Jesse, I suspect that your comment will be similar to the response that Matt has promised/threatened to make. But while you say that I'm contradicting myself, I think it's more that I'm not saying what you think I am.

Comparing Moriarty's definition of sublime art to my comment about the value of art doesn't mean that meaningful interpretations are interchangeable. It simply means that the two definitions are functionally equivalent. "The still evocation of the inexpressible" refers to a work that provokes an interpretation that can't be adequately expressed in a synopsis or summation. The Wikipedia article about The Road is not a "meaningful interpretation" of The Road (and neither is my description above).

And saying that the line between high art and low art is irrelevant doesn't mean that all art is equal. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said that The Road has more weight and more intent than The Hunger Games, for just one example. It simply means that it's irrelevant and purposeless to classify one as high art and the other as low art. It's only a "disservice" to say that if you're still clinging to a value judgment inherent in the term "high art."

The fact that there's a value judgment is shown in your use of "real" books; why the need for quotes unless there's an awareness that it's a meaningless distinction that doesn't have real merit except out of convenience? It's like the distinction between graphic novels and comic books, which implies that calling something a "comic book" is immediately an accusation of lack of depth. And I don't think the terms "genre fiction" and "literary fiction" have a lot of use, either, since they're loaded down with connotations of value — it implies that genres are inherently less valuable, and that, say, character studies of New Yorkers in their late 30s trying to process current events are no less a "genre" than "Western."

What they all rely on is one of the 2 main concepts I'm getting at in this post: the idea that the value of a work is encoded in the work itself. Most of us get that The Road will tend to have a greater impact on anyone who has a child than it would on me, and that it will have an even greater impact on fathers who have sons. So if you accept that there's already a sliding scale in the audience/artist interaction for a single work, where exactly does it stop being a continuum, where does it hit that dividing line that separates "high" and "low?"

Whenever I make the claim that intent isn't everything, that interpretation is equally important; that invariably somehow gets translated into "intent is nothing, interpretation is all that matters." My whole point is that taking it to either extreme isn't just elitism or populism, it's just plain irrelevant.

There are plenty of people — the majority of the audience, I figure — who'd consider No Country For Old Men to be a significant, capital-H High Art film. I thought it was technically outstanding but ultimately trite in its desperation to be ponderously meaningful. Who's right? Is there so much value embedded in the movie itself that it renders my take on it irrelevant?

And even when I acknowledge that The Road attempts to comment on the universal nature of human existence, while The Hunger Games attempts to tell an action story that provides a role model to teenagers, that's also missing the point, to some degree. What about the reader who found The Road to be dull and ultimately pointless, but understood exactly and profoundly what it means when the boy in The Hunger Games says that if he has to die, he wants to do it without losing himself? Is her interpretation more facile and worthless than mine?

We can draw the line between "high" and "low" in all sorts of ways — the intention of the author, the bell curve of who finds a work significant vs. who finds it too simplistic or too complex, the targeted audience, the emphasis on plot vs. introspection, the emphasis on genre vs. present-day "reality," the inclusion of a cannibal family, the inclusion of genetically created dead child dog creatures called "muttations" ‐ but I ask: if the line is that flexible, then what purpose is the line really accomplishing? (If we're passing judgment, I'd much rather draw the line between Hunger Games and Twilight, which is the line between saying positive things and saying horrible things, without caring a bit about literary intent or target audience).

My favorite book is a fantasy/comedy about an angel, a demon, and the reluctant Antichrist. The best book I've ever read is written in dialect and is about a boy riding on the Mississippi River with an escaped slave. The book that got the most emotional reaction out of me was about a couple of comic book creators. Which are genre fiction, literary fiction, high art, low art, cinematic or interpretive? I've never made much attempt to classify each one, because those classifications are irrelevant. Did each one of the authors deliberately set out to make something "literary," that would in some way make a profound statement on the human condition? I've never thought much about it, because it doesn't make that much of a distinction.

I think even with the admission of "putting on a front" about high art while enjoying low art, it still belies an externally-imposed value judgment that doesn't serve any purpose. It's the idea of a distinction between reading for pleasure vs. reading for enlightenment (as if enlightenment weren't pleasurable). Or a hard distinction beween guilty pleasures/"empty calories" and reading or watching "important" stuff.

Before it gets misinterpreted: there is most definitely some difference between entertainment and enlightenment. I definitely have TV shows, comics, games, and books that I'll read simply for a diversion as opposed to the ones that I think have genuine significance. But I've found that which work ends up going into which category, often has zero correlation to whether someone else classifies it as "high art," "low art," or anything else.

Short version: if you like to listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson, it "counts" as long as you understand it.