On libraries and taste.

The line between decaying splendor (good!) and dreary grandeur (not so good!) is a fine one. I can confidently place the Bod on the former and the Widener on the latter side. Loveliest of all is Sterling, which is as old-fashioned as either but not so campily as the Bod (those portraits of forgotten scholars everywhere) nor so creakily as the Widener (all that marble and gold). I do like modern libraries too (the Seattle Public Library and the Beinecke are two of my favorites, and the Wellesley library's intimidatingly "designed"-looking chairs that turn out to be excellent of their kind remind me of Seattle), and I rather like the British National Library as well) and some comfily elderly ones, including many smaller university or college libraries and my local public libraries where I was raised.

I don't know, it's hard to say what makes one person appreciate this imperfection and another dislike it. (I discussed this a bit in the bad movies post.) My inclination is toward a weak aesthetic Platonism: I believe that many or most of the good things people see in anything are really there and really good. On this sort of account the hard work is not saying what is really good and not good, but prioritizing: since we are not big enough to get all of the good things, and because it is not unusual for appreciation of one good to detract from our capacity to "get" others, whether because of internal tensions or simply because we have not world enough and time. So for example I believe that there really are the good things that others see in songs or books or films that I would normally, casually call "horrible." That doesn't mean I regret my inability to appreciate, oh, reggae music and Nicholas Sparks and Wes Anderson, or professional football either. Nor when picking tastes to acquire would I make an effort to cultivate those in particular. But I have no problem with people filling in the blanks in art differently than I do and I have no problem accepting that what is salient to each of us on each occasion is not of necessity the only feature of that thing that could be important. I love enough clichés myself that I could never claim to occupy some Archimedean outside point. I can't criticize those who find "Brief Encounter" classist and sentimental; so it is; but I should be very sorry to watch it again and find that those features and aspects dominated my perception in place of its delicately intense emotional fidelity. I would be sorry to lose what I have seen in it. Naturally I cannot have the same investment in "The Royal Tenenbaums," and so I am neither sad nor ashamed to declare it trite, strained, arbitrarily sentimental, somewhat sexist, and dull. But I would be sad and ashamed to find myself trying to argue someone else out of her (well, realistically ... more likely his) love of Wes Anderson.