>>24116792
I mean obviously it's subjective, but that doesn't mean it's not useful to comment on, or even that it's not true? 'Good prose' means, really, that it's enjoyable, so 'it depends on the inclinations of the reader' isn't really this takedown that you think it is
It's also pretty clear a lot of the time:
>Bad prose
The office was a rectangle of more than 1,300 square feet. One wall was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf thirty feet long containing a remarkable assortment of literature: biographies, history, business and industry, and A4 binders. The books were arranged in no apparent order. It looked like a bookshelf that was used. The opposite wall was dominated by a desk of dark oak. On the wall behind the desk was a large collection of pressed flowers in neat meticulous rows.
Through the window in the gable the desk had a view of the bridge and the church. There was a sofa and coffee table where the housekeeper had set out a thermos, rolls, and pastries.
Vanger gestured towards the tray, but Blomkvist pretended not to see; instead he made a tour of the room, first studying the bookshelf and then the wall of framed flowers. The desk was orderly, onlya few papers in one heap.At its edge was a silver-framed photograph of a dark-haired girl, beautiful but with a mischievous look; a young woman on her way to becoming dangerous, he thought.
>Good prose
How could they expect her to sleep when she was going through all of it? They didn’t know. She had swung about the room from the ceiling and it was a swinging from the cross. There had been a burial. She was lying quietly in the bed and being covered over her face. She was carried quietly out and put in the casket. Down, down she went in the rectangle that had been made for her. Down and the dirt fell in above. Down and the worms began to tremble in and out. Always she had kept telling of it, not one word of it must be forgotten. It must all be recorded in sound and after that she could sleep.

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What does “good prose” even mean? Has no one ever questioned this? It’s a completely baseless and subjective value judgement that very much does…