on Don Quixote 5

I swear i'm further than this, I'm on 600ish, but I sometimes forget to blog on something I find interesting. On pages 414 and 415 I found some passages that made me think. It is the canon speaking about quality in literature and he says "it is better to be praised by a few wise men than and mocked by many fools." and then he says "as far as authors and actors are concerned, it is better to earn a living with crowd than a reputation with the elite." This brought to mind the idea of popular and elitist literature and how we define the two. I'm kind of on the fence when it comes to this question because I can defend either side I think. I try not to be an english snob but I admit that when someone tells me they really love Tom Clancy novels or Stephenie Meyer I make a sour face. Yet I must also admit that I happen to like Mitch Albom books like Tuesday's with Morrie even though those could never be considered exceptional literature. So where do we draw the line? how do we decide what is quality and what is fotter for the masses?

If we're to go by what the canon says on pg. 412, perfection in writing is constituted by using both versimilitude and mimesis. He says that chivalric books don't do this because they don't contain any truth and aren't realistic and "are totally lacking in intelligent artifice." Applying this to today's literature, I can easily use this to justfy why I think Stephen King novels suck, because they fit the same bill as chivalric literature. But if it's mimesis and verisimilitude that we're relying on, why is Alice in Wonderland considered good literature? or Kafka's Metamorphoses? So there must be more than just truth and realism that determine good literature. Perhaps it is the canon's later comment about intelligent artifice. If literature doesn't contain some intelligence in its structure, in its story, in its motifs and themes, then it can't be considered good. Not only that, but we should have to work a little bit to enjoy this literature. Most great books are not easy reads, and one must work to understand them. But that raises the point of whether or not difficulty is a valid reason to hail the author as a genius and the work as quality. Just because Henry James uses long sentences and buries his psychological musings so deep that one must work especially hard to understand him doesn't mean his writing is that incredible. I admit that he is very smart and some of his stuff I like, but most of it I find way over the top and almost like he's trying to show off. What good is a story if only highly-educated people can understand it? Wouldn't it be better if everyone could understand it?

I haven't really figured anything out. I guess there's no set rules on what makes quality literature but it's interesting to think about.