But who says it’s the “best” of Western Culture? If you don’t like something you don’t like it, there’s no reason to suffer through it just because the literati say it’s “the best”. Even if it is the best that doesn’t mean you’ll like it. A friend of mine’s mom makes the best liver pate in the city, or so folks who like liver pate say, I tried it once, tasted like liver pate, for my pallet that’s not a compliment, I think liver pate is gross. The literati worship “Howl”, to me it’s just more beat poetry, which again doesn’t agree with my pallet, so while it very well might be “the best” that doesn’t mean I should read it.
I like it too.
Works great to kindle a campfire...
Once upon a time, “well-read” meant Plato and Cicero.
Now, most of what people refer to as “great” literature seems to come out of the 19th and 20th centuries, which is when the world began to lose it’s damn mind philosophically.
For me, well-read means John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Frederich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams.
(I also love C.S. Lewis).