This quotation helps me to feel better about my own lack of appreciation of certain well-respected, admired, and beloved authors. It shows that we all have blind spots--some quite, quite large.
from Ralph Waldo Emerson in
The Jane Austen Book Club
Karen Joy FowlerI am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. . . . All that interests in any character [is]: has he (or she) the money to marry with?. . . Suicide is more respectable.
Wow. Great quote. Thanks for sharing. I was recently surprised that Chesterton thought "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was the greatest of Shakespeare's plays. (At least "sometimes" thought it, according to a book about Shakespeare I'm reading.)
Yes, I agree; I've never thought much of Emerson. A silly fellow. ;-)