The Varieties of Literary Appreciation

In considering how we look at works of literature it seems to me worth talking about the different ways to enjoy a work. This seems to me to go beyond the mere existence of the different literary standards that have existed across time and across cultures--for instance, the differences between a play by Sophocles, and a play by Shakespeare, and a play by Eugene O'Neill, all the products of very different thought-worlds for very different audiences offering very different sorts of experience.

What I refer to instead is the fact that when most people pick up a work of literature, as with the novels we are apt to see on the bestseller list, they expect an entertainment which will hold their interest, give them particular pleasures, and leave them emotionally satisfied at the end, a work's giving them which is what they refer to when they say that a book is "good" (as they are often hard-pressed to offer any more explanation than that it is "good," or not).

However, anyone who sticks with a course of literary study for long is likely to find that even books which do not please that way can have their interest. They may find the book engaging because of, for instance, technical aspects that may not give much entertainment. They may look upon it as a historical relic, the way an archaeologist might a piece of pottery from a past era. They may even take an interest in it as a puzzle (an approach that, I think, has a lot to do with the propensity of literary scholars to offer exceedingly abstruse explanations of literary works). And so on and so forth, the work interesting even when it is not interesting in the more usual, commonplace way.

Alas, I think the literary priesthood--to the extent that they are willing or able to explain their standards to the public at all--think all this too subtle for the laity, or maybe just too much at odds with their desire to cultivate a mystique around the works whose cults they tend and by extension themselves, so that they commend to the public a simple-minded awe at what they place on their pedestals, often so high it can scarcely be seen from the floor on which the mere mortals stand.