pure_mercury
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- Joined
- Feb 28, 2008
- Messages
- 6,946
- MBTI Type
- ESFJ
I can ride with this, to a degree, but isn't a work always part of a larger context? Not just the author's life and personality. I find Mary Shelley's life to be fascinating but I can't stand her as an author, for the most part, but at the same time she is an "important" author because of where/when/why she wrote and who she affected, if not a particularly good one IMO.
Yes and no. I acknowledge work as important and influential that I don't personally enjoy. Television are a very influential band. I don't care much for them. Lots of people hate Ayn Rand (just look at this thread; I am not big on her myself), but she is way more influential in terms of Western society of the last 50 years than all but a handful of writers. And, by all accounts, she was a raging bitch. These aspects don't really enter into my critical faculties when deciding whether something is good or bad, though. That has a different meaning for me. I can also separate between "I like this" and "This is great." They usually coincide, but it's not necessarily so.