I’m going to hang my reply off this message, because it says something important.
In the sciences, there are trendy topics and I don’t even think this is necessarily even a bad thing. We learn something interesting, and then we want to learn more about this interesting thing.
Does this cause problems? Sometimes. But science is not the straight shot from A to B that you read in textbooks. It’s a messy enterprise.
There is also subjectivity in science. “This is the way to think about the problem” is an important part, and it can be ugly, contentious, and take decades to sort out. (I remember reading a report by a young person saying a certain approach was “obvious” and thinking “it sure as heck wasn’t obvious when I was the only person advocating it.”)
There’s subjectivity in science, sure. But there is also a reality behind it.
I believe that the same is true of literature. Sure there’s subjectivity involved. But I would hold that there is a reality behind it - we have heard that Shakespeare has moved and inspired at least one person here, and we haven’t heard the same for Harlequin Romances.
It’s not just highbrow and lowbrow. Here are two poems:
She stands
In the quiet darkness,
This troubled woman,
Bowed by
Weariness and pain,
Like an
Autumn flower,
In the frozen rain.
Like a
Wind-blown autumn flower
That never lifts its head
Again.
and
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
Does anyone want to argue they are of equal quality?
One of these was written by a professor of English at Harvard. Not the better one.
Just because there is an element of subjectivity does not mean that there is only subjectivity.