I don't understand literary criticism. What makes one book "better" than another?
Its aesthetic value.
>>25319419A lot of it is just dogshow bullshit but there's something underneath. Don't worry about adhering to it, just approach what critics say with an open mind and think about whether it matches with how you feel. There are objective differences between works but the way you subjectively understand them is just that. t. Ignorant
>>25319419>What makes one book "better" than another?There is no one accepted aesthetic standard. Dostoevsky is a master psychologist, but his prose is embarrassing compared to Melville and Joyce. Melville in turn lags in terms of writing believable characters, but Ahab's rhetorical grandeur matches that of Milton's Satan and Shakespeare's Lear. Joyce and my good friend Tommy Pinecone are borderline unreadable, which Tolstoy considers a flaw; in fact, Tolstoy rates Uncle Tom's Cabin above Shakespeare for this very reason.Do plays need to conform to the classical unities (action, time and place) in order to be considered great?
>>25319442>Mentioning Pinecone and not Corncob
>>25319419>What makes one book "better" than another?Contemporary literary criticicism can be reduced to "everything you find in the Bible is bad".Femmes fatales? Slop. Stop reading misogynistic pulp mags. The ingénue is what smart people like.Free verse poetry? Slop. We need poetry to rhyme.Erotica? Slop. Pornographic prose is what you should read instead of ACOTAR.Marriage plot? Slop. Don't be a child, read trauma porn.Moralizing? Slop. Hedonism ftw.
