Quote:
Originally Posted by Vivian
What we like and what we don't is definitely significant, and certainly there are things that I don't "get" and don't like but still have artistic value (abstract art?). All the same, I don't think art is entirely subjective. There's got to be some kind of line one can draw and say, this is quality, that isn't. It may be a fuzzy line, but it exists. Can't we agree, for example, that Arthur Conan Doyle was a better writer than Dan Brown?
(I'm not really satisfied with this example. It's so much easier to call people geniuses after they've been dead a hundred years. I'll try and think of a better one.)
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The issue is that there isn't a single over-arching standard you can judge by.
You can certainly draw a line, but before you do so, you need to be able state what the line is, and why you are drawing it where you are. You need to make the criteria by which you are judging clear.
The criteria which are meaningful to you may not be meaningful to someone else, or may apply only in specialized circumstances.
For instance, one factor on which mysteries are judged is the skill of the author in concealing the evidence. The reader should have all of the information available to the sleuth, and be able to make the same deductions and come to the same conclusions. The skill of the author is in providing all of that information in such a manner that you don't realize what it is when you read it, and may smack yourself on the head and say "How did I miss
that?"" when the detective reveals his reasoning and exposes the killer. (Agatha Christie was the acknowledged master at this sort of misdirection.)
In SF, a ground rule is that you can speculate all you want about stuff we haven't discovered yet, but you have to get what we
do know right. So the Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs are still popular, but considered science fantasy these days. We are well aware the Mars he postulates doesn't exist. As SF, Burrough's Mars books fail because we know better.
Neither of these rules will be applicable to mainstream fiction, but other specialized rules may apply. Whatever rules you are applying, you have to be able to explicitly state them to have any meaningful conversation.
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Dennis