the golden threshold

I always recognize that the best books I've read often fail to meet "objective" criteria - the ones I use to justify my criticism of "bad" books. So I argue that a good book is not necessarily something that meets all "good writing practices"; but one that has some extraordinary strength, sometimes the form, other times the content; in artistry, creativity, novelty or deep thinking.

Good reasoning; yet it rarely succeeds in convincing anyone who does not already share my opinion about a given book. And it does not predict how the next book would "fare". So my literary criticism (or that of others) appears arbitary or subjective.

What I've realized recently is that this subjectivity is nevertheless "predictable", in the sense that one seemly always appreciates an artwork intuitively first. And it is with this "gut feeling" of satisfaction (or the lack of), which apparently has some kind of threshold, does one proceed to praise or criticize an artwork rationally, or "objectively".

While this aesthetic intuition is as subjective, and unique to each individual, as it can be, it evolves with growing up, or learning. Learning from experiences. Learning of known literary standards. And influenced by others, too. Thus, an "educated subjectivity" moves inevitably closer to an "objective" judgement, which would define a more stable, rational and sophisticated threshold. Individually, your own evolving threshold is always golden. Culturally, a few recognized great minds set the bar. And historically - one may suppose - the survived is the truly great. With the caveat that not all great works make it to the day.