"favourite" vs "great" (was Re: NP Warlock (1959)

[Michael Bailey]

On 4/17/06, jbor at bigpond.com <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > Where I seem to be in disagreement with others on this list is in this
> > odd notion that "favourite" = "great". It doesn't.
> >
> > I quite like _Warlock_. I don't particularly like _Ulysses_. But I can
> > also see that by any legitimate criterion of assessing relative
> > "greatness", the latter ranks above the former.
>
> Should have added re. Joyce's fiction that I do very much like both
> _The Dubliners_ and _Portrait_, but detest _Finnegans Wake_.
>
> Thus, his novels' respective claims to "greatness" might sit in exactly
> the reverse order to my personal preference.
>
> best
>
>

After a certain point, isn't literary greatness like ranking various
math techniques for both difficulty and importance?
Subjectivity enters in to the assessment of difficulty, and importance
varies with what you want to use them for.

i'd both want to attend the meeting where they firm up the greatness
criteria(to give my input)
but yet also want to miss it (because it would be one long drawnout
meeting, for one thing)

It's fun to browse FW with a rightbrained kind of de-focus, like doing
wordsearch puzzles where answers (both right and wrong) pop out

got to admit I sometimes "read" GR that way too...
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