This weekend Joseph Salvatore published four book "reviews." One of them was for Palahniuk's Pygmy. I won't praise this book as a work of genius, in fact, my love/hate relationship with Palahniuk leans more towards hate after his fifth book, but I also recognize that the man can write as well, and often better than anyone out there. One of the complaints that Salvatore, an MFA in Fiction from the New School, had was about the language. The language in Pygmy is broken, it's the language of a non-native speaker, and it can be frustrating, but the unbelievable level of consistency is praiseworthy, especially for someone who is concerned with fiction and literature and not just looking for a good weekend read (in which case I'd probably suggest skipping this book, unless you're a Palahniuk fan). Most people can't write proper English as well as Palahniuk wrote his broken English. It has rules and logic and, again, consistency that completely floored me. But Salvatore makes no mention of the skill required in handling any language in this way, just complains that it was awkward to read. He also labels the book "Transgressive Fiction," a point which I would contest, but the popularity of Ellis and Palahniuk's early works have now created a sub-culture that labels anything with a sensory experience, or highly visual gore factor as Transgressive fiction, but originally, Transgressive Fiction had some social statement, which Pygmy does not. In fact, Pygmy's only attempts at a social statement can be heard for free, and in slightly less flawed English, at any middle school in America. Just look for the kids with the Anarchy button on their back pack, and a naively nihilistic response for every question asked, they'll fill you in on Palahniuk's philosophy.

Anyway, Salvatore and I disagree on this book and where it stands. I say it's entertaining, and even if shallow still a solid example of talented writing. He says it's garbage because any author with a popular following must be doing something wrong. And because of his conclusion my assessment of him was:

"He's an idiot."

But he's not an idiot. I know that, he's more educated than me, and if we could get past each other's dogmatism I'd probably learn a ton from him. But at our initial disagreement I assumed the issue was that he was stupid (in case you're curious, Plato says this probably means that I'm stupid, a point I won't contest.)

So, finally, to my question: Do you ever assume that a difference in taste equals a difference in intelligence? If someone disagrees with you, are they stupid?