The Quality of Merit

By Ewan

Sun, 20 Aug 2017
  • 531 reads
2 comments
 

The quality of merit

is not strained

in the sieve

of one's preference.

 

We know what we like,

but our liking

does not confer quality.

Why should it?

Tell me,

I'd like to know.

 

Nabokov's Lolita

is a tour-de-force,

brilliance setting pages afire:

I don't like it,

but I know it's good.

Certificate U
Poem
Rant

Comments

Submitted by airyfairy on

I'm shocked, Ewan.  Next you'll be telling me that ​Law and Order - Special Victims Unit ​is not high art even though I'm addicted to the late night reruns.  

I've had a lot of conversations on this 'It's not good if I don't like it/it is good if I do like it' thing.  I sometimes wonder if it's attack being the best form of defence - people are so worried they might not be 'getting it' that they deny there's anything to get. Or perhaps it really is just the cult of the individual as arbiter of quality.

Good piece.  I pompously refused to read ​Lolita in my youth, convinced (not sure how) that it was just an arty-farty excuse for a paedophile fantasy.  I finally had to read it for a course, and it is stunning, and I do really like it.  

Submitted by Ewan on

read it twice. The second time to make sure I didn't like it. It's not even Nabokov's best book. (Despair, in my opinion, but that's all that is, my opinion). He is a fantastic writer though. Neither film did the writing justice.

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