Sorting the Writings

If you have a desire to sort books by something other than their covers, you may need to see through them and take special noticse of those those with tenable content and form. If you hesitate to make up your mind about it, there are shortcuts - some good ones are below.

Well, go for accepted quality if you can. Here is how to do it for non-fiction output: Learn to sort facts from hearsay and fiction with increasing proficiency. Go from feelings or attitudes to possible, underlying thoughts, if any, and also sort the best issues at hand, to present them well enough. Here is where presentation quality sets in. It is of different degrees, much like a staircase with several steps. At any level, aplomb is seldom harmful.

Quality concepts

Some things that last for a long time, are often of quality. But what is quality?

We speak of top quality, high quality, medium quality and so on. There is quality of life, high standards, excellence, and writers of quality, good quality at reasonable prices. And there are persons who focus on quality above quantity, even though quality actually may be difficult to define.

Quality may refer to a feature, characteristic, character, nature of something, or a standard of excellence or superiority.

The word quality comes from Old French qualité, from Latin qualitas state, nature, from qualis, of what sort.

Synonyms include: value, merit, pre-eminence and worth.

In philosophy, how to distinguish certain kinds of qualities from one another, remains controversial. Philosophy and common sense tend to see qualities as related either to subjective feelings or to objective facts, or both. Things and ideas and maya we want to last throughout life, should be of quality - outstanding too.

Books of outstanding quality tend to become classics - suit yourself

'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read. [Mark Twain]

Classics - works that never are wholly out of date. [TK]

Today it is not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of models of eloquence, but the ad agencies. [Marshall McLuhan]

Literature - a kind of storytelling that's been with us a long time and may be with us for a long time to come. [Cf. John Green]

The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them. [Italo Calvino]

American classics taught me that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art. [Cf. Russell Banks]

Introductions belong to the masterpieces and classics of the world, and I am here introducing. [With Arthur Machen]

You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time. [William Landay]

Classics are constantly being re-imagined and transformed, and the originals are none the worse for it; they endure. [Robert Gottlieb]

A. On high quality in literature

The fabric of words may cast its spells on a man. Stupid faith may result, for one thing. Are there other untoward results of reading and hearing than gross lack of realism, being led astray, and wasting one's precious time?

Since there are many sorts of classics around, and classics in many fields. A first definition is here: A classic is a largely enduring work. Also, a classic reflects sides to the history and culture of a civilisation in its way, and helps the study of a civilization. And here is a tendentious way of speaking about classics: "Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race," said Henry Miller. Such a saying is quite a lemon, and not true to facts as far as I can see. What matters the most is not how many classics we have read and now neatly, but how well we have digested them - and the quality and subjects of classics differ a lot as well.

But to stay with the lemon simile, in case a classic is forced on you on some level in your compulsory education: "When fate hands us a lemon, let�s try to make lemonade," said Andrew Carnegie. How to make the lemonade of self-help learning and reading comes next - how to profit from various uses of language.

B. Good quality in the main

Good quality may be measured tentatively by a mixture of informal and not so informal yardsticks, and some search engines offer help toward finding works of scholarship too. Also, the structured comments on various books and other items on Amazon.com may give good hints, once you know the many caveats involved.

In a library, works are grouped into such as General Works; Philosophy; History; Geography; Folklore; Social Sciences; Education; Fine Arts; Language and Literature; Science; Medicine; Agriculture; Technology; Bibliography and so on. Another, greatly helpful division is between fiction and non-fiction. If we look for facts to be rooted in or even base our fare on somewhat, non-fiction works are more likely to offer good help.

On our way on and up, solid non-fiction books of many kinds can help to some degree. A book is not to be judged by its cover, says a proverb, and to judge the value of people and their thoughs only by virtue of their rank or status is a fallacy too: Is not the cowl that makes the monk or the pointed beard that makes the sage, says our inherited folk wisdom. To rub it in, take a look at the tale of the abbot who is called to document his knowledge, and who sends his shepherd to answer difficult questions aimed at finding out of the abbot's worth. The abbot or minister in such tales is high-ranking but not wise. The Finnish scholar Walter Anderson collected almost 600 variants of this type of tale [Bø 1982:381].

Outer marks and status may fall short, or they may not. Formal qualifications are had by exams, and real qualificatons show up in the living as true competence. It does not have to be any either-or; however, some who seem competent by virtue of their degrees, may not be fair or markedly bright anyway, and vice versa. There are some skerries under the surface where the tactful learner and reader is sailing. And as a reader or learner you are called to sail between Scylla and Charybdes, somewhat like Odyssey and his crew.

Scylla: It is usually good to know about formal signs of quality and give thought enough to what underlies many sites. For some seek to make you buy something, or seek profit by ensnaring ways and means. So ponder: "f we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too, wrote Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Others may take to indoctrinating means, and not every site is fair and reliable. Some find pretences OK. Now, as with good books to learn from, find out something about the author(s) by their formal grades, titles and reputation. Also have a look at who publishes the works in question - university presses and works of repute or thought well of in journals of esteem seldom go along with authors of ill repute. So check well. It helps to be informed, even though there are limits to it. The Scylla error is to be greatly duped by titles and status marks, and not be able to evaluate the merits of a work yourself. There are very enabling methods to learn here. [Link]

Charybdis: There are also works of outstanding quality without formal marks as those pointed at above - it happens. The error is to pass by such works, not noticing how great and helpful they are.

C. Good quality in non-fiction works

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words . . . for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." - William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style

You may produce a work in two pages, and only make a book although you fill ten volumes folio." - Joseph Joubert

Impressive language may not be the best language, for the hoof of demagogy could well be in it. In science and scholarship it is fit to let facts speak for themselves without great-looking words and howls to accompany them.

In cases of uncertainty one is to tell how uncertain things supposedly are, by estimates. Uncertainties can be graded, as in statistics, through such as "most definitely", "most likely", "rather likely", "likely", "probably", "possibly", to "maybe and maybe not". There are shades of uncertainties.

Also, one is to discern between facts and interpretations. Literature analysis hinges on interpretation skills, just as for picture analysis. Many principles for doing it exist, and you have to use your common sense - a common sense that is not too common anyhow.

Further, it is a given to discern between firsthand sources and other sources, between sources of good quality and others, and prefer the best ones at hand.

Academic writers and able scientists learn how to present their ideas neatly, by taking the time to go through various primers in the art of writing reports and dissertations. There are "How to" books for these too.

In scientific writings you are to refrain from undermining your readers by tricks and other means that demagogues resort to. For one thing, you are expected to substantiate your claims by being specific, being to the task, and giving marked examples, and refer in accepted ways to the sources you use. This is to link up to related research, and help the reader to check your sources, even to duplicate your experiements, if you tell of experiements. It all is supposed to work against such as tendentiousness, bias and gullible beliefs.

Another fine side to learning academic ways, is to tell first what is to come, and then fill out. This structuring principle applies both to whole works, chapters and paragraphs. This skill makes it easier for readers to get a grasp, if you write for them. Summaries help too, and being clear, using reasonably understandable language. Plain English guidelines may serve us here along with more concrete guidebooks.

As for polishing one's output, "I was working on a proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back in," by Oscar Wilde. Today there are style guides with a mixture of fixed and suggested rules that may ward off many of these delicate problems.

It helps to be alert to devious, creepy arguments, and appeals to authorities that may do no good.

Good luck.