[lbo-talk] Billy Joel

[Carrol Cox]

Dennis Claxton quotes someone: ". . . the badness of really bad art is, I
believe, always worth affirming, since it allows us to praise-and to examine
why we praise-'good' or "great" art."

I don't have time just now to develop the argument, but I wish to state,
dogmatically, that this is profoundly false -- even disastrously and
viciously false.

Fro some comment see the "Polemical Introduction" to Northrop Frye's
_Anatomy of Criticism_ (the remainder of the book is of less interest). 

Evaluative criticism, whether negative or positive, si juvenile and
nonsensical. It disrupts useful intellectual discourse, and represents
merely a fart of self-expression by the critic.

Carrol