Looking back on the books I've read this year and last year, it strikes me that the ones that really stand out in memory are the ones that have that effect. I've mentioned The Sparrow and The Children of God by Mary Doria Russell to people a couple of times recently - I found them (reading together as a single story) powerful because they had me thinking about suffering, theodicy, the purposes of God, vocation, cross-cultural blunders and beauty.
I also want to mention Life and Fate (1959) by the Ukrainian Jewish author Vasily Grossman (English trans. Robert Chandler). It's a complex story of life for ordinary Soviet citizens during WW2. It grieves with the families losing sons. It goes to the front in Stalingrad and shows people getting on with life in the midst of war. It goes into the concentration camps with captured Ukrainian Jews. It ponders the role of learning and science, and how individuals respond to the demands of totalitarian regimes. It's sometimes incredibly difficult to read (in terms of the content, what happens to people, not the language - the translation is excellent) but very much worth it.
Thanks for the suggestions!
As a writer, I don’t sit down and purposely think I want to convey a particular theme to my readers. I just want to write something that I like, and hope they will as well. Basically, I write to entertain myself. That being said, I’ve never been able to categorize my writing. I have a couple of serials I’m working on and have behind my paywall, simply because the few readers I have that are paying, deserve something. The stories I write, and that matter to me, I put out on Sundays, for free. I tend to write long pieces that are more novella length than novels (except for my serials), and are stories that interest me—and I have a lot of interests. I’d like to think that most writers do the same. If you don’t write something that tests you, interests you, and challenges you, what are you writing, and why are you writing?
I’ve never thought that anything I might write would be critiqued, but some of the comments I get leave me absolutely gob-smacked. People see things in my writing that I fail to see myself. They pull out little snippets and say they like this or that turn of phrase. I love that they do this, of course, but the turn of phrase they pull up as examples mean nothing to me, because most of the time I don’t even remember writing this or that line.
I enjoy reading your take on literary criticism, because as a reader, I don’t look at writing the same way you do. I don’t have a post-secondary education. I was a blue collar worker and everything I’ve learned in life, I’ve learned the hard way. I’m self-taught as far as writing goes, so I’ve readily accepted that I’ll never be considered a great writer. I tend to see myself as adequate. But as I’m now in the sunset years of my life, I accept that. I don’t know if any of my stories will survive me, no one can know that about their own writing. I’m never going to win any prizes or high praise, and I’m okay with that, too.
I look at writing as a challenge to myself, not that I want to win anything with it, but that I can look at it in twenty years from now and say that I didn’t embarrass myself. That I’m not a hack.
"If you don’t write something that tests you, interests you, and challenges you, what are you writing, and why are you writing?" Preach!
"I don’t know if any of my stories will survive me, no one can know that about their own writing. I’m never going to win any prizes or high praise, and I’m okay with that, too." You're probably one of the happiest writers out there.
What I theorize is that how you live your life will always be a more important legacy than your writing. And in your case, your writing is part of how you live your life, so it's all tied up in there. When I'm your age, I hope I'm as content and confident as you are. Right now, I've got the young-man-need-to-prove-myself. Thankfully it's slowed a little since my early 20's. And while I'm going to capitalize on that energy while I can, I look forward to getting older and hopefully becoming a little healthier internally. haha
Oh, and blue collar/self-taught/grad school doesn't mean much at least in my case. I took a fiction writing class, and I BOMBED it. I can't believe the prof didn't fail me. Looking back at what I wrote, I feel like reaching into the past and punching myself. Like no concept or plot or them or self-respect. Haha
What I've learned about writing well (if I have learned anything) I've learned probably like you: from reading good books.
So more power to you!
Hi Clifford!
I am fascinated by your comments about the objectivity and subjectivity in determining a book's worth.
First, you say that "we cannot escape the subjective in this first question." However, what if we approach this question from an objective moral framework? If there an objective basis of right and wrong, and we use that basis for analyzing the goal of a piece, that objective moral framework can determine if the goal of the piece is valuable. Therefore, I would argue that there is a way of escaping the subjectivity. What are your thoughts on that?
Second, your third question brings up the question of where meaning lies. Is the meaning of a piece contained in what the author intended it to mean or in what the reader interprets it to mean? Is there a way of saying that a piece should have had an impact on a reader and didn't, but that indicates a flaw in the reader rather than a flaw in the work itself?
It’s a very fair point especially if your interlocutors all share the same moral framework, there will be a lot of assessment here that is very easy to process.
And in your second point, I feel as though I've been caught. Indeed, this question is intensely important to this whole discussion and was one I didn't think I had time to get into in what was already a pretty long essay. But I think we have to acknowledge that meaning is created in both situations. And like Lewis asks in AEIC, why not both? Too many readers and scholars want to emphasize Reader Response while other hold tightly to authorial intent. I think we can have a richer experience if we allow for both and reject the binary.
I'm really liking this substack! Thank you :)