I’ve said it many times, in many different forums, in many different ways, and I will say it again: making writers talk, socialize, or leave their homes is cruel and unusual. Writers are creatures of their desks, or at least, this writer is a creature of her desk. As I’ve also said before, and as I will no doubt have many occasions to say again, I write precisely because I find talking so miserably inadequate. As I’ve also said before and as I will go on repeating forever: Nabokov, who insisted on writing out answers to interview questions in advance, had the right idea. The caveat that I wish I could append to every conversation I ever have is: I don’t know if I mean anything I say, because the way I figure out what I mean is by committing words to the page, and if I
On Kirwin's account, idiosyncracy of taste arises from idiosyncracy of value expertise. The chocolate lover possesses expertise in the value of chocolate that the vanilla lover lacks (and the same goes for artforms, genres, and specific works that are valuable but not universally beloved). If that's right, then the difference between the disagreements of idiosyncratic taste and disagreements in aesthetic judgement might be a difference in the degree of public access to the relevant aesthetic reasons (rather than, say, a difference in kind based on whether there is objective aesthetic value at issue).
You might be interested in this essay by Claire Kirwin, "Value Realism and Idiosyncracy", in which she argues that even matters such as chocolate vs. vanilla are matters of objective value: https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MHbJEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA24&ots=Y26lZmOuHY&sig=fwG3uX0iRcofIZjHQ2cA3rw1cFc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
On Kirwin's account, idiosyncracy of taste arises from idiosyncracy of value expertise. The chocolate lover possesses expertise in the value of chocolate that the vanilla lover lacks (and the same goes for artforms, genres, and specific works that are valuable but not universally beloved). If that's right, then the difference between the disagreements of idiosyncratic taste and disagreements in aesthetic judgement might be a difference in the degree of public access to the relevant aesthetic reasons (rather than, say, a difference in kind based on whether there is objective aesthetic value at issue).
Literati! So excited. (As cruel and unusual as it is to make writers talk.)
Bummer you're coming to Vermont. Break a leg. Oh, and the review? Spot on!!