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"Terry Pratchett is not a literary genius" - And you are? You fool.

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posted on Apr, 21 2016 @ 07:31 AM
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What an idiot that blogger is.Terry Pratchett was an absolute literary genius.Bet you the critic himself can hardly string a shopping list together,leave alone making people laugh except at his own idiocy.And i don't think the idjit will be leaving behind himself a rich legacy of much loved and vastly popular books,cult classics that will forever be loved by a multitude of readers all over the world.



posted on Apr, 21 2016 @ 02:16 PM
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Choosing not to read a work because you feel it isn't worth your time and doesn't interest you... all well and good. My response to which would be simply, "Ah, cool beans. That's your prerogative, carry on. We all like and derive value from different things."

Saying this:



It’s time we stopped this pretence that mediocrity is equal to genius.


... however, is literary elitism and is my least favorite debate to enter into on the internet because 1) it never ends, 2) it can never be "won," and 3) people who hold that view of art never, ever seem to simply agree to disagree.

It crosses the line from subjective appraisal, and seeks to impose objective criteria upon art to assert its value not just to the person speaking, but to all. Objectively, the only metrics for a work's importance are its influence on other artists, its cultural impact, how widely it is adopted, grammatical correctness, and its novelty. Those are the only things about it we can measure objectively (other than technical details such as its duration, word count, etc.) And maybe, arguably, its workmanship... if it's something like, say, architecture where structural soundness matters. But if it's a literary work, then apart from gross grammatical errors (unless intentional for some given purpose,) workmanship basically is interchangeable with stylistic intent or tendency.

And none of those things can objectively declare a thing "good" or "bad" relative to other works, much less "genius" or "mediocre." (Or are we going to IQ test the authors and compare?) They merely allow you to make objective statements about the work... not about its subjective value on a person to person basis.

Beyond that, all appraisals of the value or worthiness of a work of art - let alone its "goodness" or "badness" - are utterly subjective, predicated upon subjective criteria such as how the work made you feel, how it expanded or stimulated your mind, how refreshing you found it to be, how well you feel it was written/composed stylistically, etc. etc. All of those are subjective criteria because one may or may not include them in their definition of why something is of greater or lesser relevance or worthiness to anything else. One can literally just say, "I don't care about that particular criterion, that's not what I value in this particular art form."

I go back to the musical analogy. Is Malmsteen a superior guitarist and artist to Hendrix because he can play in more modes and scales, faster, with more complexity and precision, and has a grasp of music theory? More (be it notes, modes, scales, progressions, or even simply knowledge) doesn't automatically equal better. It depends on what it is YOU value in art. Personally I appreciate them both, but that's beside the point.

Making the assertion, outright, that something is objectively mediocre versus other works...

That's the real pretense, imho.

Peace.



 
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