Josh Cook on the uses and misuses of judgement about literary quality and reflections about the process of suggesting books

Articulating these distinctions does more than just help people make decisions. When I describe a book to a reader, I want to do more than just convince them to buy it. Humans are language animals. We understand the world through language. We experience the world through language. For example, until I started reading and paying attention to descriptions of wine, wine always just kind of tasted like wine to me. I could tell a white from a red from a rosé, of course, but tasted with little subtlety beyond that.

Learning wines could be described as having “minerality” or a taste of “graphite” or “grass” unlocked those sensations in my mind. I needed the words before I could taste the flavors. We can’t ask for what we can’t name. Often, we can’t even experience or feel what we can’t name. So that articulation of distinction doesn’t just help people make choices, it also helps them have richer experiences reading the books they choose by giving them language for those experiences.

Sometimes those distinctions do include value judgments. Sometimes I do want to tell a reader that I think this book is better for what they want than that book. But declarations of quality, declaring this book “good” and that book “bad” is a fundamental aspect of weaponized good taste, one that brings together assumed authority and those incorrect assumptions of “standard” human experiences. Rather than thinking in terms of “good” and “bad,” I think about books in terms of “success” and “failure.” Does this book achieve the goals I think the author set for it? Does it meet my personal needs? Is it likely to meet the needs of this reader at this moment? What impact could it have on the social, cultural, and literary context in which it exists?

When I answer those questions, I do so assuming different readers might answer them differently. “Successful” and “failed” are still value statements. I’m still using my expertise in books to assess the quality of books, but “quality” rooted in specific contexts that acknowledges subjectivity is significantly different from a “quality” rooted in an assumption of universal quality. The former rests on acts of influence, while the latter relies on power and authority.

Ultimately, we’re all people with different skills and interests who made different decisions about how to spend our time and so developed different resources. To me, a humane practice of good taste means using the resources I’ve developed to discern distinctions between books and to articulate those distinctions while being honest about my own subjectivity and cognizant of the specific contexts the books exist in to help other people make good decisions for themselves and have better experiences with what they decide to read.

I can do this without denigrating works that I don’t find successful or readers who love those books. I can do this so readers who want to are encouraged to strive for deeper reading experiences outside their comfort zones without depicting everyone who hasn’t read the books I think are important as bad readers. I can open gates. I can lift up. I can inspire readers to want to be lifted.

One might ask: If “good taste” can be used as a weapon of cultural authoritarianism, why bother creating a humane version of it at all? Why can’t we just let people like what they like and find what they find? After all, most of us have access to a near infinite database of books, book reviews, amateur reviews, ratings, and opinions. Perhaps the easiest solution to the historical and contemporary weaponizing of “good taste” is to abandon it all together.

But having a near infinite database isn’t always helpful. If you don’t know what you’re looking for or how to sort that information, it’s easy to drown in that ocean of data. With online shopping, library networks that lend across branches, and websites like Project Gutenberg that provide easy access to public domain books, the contemporary reader can choose from damn near every book ever written. The number of choices we face can be so overwhelming that we are more stressed having to choose than excited to enjoy what we’ve chosen....

Ultimately, perhaps the biggest difference between the humane good taste I’m trying to cultivate and the weaponized good taste used as a tool of cultural authoritarianism is the latter is something you have and the former is something you do.
But I am not daunted by the expanse of books I’ll never read. I am thrilled. I think it’s beautiful that I could read books forever, and forever encounter the unfamiliar. To me, that proves the breadth, depth, and fundamental substance and significance of the human experience. To me, reading is an infinite journey and I want to bring as many people along with me as I can.

Weaponized good taste argues that only some of us are truly worthy of the power of art and literature. It argues that only some of us are capable of discerning the true quality in books and that everyone else should follow that vanguard. It can be easy to believe many books are out of your reach, that you are only capable of appreciating the most conventional or most familiar books, that challenging books are just for professors or lit bros who want to show off for each other.

But if you are literate, you are almost certainly a better reader than you think you are. You have the skills to interpret sophisticated images. You can be comfortable with ambiguity. You are capable of approaching the unfamiliar with curiosity instead of fear. You can be adventurous in exploring that infinite world of books with or without a guide. And if you want a guide, I need to continue reading adventurously and developing my expertise so I am always worthy of whatever influence I have.

Ultimately, perhaps the biggest difference between the humane good taste I’m trying to cultivate and the weaponized good taste used as a tool of cultural authoritarianism is the latter is something you have and the former is something you do. Humane good taste is a practice. It’s not about possessing expertise but about using whatever expertise you have developed to enrich the lives of others. It is not about hoarding whatever influence might come with that expertise but about sharing it with others. It’s not about occupying a position of authority but about communicating what I think and what I know in ways that are impactful and evocative to other people.

It’s about what I do, not who I am. The world of books is so fucking big. If I want to claim I have good taste in books, I have a responsibility to bring as much of that world to as many of you as I can.

The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century - Cook, Josh

Excerpted from The Art of Libromancy by Josh Cook.