-----Original Message----- From: Matt Kozusko <mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu> To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu> Date: Monday, July 13, 1998 3:09 PM Subject: Re: Beats me >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 Matt Very well said, my friend. Greatness is only a matter of opinion. I was, perhaps a bit "silly" in proposing that _Cathcher_ is the "greatest." I guess I got a bit carried away. But, please don't call JD a "beatnik." Patrick Flaherty