It’s true that I’ve never written anything from the point of view of creative writing. Now that you’ve brought that up, I can see what you mean about censorship. But I think it’s not the product of attempting objectivity, in and of itself, more the product of the problem you describe in the pedagogy of creative writing (?). Perhaps.

Specifically, I despise the “canon” and the rearguard actions most critics take to keep it alive. As a myth critic, I look at literature of all forms in the way it connects to the audience, how it provides what people need, and if that’s served by a piece of realistic, semi-autobiographical fiction, that’s okay; but it can be served just as well, sometimes better, by something that would never be accepted into the “canon.”

I should probably explain that I write genre fiction, specifically fantasy, which is still almost universally despised by creative writing academics. Literature academics don’t have much of a problem with it, having accepted, to some extent, the idea that anything is a text. But every time I submit a story to a workshop and have my professor tell me I should be writing something else, I feel the effects of the censorship inherent in supposedly-objective judgments.

I had originally meant to add something on the side of “objective” judgments, though, but I partly forgot, and partly found that what I had written worked better without it. Here it is, though: I don’t rate things over on MAL according to my subjective views, I go after what you would call an objective valuing. That’s because I rate over there with an eye to recommending something to total strangers. That’s close, I think, to what you mean.

I should also mention that I only like “best something” lists when they’re personal, rather than an attempt to actually organize a body of literature, and I’ve never really liked book reviews. : D

I imagine I’m going to wind up unconstructively restating my position here, but I believe we’re not ‘just’ entertaining each other – that’s all that we can prove we’re doing, yes, but out there somewhere lies objectivity. Discussion is far more interesting (or, if you want, entertaining) when the people involved are striving to accomplish something, to reach some kind of conclusive answer to the question ‘Is this good?’

Not that that answer is going to be reached, because an objective assessment of a work’s quality is far less scientific a matter than the empirical observation that gravity exists. For some reason, however, the general preference does appear to be for opinions about objective value: people love to draw up lists of ‘best/worst of all time’ and people love to read book reviews (which are, oddly, much more popular than articles about what other books mean).

Which brings us to canons and censorship. I’m not sure I understand why censorship’s such a dirty word. I’m happy with a reasonable amount of censorship, possibly because I lack physical courage, in a ‘I disagree with what you say, and if someone threatened me I would happily let them trample all over your right to say it’ way, but possibly because it can be a reasonable, pragmatic measure. Meanwhile, canons – and, more broadly, lists – seem to me to be essential to the way we think about literature.

I imagine I’ve misunderstood what you wanted to say, and that most of this comment was me talking past you, for which I apologise. I’m a pretty amateur theorist, if I’m a theorist at all.