Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Not a fair statement (nor even a particularly good flame). The classics are such a broad category of novels, that its unreasonable to assume that anyone's tastes are going to include all of them. Alexander Dumas and Herman Melville, The Bronte Sisters and Joseph Conrad are all very different authors and I suspect that one could like one or two of those authors and abhor the others. Yet by labeling their works as classics, there is some expectation that these books should be universally well regarded.
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Bill
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Broadly speaking though, the classics prove the point that Quality will out, especially over time (all things being equal of course, which they never are!)
Then you're into the murky waters of postmodern relativist inter-subjectivity (Quality only being in the Eye of the Beholder); versus Quiller-Couch or Robert Pirsig's position that Quality is an objectively perceivable phenomenon, in literature as in Life.
Oh, forget it....pass me THE CHEETOS! (Not that I know what a Cheeto is, being Scottish, I am imagining some savoury potato chip snack?)