4. Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can't recognize "good writing" or don't value it that much.I don't know if this is untrue so much as that I want to believe that readers, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, know good writing when they see it. Even if we can't all agree, there must be a baseline somewhere. Or have I lost all perspective? What do you say?
3 days ago
1 comment:
I agree with the first part of the sentence: nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is. Aesthetics are entirely subjective.
I can recognize differences between J.K. Rowling's prose and Ernest Hemingway's, and I can point to particular techniques they're using that make up their style, but whether I think either style is "beautiful" or not is entirely a matter of opinion. So I guess that puts me in the latter camp: if I don't think something's "beautiful", Miller would probably say that I "don't value it".
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