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.
Lev GrossmanMost people are blind to magic. They move thru a blank and empty world. Theyโre bored with their lives and thereโs nothing they can do about it. Theyโre eaten alive by longing and theyโre dead before they die.
Lev GrossmanI guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.
Lev GrossmanMost people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.
Lev Grossman