Oh man. I always miss the fun stuff.

I don't think artists are more likely to be crazy or sensitive or neurotic or tortured than anyone else is. That conception is a hangover from the Romantics.

Bad art is still art. Food is still food even if it tastes awful. I'll go even broader than Fred Pete and say that if someone made it, it's art. Whether it is good or bad art is a different question. As usual I am with ita in liking bright lines, and that's the only place I can draw the line that makes sense to me.

Leading us to: I have not seen any Michael Bay movies, because they look stinky. But I have to say that his Verizon ad makes me laugh.

However, I will say, Hec, that I think your definition of art is personal, but in a way that weirdly claims objectivity.

I don't want to quibble because I don't believe you want to take the stance that there is no way to define art or judge good art. I could be wrong but I think that stance is unproductive. You might as well throw criticism away. Which is fine for some people, but again, not really what I think you believe.

So then it's a matter of discussing the differences in our standards instead of arguing whether there are any worth having. That's a more interesting discussion than starting with "Previously in Aesthetics, the earth cooled." I think we're both further downstream than that. I'm confident that we have some some common heuristics.

ita, however, I suspect might argue the radical stance that there are no defensible aesthetic standards. But she's further out on the galactic rim on critical opinion.

Bad art is still art. Food is still food even if it tastes awful.

This. If you write, you're a writer. If you sing, you're a singer. If you paint, you're a painter, whether or not you get paid for it, or publish it, or make it public. What you write/sing/paint is art, even if it's awful. If you're creating something original, it's art.

What makes good art good, or bad art bad, is completely subjective.

I don't know art, but I know what I like.

Do you know it when you see it?

And you don't mean porn?

But I have to say that his Verizon ad makes me laugh.

Hee! Awesome, indeed.

That conception is a hangover from the Romantics.

Really? Do you want to run a tally on American writers of the 20th century? You don't think you'll come up with a higher tally of suicide, mental illness and alcoholism than the general population? Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Plath, Styron...

Writers who committed suicide is a big list.

What makes good art good, or bad art bad, is completely subjective.

That's bullshit. First of all, I know you don't believe that because you worked in publishing and made judgment calls about the quality of writing every day. Taste is not the same thing as quality.

Taste is not the same thing as quality.

It's not. There are a lot of things that a lot of people agree are good (even great) art. Beethoven symphonies, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare's plays, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

There are a lot of things most people agree are bad art, like black velvet paintings of Elvis and Precious Moments figurines.

But there's a middle ground, too, where what I think is a publishable novel is *not* a publishable novel to my colleague.

I also think making those decisions, as an editor, was muddied by the issue of commercial value. I acquired a lot of books that weren't great, but were books I knew readers would love. I had to turn down a lot of books I thought were wonderful because there was no (or a not-big-enough) market for them.