Speaking of style, we have a book from the Metropolitan Museum (ca. 1982) that tells the Baby Jesus story with pictures from their collection, and the text is one of the gospels, King James version. I was reading it to Dillo, and he was like, "This sounds like the Secret Garden." (Which we are in the middle of reading.) I found it very interesting that two examples of fairly formal, pre-20th century prose sounded alike to him, even though they are very disparate to me.

While there isn't one set of objective standards for art, you can delineate all the different ways a work succeeds or doesn't succeed

Sure. If you know the parameters involved. I can do it to my own satisfaction with writing, but with art or dance, for example, it mostly comes down to what I like. I'm okay with that.

Even the writing which is cited as being particularly direct, non-figurative, with short sentences in plain English represents a particular kind of style.

This sounds like you're saying that Asimov does have a writing style, but you don't like it. Which is also fine.

Strunk and White's book is called Elements of Style not because they want fancy/pretty writing. It's because the elements of style are what constitute writing itself.

I still maintain that this is bullshit. Ideas are articulated with words, yes, but you have to have them first. A lot of people could write pages of beautiful or moving or fresh descriptions of trees, in all different styles, but who would care?

This sounds like you're saying that Asimov does have a writing style, but you don't like it. Which is also fine.

Everybody has a writing style. His isn't particularly artful.

I still maintain that this is bullshit. Ideas are articulated with words, yes, but you have to have them first.

The idea behind Cold Kiss is not what makes it a good novel. It's just a plot bunny. It's a good plot bunny but many other writers could've executed it and it wouldn't have been as good as your book. The fact that your style and process is somewhat transparent to you is to be expected because it's your voice and that's how you write.

Maybe finding the right idea seems the most important to you because that's the spark that fires up your writing engine. That the writing itself flows from that idea. But I think that's just because you're very in touch with your own style as a writer. But I don't think the generative idea is as valuable as the writing style which you've developed over time which is as natural to you as dancing is to a trained ballerina. Her technique is invisible to her. She's using it to express the choreography.

But you get that I'm saying you do have to have an idea to tell first, yes? I'm saying that there are novels out there that have very little plot/content/whatever you want to call it, but are filled with lovely, pointless language.

Pointless language is as bad as clunky language, IMO. Neither of them use the tools of writing in the strongest way.

But knowing a subject in detail

I don't think you're risking getting called a snob because you know details, Hec. That's deflecting.

I have never read any Asimov, but I am picking up the I, Robot audiobook right now. All right, Scott Brick, make this serviceable prose worth listening to.

Some critics can certainly be pretentious assholes, but I also want to say that it's fine to love things that aren't actually good and critics pointing out the non-goodness is not, in an of itself, being snobby. I define a good work of art as one that uses all of its tools well. Not just plot or language or storytelling, etc. but all of them.

I am more familiar with film criticism so I will use that for an example. I don't care that some films I love are not liked by critics. I can love "Summer School" with Mark Harmon and not feel that film critics who hate it are snobs. Just because I love it does not mean it is as good a film as, oh, "Philadelphia Story." It's still seems to me to be useful to have the ideal of goodness, even if that can be hard to define. I don't think saying it's all subjective will EVER mean that "Billy Madison" is a great film, no matter how many millions of people enjoyed it. It's enjoyable, which is good, but not GOOD.I don't think I am a snob for pointing that out.

The thing with Asimov, and I just re-read Nightfall thanks to this discussion, is that his prose is often effectively transparent. Reading it, the story, the *what* of what's happening is what you notice, even 70 years later. It's aged exceptionally well in large part because of that.

Nightfall is probably the best example, but I think "The Ugly Little Boy" is damn close.