Still Blair

I've been quite interested in the idea of the literary Canon for some time.  The idea of a fixed (more or less) list of important, good books raises a lot of questions for me, about a number of things. First, what books make it in? If it is just how widely read the books are and how well they've stood the test of time, it is basically a popularity contest--but no one would say 50 Shades of Grey belongs in the Canon over, say, Hamlet, just because it sold more copies recently.  If the Canon is not determined by a popularity contest but by Ivory Tower dwelling intellectuals passing down the list from on high, that also presents problems: what happens when the PhDs are telling everyone book X is great and no one ever reads it?  There seems to be some element of a popularity contest in the Canon's makeup, but trying to quantify it is quite difficult.

This gets to a similar argument, of exactly how subjective or objective evaluation of art can be. I have always felt that there was a subjective element to art, but not to the degree some people claim.  I don't believe that there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" art and everyone has a personal evaluation.  For example, if someone says they like Bach more than Beethoven, that seems like a reasonable preference to me, but if they like their neighbor's two year old banging on a keyboard more than Beethoven that seems objectively, provably wrong.  I can have a legitimate discussion with someone about whether The Godfather or Goodfellas is a better movie, but if you like Transformers more than either, that seems to me to be clearly incorrect. 

Blair seems to be addressing this fuzzy area between objectivity and subjectivity on 959, in his discussion of Virgil and Homer.  Here he presents an argument between himself and a friend, one preferring Homer, the other Virgil.  He says "The other person is more struck with the elegance and tenderness...of Virgil: I, with the simplicity and fire of Homer.  As long as neither of us deny that Homer and Virgil have great beauties, our difference falls withing the compass of that diversity of tastes..."  ie it is not a problem they disagree on these two titans, as they are both great enough to be comparable and close enough in quality that there is wiggle room on preference--everyone likes something a little different.  Blair continues, if the Virgil lover rejects Homer completely from the discussion "...I exclaim, that my antagonist either is void of all taste, or that his taste is corrupted in a miserable degree."  

Blair and I seem to agree that there is a degree of subjectivity in determining the quality of a work of art, but an opinion must be formed within a given framework or it is outside the limits of subjectivity, and simply wrong.