quote · Legacy record
The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We’re increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism.
The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We’re increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism.
Approximate author period: c. 1969 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Lev Grossman
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1969 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1969; activity date not established; Wikidata Q2558063, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2558063 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 166249; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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