On Good vs Great Works of Art

On our travels so far, Scot and I have read many, many very good books, among them works like The Transit of Venus, A Canticle for Leibowitz, short stories by Janet Frame, etc. We’ve also encountered a number of nearly perfect works like When the Emperor Was Divine, Hill by Jean Gino, and Young Once by Patrick Modiano. But, by far the single greatest of them all – indeed, one of the single greatest works I’ve ever read- is Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. White won the Nobel prize in the 1950s, and this book is largely the reason. It is a sweeping, elemental story of two generations early in the founding of Australia, and its genius leaps off every page, all the more so since the people it portrays are decidedly inarticulate ( as one character says, why would I keep a journal? To put in it what I had for breakfast?). Yet, the insights it shows into each character and into mankind itself make it stand head and shoulders above every other very good book, to give it the unquestioned stamp of greatness.

Similarly, Scot and I have seen a number of really good movies in the past two months, including Anatomy of a Fall, Oppenheimer, Maestro, and most of the other best picture nominees for last year. All are very, very good. But, the one that truly stands out as great to me is Zone of Interest. An analysis of the banality of evil ( the couple live right next door to the Auschwitz’s death camp), it is so exhilaratingly strange, devastating and original that you know you’re in the presence of a masterpiece. That , to me, is the difference between good and great. Much like the famous quote about the difference between art and pornography: you can’t quite define what it is, but you know it when you see it.