Green Is a Prettier Color Than Blue

[Peg Herring]

I know. It's a matter of opinion. Steak is better than seafood. Girls are smarter than boys. Duncan Phyfe is nicer than Old Mission.

Yet we try to convince others that a certain author is no good or the very best. We think that if we just point certain "facts" out to people, they'll stop buying junk and read what we read. I suppose it sharpens your skills of argumentation, but it isn't going to work.

I recall a student who was hooked on a certain spooky author and asked if I'd read his work. Crazy me, I said I had but didn't like it. For the rest of the year the girl, and later her mother, shoved his bestsellers in my face periodically and assured that if I tried this one, I'd begin to see his genius. The mother actually ended up miffed at me because I couldn't get interested or even fake interest. I used to wonder how she'd have reacted if I shoved my beloved Thomas Hardy novels at her insisting, "Try this one!"

Writers are particularly prone to this useless enterprise. We're interested in "good" writing, and we think we know what it is. (Sometimes we even think it's what we write.) As a result, people spend time better invested somewhere else arguing that this or that bestselling author is a putz. Hey, it could even be true, but you are not going to make people not like to read what they like to read. And it makes you sound like a green-eyed monster.

As a teacher I tried to expose my students to different types of writing, hoping that they would widen their scope and perhaps raise their standards. But I contend that if people are reading, that's good, and telling them that what they read is junk is like explaining why green is prettier than blue. There's nothing wrong with sharing good writers you've discovered. The problem comes when you decide that you're the judge of what a good writer "really" is.

[Peg Herring]

Good points all, and I agree, analysis doesn't explain a thing in the end about our visceral response to a work of fiction (or music, Dana).

[Dana King]

Musicians have these same discussions all the time, and they're just as avid about pushing their personal likes onto those poor souls who just don't get it.

I think we have to remember that "taste" and "quality" are apples and oranges. While there can be objective standards for quality, there's no accounting for taste. (Sorry about the cliche.) We can be debate the quality of a book, and there may even be some correct and incorrect positions availabe in that debate, but taste is unique to the individual, and cannot successfully be argued.

[Jon Loomis]

I'm enough of a dinosaur/elitist to believe that there are actual objective standards that separate good writing from crap, so for me it's not at all just a matter of taste. If it was, I'd have nothing to say in the creative writing classroom other than "I liked it" or "it wasn't my cup of tea." But I agree that arguing such things on internet forums is an utter--if sometimes entertaining--waste of time.

[I. J. Parker]

Well, I don't know. The Romans said "de gustibus not est disputandum," recognizing precisely the truth of your point. But they also named an arbiter elegantiarum who was supposed to tell them what was good taste and what was not. And if your teaching background is in English literature, then you know that that involved criticism of literature, i.e. weighing the good against the bad and knowing why one thing was good and the other not. Good taste is teachable.

On the other hand, we may have shifted to majority opinion.