2. Former only matters if one lets it, right? Mark Twain wasn’t wrong to say he hated Austen, and neither was Bronte. But their opinion were informed, and thus able to be disagreed with. The crit I’m talking about at IJ is sometimes incorrect, as complaining that a character at 200 kg is sloppy, when it’s actually deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.

3. Enjoyment and goodness are related, but not equal, is my point. I am both enjoying and appreciating the merits of IJ. I don’t take issue with the readers who aren’t enjoying it, but rather when they go on to say the book isn’t well written or crafted and list reasons (or worse, don’t) that I find evidence for otherwise.

I can enjoy something, yet know it’s not fine art, like B movies. I can also not enjoy things even while I see their merits. I put down Bolano’s Savage Detectives as not for me. I don’t think it’s bad–lots of people think it’s great and they have good reasons. I didn’t love Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, but concede her breathtaking skill at writing. I enjoyed City of Refuge, yet thought the writing and structure were at times problematic.

But, I find the question you pose about the emotional vs objective appraisal of a book to be an interesting one. It seems to me you come from the perspective that IJ is a Good Book, even if it is difficult (sometimes purposefully so) and not always enjoyable. I guess I don’t know how one does separate the emotional from the rest of it all, how we can ever give an objective appraisal of a book and have our account of a book ring true for all other readers. I feel it comes down to what we bring to the table as readers, what we look for in our reading experience. Even if you find the book hard, you find it ultimately rewarding, which I suspect validates the reading experience for you. But for the readers that don’t enjoy it, that don’t see the connections, that feel it is a waste of their time, does it really matter that this book is Good? I suppose my question is what does it matter if a book is respected on its literary merits but not enjoyed? That is, if a book isn’t for me (and one might even say, it wasn’t a good book for me), then does it matter if there seems to be some objective measure (and I’m not convinced there is… everyone has their own biases when evaluating the worth of art, literature, music, etc.,) saying it is Important or Good? Certainly that’s not going to change the way I feel about it.

Again, some people enjoy challenges in their reading whereas others do not, and we each need to decide the kind of readers we are and why it is that we read. I’m not sure what camp I fall in, to be honest… I like that reading expands my mind and can cause me to think about language and themes in ways I haven’t before, but I certainly want to like what I’m reading, to feel like I’m engaged with the text. I’m not sure that any of us would be happy readers if we felt every book we approached was a hard slog with little to recommend to us personally and emotionally, even if others were telling us each of said books were masterpieces (post-modern or otherwise). Reading is so intensely personal and subject, so I don’t see why objectivity is championed in this case. Challenging books can be good, of course, but we should not fall into the trap of believing that simply because something caused us difficulty it was good.

So I guess my questions are:
1) Who’s to say, really, which books are Good or worthwhile, and which ones aren’t? Mark Twain hated Jane Austen’s writing, and Harold Bloom thinks Toni Morrison is “supermarket fiction”…
2) Why does the former matter?
3) Why do so many people (and to be clear, I’m not implying that you are one of these people!) seem to place the objective merits of a book (and again, I’m not sure how we determine what these are!) over enjoyment? What’s so wrong with enjoying a book simply for enjoyment’s sake?

(I don’t necessarily expect you to have the answers, though it would be great if you did! - but these are just things I wonder every now and again. Having read your blog for some time now, I know you’re a lover of thumping good reads as much as you enjoy really tackling something far more difficult to wrap your mind around!)