Re: Beats me
patrick flaherty (pfkw@email.msn.com)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 02:42:26 -0400
-----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