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The better we know a piece of art, the more we can see it for it is, and not have our judgement clouded by our pre-existing feelings. The more we have read, the better we know where a new book fits. The more ignorant we are, the more likely it is that we will be dazzled by mediocrity. Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul, as Alexander Pope said.Good taste is accumulated through wide knowledge.

Henry Oliver, How to have good taste

#Henry Oliver #How to have good taste

Being able to change the world, act effectively in the world, relies on your mental model of the world—and of yourself. Those models can be significantly affected by the works of imagination you read, watch, and listen to. Those works give you new models all the time, new ways of connecting the inner and the outer life, new explanations for why people are the way they are, and new maps for the journey you might take. Imagination is essential to our notions of identity, language, and thought. That is part of Locke’s revolution in 1690. And those ideas gave the novelists their starting point.

Henry Oliver, Will Imagination be the Key to Thriving in the Age of AI?

#Henry Oliver #Will Imagination be the Key to Thriving in the Age of AI?

One widely recognized purpose of reading and studying literature is to challenge existing beliefs—to provoke. So if we are too sensitive about not telling people that some books are better than others (because we don’t want romance readers to feel bad about themselves or whatever), we are deciding to prefer one sort of good to another, before we have even begun the process of thinking through what the goods are and how to value them. Elitism is the belief that some books are better than other books and that it is better to read those books. This is not necessarily an argument for only reading those books. I happen to believe that it is important to have catholic taste. How can you know the relative value of different pleasures unless you enjoy them all, or at least experience them all? As Robert Gottlieb, the famous editor (who edited Caro) said, “I will read anything from Racine to a nurse romance, if it’s a good nurse romance.” The goodness of Mozart is not about you, and not defined by you; the apprehension of Mozart’s goodness is another matter, and one which we might argue about. The same is true of Racine and the nurse romance and all the other works of literature under dispute. Being able to apprehend these differences, independently of any value judgements you may make about them, and any emotional reaction you have to being told that you like the lesser-valued work, is the task of criticism.

Henry Oliver, Elitism is good (so is being nice)

#Henry Oliver #Elitism is good (so is being nice)

Analyzing a passage of I.A. Richards, McCloskey compares the development of taste to “revealed preference.” Richards says that those who begin by enjoying “bad poetry” but who then enjoy The Golden Treasury do not go back. Those people who are able to appreciate both prefer The Golden Treasury. McCloskey says that this is like a customer who can afford two products: the one they choose is their revealed preference. This argument is not exclusive to The Golden Treasury, or even exclusive to literature and art. You can have metapreferences in any domain. Once you have enjoyed Indian food, you cannot think McDonald’s is better. Once you have understood Adam Smith, you won’t take so seriously many op-eds. Once you have worked in advertising, you ought to have good taste in landing pages. When people are free to choose, liberals are fond of saying, they choose freedom. The same goes for taste, be it in Shakespeare or fountain pens or cheese.

Henry Oliver, A simple test for developing taste

#Henry Oliver #A simple test for developing taste

When we prioritise our own reaction to art, we assume that those reactions are about the art. But if you are misreading a piece of writing, without knowing it, your feelings will be more to do with you than with the writing, and thus not a response to the writing at all. When we misunderstand what we read, our feelings make us pay more attention to what is familiar in the writing than to what is unfamiliar. Thus believing that taste is primarily personal encourages us to not react to the writing, but instead repeat what we already think and feel. And so bad taste perpetuates itself. Once we aspire, like Klein, to appreciate the best work, we begin to pay attention, acquire knowledge, and to see our personal reactions and deep feelings as only one important way of assessing great work. The more we can find in these great works of art, the broader the range of responses we can have. Struggling through works that are beyond us leads to new levels of understanding, new depths of feeling. The more you sample, the better and broader your taste will be. The more you stick to what already speaks to you, the more limited and narrow your taste. Call it good taste or don’t, it’s all the same.

Henry Oliver, How to have good taste

#Henry Oliver #How to have good taste

So we have a question—can we be elitist about literature (maintain canonical standards) and make it a welcoming subject for people who love reading non-canonical works? I think we can, but I want to defend elitism as part of that belief. We can believe that some books are better than others without believing that makes readers of those books superior. Anna Karenina is supreme; reading Anna, however, isn’t a magical process by which you become supreme. I am a pluralist, so my response to Isaac is to say that while some books are better than others (there really is such a thing as a canon and notions from the social science about socially constructed ideas don’t change that), there are many different forms of the good. Lots of things are good in ways that might not be consistent. We don’t have to pick one exclusive idea of the good. We have to pick between competing ideas of the good. To say that there are different goods is not to deny that some goods are better. There are many sorts of pleasure and you have to be a stubborn Benthamite to maintain that they are all equal. I doubt that anyone seriously thinks that there are no higher pleasures. We don’t really believe that the students who are told they enjoy “bad” books are always enjoying books which are the equal of canonical literature. These debates are often non-pluralistic. We debate as if we have to choose between types of pleasure. In reality, you can have some fun and enjoy the higher pleasures. Even that notable elitist Harold Bloom liked to watch the Yankees on the television. Life is not all Dante and Proust. What we want, then, is some variety of pleasures, with a recognition of the different types of good that exist, so that we can make informed decisions about how to spend our limited time. Pluralism would also insist on the idea that there are other goods than pleasure. There is a whole range of human experience available to us, and pleasure is not the only good thing that makes life valuable. From this we can say that elitism is fine because some things are better than others and anyway studying Literature is not only valuable because it is fun (or because it is a higher pleasure, for that matter).

Henry Oliver, Elitism is good (so is being nice)

#Henry Oliver #Elitism is good (so is being nice)

Panicked Note!

A brief break in the Big Smoke “London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.” – Anna Quindlen (Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest…