Is my taste in books a thinly veiled form of academic posturing and approval-seeking? Is YOURS?

Not that this is what she was saying, but this is the question that pops into mind after seeing Ty’s comment on my list of “Books I’ve Never Finished Reading.”

On a related note, a friend has convinced me that there are no objective standards or qualities of beauty, except for those illusory ones projected onto works of art by self-satisfied critics or chain-smoking hipsters.

So what, then, makes a book, song, or film good? I can think of 3 reasons.

1. It makes you happy. Or sad. Or something. Things that are good in this way are apt to be described simply as “good” with no further explanation. Example: Atonement. More the movie than the book, but both fall under this category. Someone will say, “Oh! Atonement was SOO good!” This refers to the artistic merit the work gains from making your insides feel like they’ve twisted into a Klein bottle. In the case of Atonement, the feeling is an old literary standby: intense, crippling regret. Self loathing. The more desperate and hopeless the emotion, the more artistic. (This also explains why existentialism is so artsy.)

2. You can write a really long paper–or at least have a very long, one-sided conversation with a hapless friend–about it. These also have a tendency to fall under the no-questions-asked “good” category, the difference being that the circular reasoning might be concealed using a different word, or usually, with more words. Example: Heart of Darkness. “Joseph Conrad’s harrowing critique of colonialism wasn’t just good–it was masterful!” Note that anything that is a critique of something that used to be good but now is bad, like slavery or imperialism, should send strong signals to your art-dar. Which leads me to the 3rd reason…

3. It makes you feel like a good person. Example: novels about totalitarian or dystopian societies, novels written by people who can no longer legally reside in their country of birth, Schindler’s list. These stories are usually very depressing and might feature a lot of violence, but are actually meant to make you feel really good. This might seem counter-intuitive, until you realize that no, you don’t live in a fascist country, but if you did, yes, like Liam Neeson you would also risk death or torture to save other people and stick it to the man. Discovering your inner hero but still being able to enjoy democracy and freedom–it doesn’t get any better than that. Good words for describing works like this are “affirmation,” “humanistic,” and “deeply humanistic.”

So, getting back to the question at hand, do we only like the books that make us seem more intellectual? No, of course not. We like them because they’re an affirmation of our deeply humanistic values!

Oh, and also because they’re good. Can’t you see that?