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When we say that we love a writer’s work, we are always stretching the truth: what we really mean is that we love about half of it. Sometimes rather more than half, sometimes rather less. The vast presence of Joyce relies pretty well entirely on “Ulysses,” with a little help from “Dubliners.” You could jettison Kafka’s three attempts at full-length fiction (unfinished by him, and unfinished by us) without muffling the impact of his seismic originality. George Eliot gave us one readable book, which turned out to be the central Anglophone novel. Every page of Dickens contains a paragraph to warm to and a paragraph to veer back from. Coleridge wrote a total of two major poems (and collaborated on a third). Milton consists of “Paradise Lost.” Even my favorite writer, William Shakespeare, who usually eludes all mortal limitations, succumbs to this law. Run your eye down the contents page and feel the slackness of your urge to reread the comedies (“As You Like It” is not as we like it); and who would voluntarily curl up with “King John” or “Henry VI, Part III”?

Martin Amis (via ayjay)

Clever, but false. Whether it’s writers or spouses, you love someone even if you don’t love 100% of everything about them. In fact, that’s pretty much the whole point of love, which is that you love people despite their flaws, or even because of them. (Love would be meaningless if you could only love perfect people, if they existed.) …

(via pegobry)

I’m with PEG. The whole point of declaring that you “love” certain artists is to distinguish your appreciation from ordinary admiration of their good work, and to admit that you find something worthwhile in their failed efforts. Neil Young, for instance, would be a lot less interesting to me if he’d only produced the albums that everyone recognizes as brilliant. Same with David Bowie.

Of course, the cost of listening to Landing on Water is much lower than plowing through one of, say, William Vollman’s lesser works, so dilettantism is easier to sustain in music than in literature. But still: some of us, Martin Amis, would never trade away that other half.

(Reblogged from pegobry)

Notes

  1. mwfrost reblogged this from pegobry and added:
    of declaring that you “love” certain artists...to distinguish your appreciation from...
  2. pegobry reblogged this from ayjay
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