🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1gbvpuINNq0e@agate.berkeley.edu> curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
>In article <1992Dec10.141204.13258@syma.sussex.ac.uk> mapd1@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Nigel Ling) writes:
>>
>>Well, excuse me for saying so, but this is *not* what literature is.
>>Literature is art, not necessarily what the majority prefer to read.
>
>Oh?  And who are you to decide which is which?

Well, I'll tell you I am: I am someone who reads literature, who happens
to think it has great value, and who is entitled to express an opinion
just as you are.

>
>But even were it possible to define what is literature and what
>is crap, fund the former and burn the latter, we could not
>agree.  We have a fundamental moral conflict, which cannot be
>resolved by argument.

There cannot be a precise definition but there is no doubt in my
mind that there is writing which is literature and there is writing
which is not. However, I said nothing about burning anything. There
is nothing `wrong' with popular writing; but there is something
wrong when literary work cannot get published because it doesn't
sell as well as pulp.

>
>I believe that art is only valuable insofar as it makes people
>happy.(*)

Maybe that's a fair comment. But not everybody is made happy by
the same things. And something is not art just because it makes
one happy.

Nigel