'Recognize Quality in Something Without Actually Liking it"

An English veteran of the Blog Wars, mustered out long ago, recalls a reader who requested book recommendations. “I asked what he was interested in,” my blogger emeritus writes. “He said anything would do, so I said I had no idea, could only tell him what I was reading at that time (all very dry and frankly tedious, like Plato), much to his discomfort.” 

This happens quite often. I want to be civil, of course, and not ignore the request. My strategy, which never leaves me feeling satisfied, is to refer him to a book I have enjoyed and found rewarding. I don’t try to sell it. I don't want to be blamed if he chooses not to like it. I describe its virtues and then drop the subject. Recommending books to someone you hardly know online is like prescribing medication for someone who won’t describe his symptoms. I’m reminded of the bookstore customer who, decades ago, asked me, “Do you have that book with the blue cover?” No author, no title, no subject. Just a blue cover. My old friend continues:

 

“Very few people can recognise quality in something without actually liking it. I used to get irritated that almost everyone denies value to that which leaves them indifferent, but now I'm wondering if my split objective/subjective judgement is abnormal, perhaps even pathological. It would be as if one could say a woman is very beautiful but you don't find her remotely attractive - though I think, here, most people could understand the concept, that everyone has a ‘type’ to which they are drawn, without being totally unmoved by other ‘types.’”

 

I should add that my friend writes “Taste” as his email’s subject line. He raises an interesting conundrum and the writer who best illustrates it for me is John Milton. I’ve read Paradise Lost and most of the other poetry. Some of it has stuck. I reread the sonnets and “Lycidas” on occasion, and will now and then look up an allusion in Paradise Lost. But I’m certain I will never read it again, beginning to end. Is Milton a genius, a poet every thoughtful person with pretensions to being well-read probably ought to know? Of course. Have I internalized him, made him mine, the way I have Shakespeare and Swift? Not even close. But it never occurs to me to think Milton is a failure, a “bad writer.” In fact, the “failure” is mine.

 

I should add that “taste” shifts and evolves across a lifetime of reading. I adored Hart Crane in high school. Now I would have a tough time reading him on a bet. On the other hand, I dismissed Max Beerbohm as a decadent trifler. Now he’s on the short list of essential writers.