Quote:
Originally Posted by radleyp
There is a difference between saying "I don't like Hamlet" and "Hamlet is a bad play". The latter implies a measurement of quality that is over and above my opinion, and I will surely be called upon to defend the view. This thread is not called "the 10 books I hate the most" but rather "the 10 worst books". To me this is a distinction that must be made, and I feel that those who now say that all we are doing is merely expressing our opinion have started a different - and certainly more enjoyable - thread. Frankly I avoid discussions of literature that focus on the "best" and the "worst", because personal opinions get obliterated and what we call "standards" (which are the bellweathers of political conservatives) dominate. The great American critic Edmund Wilson was once asked what he thought of the literary standards of his day: his response, "I never think about those things at all".
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I see, I knew this would lead to this. I keep controversy limited to more specialist forums, like Literature Network, for example. You are out all guns blazing without reading my post properly. I did
list Nabokov, Austen etc among the ones that I like, not among the baddies. Well that's what you get for getting involved in wrong discussions in wrong place. Lesson learned!