From: le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel)
Subject: Re: Literature Students/Small World
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. - Rye Canyon
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 92 00:07:47 GMT

In article <1992Oct10.152041.6378@athena.mit.edu>, kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan) writes...

>>Some of us (maybe all of us at one time or another) make the intellectual
>>a necessary qualification before benediction is passed over a work (the
>>Snob Requirement, some might say).  Even though we all appreciate and
>>indulge in the "light read" (or is it "lite"?), those books keep that label, 
>>and never rise in our esteem to the title "Great".  So for those with the
>>Snob Requirement (and I include myself in this category), where does this
>>heightened need for the "intellectual" come from?  Why isn't the pleasure
>>in its more immediate "gut level" enough?  To the point that we may
>>condescend someone else who unabashedly says "I don't know what's good, but
>>I know what I like".
> 
>	Ron, isn't there a hierarchy of pleasures that has some
>relation to the amount of *effort* expended? For example, I gain
>pleasure from a bracing walk in the woods; however, were I to climb
>Mount McKinley (ha, ha) then my pleasure would be greater due to the
>commensurately greater amount of effort involved in attaining that
>end. 

Maybe your pleasure would be great...after the climb.  Or maybe your pride
would be great upon reflection of your great effort.  I've done a lot
of backpacking myself, and there were climbs that I hated WHILE I was
doing them, but bragged about later.

So, because of those greater efforts involved in the mountain
>climb, I can put a "benediction" over it that places it in a higher
>level of pleasure and of accomplishment. Books are much the same
>aren't they? i.e. I gain some pleasure (and diversion) from "lite"
>reading but I gain a sense of accomplishment from finishing something
>difficult.

OK, but the sense of accomplishment is for your effort, but the appreciation 
of the novel is for the author's.  So, what happens if you put a lot of
effort into a really lousy novel.  Do you still feel accomplishment?  And
accompishment aside, what judgement do you pass on the work?  This is what
I'm getting at, actually.  Some people judge a novel by the intellectual
satisfaction they may get after reading it, but not so much on how they 
enjoyed it while reading.

>evidence of our accomplishment. After all, don't we usually display
>these books, somewhat like trophies, as evidence of the feat

Sure, but was it a great book?

>As to the "snob requirement" I view that as an exceedingly natural human
>tendency, i.e., differentiating and elevating our accomplishments from
>those who haven't the same experience. 

No doubt.  This was not even called into question, but went without
saying.  And so you come to the point where I began.  One r.a.b.er said
that she did not like Lord Jim until it was explained to her...THEN she
liked it better.  She liked something intellectual about it, it seems to
me, and that worked "backward", as it were, so that it changed her
initial judgement of the work.  Is this intellectual trophy to our effort
the thing we're after?

Ron