Re: Beats me
Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Mon, 13 Jul 1998 15:04:37 -0400
patrick flaherty wrote:
> Literature, in my opinion, should be judged first on the amount of pleasure
> one gets from the reading of it. As readers, we should also consider the
> works' intensity and, in a sense, the effect it has on our own lives.
Even if every reader on the planet interested in ranking books as
literary accomplishments could agree on certain selected criteria by
which to establish the order of books from greatest to least great, and
even if such a project weren't silly to begin with, you'd have to
grapple with the problem that greatness is ultimately only a matter of
opinion, anyway. If C.S. Lewis says that _Paradise Lost_ is the
greatest poem in the language because approximately 1200 of its 10,565
lines are enjambed, contributing significantly to Milton's dazzling
syntax, Ezra Pound could justly reply that he didn't like enjambed lines
or Milton's syntax and that therefore, _Paradise Lost_ could be
considered among the worst poems in the language.
But I am beyond my original reply, in which I only wondered what your
criteria were. I judge from your post that you derive pleasure from
_Catcher_, that you consider it an intense book, and that it has had a
notable effect on your life. Those are important aspects and valid
criteria. But to call a particular book "the greatest book ever
written" is to suggest clearly that it is better in a general sense,
across a large number of criteria that lots of people would use, than
all other books ever written.
Perhaps _Catcher_ is the most important (even the greatest) book to you
as an individual, 20th-century reader. But the qualifying phrase that
you used, "in my mind," sounded to me more like "in my opinion" than "as
far as my life is concerned."
--
Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu