Kerry wrote:
"Sorry Al, I can't answer this. Like I said off the top, to
me
"literature" is both the definition of all things written, or
the name for another genre."
John Carey starts his book, What Good Are the Arts?, with the
premise that art is anything anyone has ever said was art.
And he makes a very convincing argument that there are no
rational reasons that one person's definition, no matter how
accredited that person, is better than another's.
However, the second half of the book is Carey's argument that
literature is the greatest art. He offers standards by which
literature is better than other arts, usually compared to
music and/or painting and sculpture, mainly in its ability to
argue and debate. Unfortunately, he never provides a
rationale for why those are, or should be, the standards by
which art is judged. Although he occasionally throws in a
caveat that this is only his opinion, he seems to be doing
just what he criticized everyone else of doing in the first
half of the book.
And Kerry, like you, I've been trying to think of some crap
that has survived. Although I hated Dickens in high school,
I'm not ready to dismiss him (and keep meaning to reread
something by him to see if I just didn't get him at the
time). The closest I can come is something that has survived
because it is historically important to the development of a
genre, but, at least for me, pretty hard to slog through --
Carroll John Daly.
Mark
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