'The Possible Verdicts Are Five'

As binary thinking -- a rush to judgment about books, food, our fellow humans and just about everything else -- becomes harsher and more fashionable, interesting conversation withers. Have you noticed how quickly people dismiss a subject before it has been pondered and probed? The explanation would seem to be impatience (which Kafka once described as a form of laziness) abetted by self-righteousness, the refusal to admit one always begins in a state of ignorance. A sharp, instantaneous, conversation-ending verdict on a topic of some complexity is the new, socially sanctioned face of machismo. 

“As readers, we remain in the nursery stage so long as we cannot distinguish between Taste and Judgment, so long, that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a book are two: this I like; this I don’t like."

 

That’s W.H. Auden in A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970). Every day in the bookish precincts of the blogsphere I see what he described more than half a century ago. Liking or not disliking certain books and writers brings swift censure, often accompanied by an ad hominem attack at no extra cost. Judgment in literary matters is a necessity, of course. But so is thoughtfulness and a dollop of humility. The problem is not “negativity” but a sort of hair-trigger mentality, literary Manicheanism. Auden, ever the grown-up in the room, continues:

 

“For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.”

Like me, you’re probably thinking of the titles that nicely fill these slots.