An essay that misses its own point and makes my head hurt.

[khyron1144]

However, I still say that "on par with a Rodin" is subjective.  The fact is that people are going to like different things.  If we continue to act as if there is an objective standard we are going to alienate those people who actually don't follow it.

I agree there's a lot of subjectivity in evaluating any work of art.  Anybody who tells me that Youngblood #1 (first series) is superior to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's Fantastic Four is going o get a look of puzzlement from me, though.

I'm not an anti-intellectualist; when I went to college, I was an English- Language & Literature major, but certain things that the convetional wisdom marks out as drenched in literary merit leave me very cold, and certain things that are supposed to be meritless as literature are the best stuff I ever read.

Dune, I'll agree is a classic.  

Tolkien, doesn't do much for me.  I made about five false starts on Fellowship, and still haven't finished it.

I hated The Great Gatsby, not because it was an assignment in high school, but because it wasn't about anyting.  Nothing happens in it.  Actually, I generally liked school assignments. I loved Lord of the Flies, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, and The Crucible.  I even kind of liked Pride & Prejudice.

Geting back to speculative fiction read for fun.

Pratchett is amazing. Discworld is better than most fantasy that doesn't also go for laughs.

Robert E. Howard is criminally under-rated.

[beejazz]

Oh noes... are we resurrecting this thing?

Preferences vary!
There are things that are aesthetic and things that are not!
All art is not equal*!
All art is not necessarily good!
All good is not necessarily art!
Some things aren't and can't be art by definition**!

*Actually all art is equal, but some art is more equal than others. :p
**Nature is *not* art no matter how good it is because nobody made it. If there is a God this is only thrown into doubt and not disproved entirely.

[khyron1144]

Oh noes... are we resurrecting this thing?

Preferences vary!
There are things that are aesthetic and things that are not!
All art is not equal*!
All art is not necessarily good!
All good is not necessarily art!
Some things aren't and can't be art by definition**!

*Actually all art is equal, but some art is more equal than others. :p
**Nature is *not* art no matter how good it is because nobody made it. If there is a God this is only thrown into doubt and not disproved entirely.

Sorry. I was bored and was back-tracking through old threads to find one of mine.  It probably was not worth the thread necroancy becasue now that I look at what I said and what was already said by others, I believe a consensus was reached, and I don't disagree with it too much.

And the indirect Animal Farm reference was cool.  Animal Farm was another one of those high school English assignments that didn't suck.

[Bill Volk]

"With one stroke of his fifty-pound sword, Gnorts the Barbarian lopped off the head of Nialliv the Wizard. It flew through the air, still sneering, while Gnorts clove two royal guardsmen from vizor through breasplate to steel jockstrap. As he whirled to escape, an arrow glanced off his own chainmail. Then he was gone from the room, into the midnight city. Easily outrunning pursuit, he took a few sentries at the gate by surprise. For a moment, arms and legs hailed around him through showers of blood; then he had opened the gate and was free. A caravan of merchants, waiting to enter at dawn, was camped nearby. Seeing a magnificent stallion tethered, Gnorts released it, twisted the rope into a bridle, and rode it off bareback. After galloping several miles, he encountered a mounted patrol that challenged him. Immediately he plunged into the thick of the cavalrymen, swinging his blade right and left with deadly effect, rearing up his steed to bring its forefeet against one knight who dared to confront him directly. Then it was only to gallop onward. Winter winds lashed his body, attired in nothing more than a bearskin kilt, but he ignored the cold. Sunrise revealed the shore and his waiting longship. He knew the swift-sailing craft could bring him across five hundred leagues of monster-infested ocean in time for him to snatch the maiden princess Elamef away from evil Baron Rehcel while she remained a maiden '" not that he intended to leave her in that condition '¦"

Is it just me, or is this made-up counterexample actually kind of entertaining? It's much more readable than some of the pedantic, didactic stuff that Anderson writes when he's being serious.