The thing for me is that only a fraction of literature falls under Art, accidental or intentional. It can be accidental in the sense that the writer is so special and great that whatever his or her ambitions or intents, the books can be considered Art. Tom summed up well what a book needs to be considered a work of art: a significant aesthetic value, an exceptional mastery or a very unique and personal use of language, a depth of thoughts and ideas. Another criteria would be some personal contribution to the form, the "Art of Writing".

Personally, I just refuse to agree that for a writer to be considered "good" his work needs to have artistic significance, that the writer absolutely needs to be an author. Not every writer is an artist. Storytelling is also a craft, and there are many very good craftsmen who rather than push the boundaries will work within them. I don't agree these works should be judged with the same criterias used for Art. I find it completely absurd to measure Jordan's skills with those of artists like Nabokov, Borges, Flaubert, Proust etc. All they have in common with Jordan is the use of writing as a medium. Unlike him, these authors all considered themselves artists, and beside or beyond providing entertainment or pleasure of reading, they had artistic ambitions. Jordan would have been the first one to state right off the bat he saw himself as a crafstman of writing and aimed to entertain, give his readers a good time with a storym and had no artistic ambitions. He chose a level of language he was comfortable with andthought well-suited to his storytelling needs (and it was old fashioned and conventional) etc. We'll never know if he could write an artistic novel, he never tried to write one. We'll never know if he could write deeply psychological characters, he said himself he didn't want to have those in WOT!

It's the same with movies. I always laugh when critics approach an American blockbuster the same way they approach an auteur movie, when they judge movie stars' performances the same way they do actors'. It's the same confusion between craftsmen and artists. Auteur cinema is by definition Art, from good to atrocious. But cinema is also entertainment and a craft, and in Hollywood it is most often just that, and intentionally. There are excellent craftsmen among American directors, and only a handful who are true artists, even less who are significant ones. Of course, moviemaking like writing is an artistic craft and involve artistic disciplines, but most of it isn't Art, nor should be judged as such. You judge a blockbuster primarly by how pleasing and entertaining it is, how well the director master this aspect of the craft. The living pinacle of this type of directors who excel at their craft but aren't artists (or more properly, who did only a very few movies with artistic ambitions) is probably Steven Spielberg. Lucas began his career as an artistic director (the guy who directed THX-113 before turning to pure entertainment. It tends to irritate me when people don't acknowledge the talent or worth of crafstmen, of storytellers in particular, or try to apply the criterias of Art to judge works from people with no artistic aims. Of course when deluded morons start speaking of their work as Art (eg: Terry Goodkind, or that guy who directed Independance Day), they're fair game for bashing!!

In general it's why I usually stay away from debates about Jordan's value as a writer. In my eyes, he's a craftsman and a fairly succesful one - a storyteller with a great imagination who managed quite well to keep me entertained for many hours over the years. He's not the only one. In the same "genre", Tolkien, Erickson, Martin and a few others have entertained and stirred me in a very similar way (and I don't worship Tolkien the way some do. His English was certainly more elegant and pleasing, in an archaic and heavygoing kind of way, but in my view Tolkien was at best average as a novelist and that's charitable. His themes are overall naive and occasionally simplistic. His genius was elsewhere, in the depth of his imagination, in the depth of his understanding of archaic literature and mythology, in his knowledge of Language and the imaginative way he managed to incorporate language in his worldbuilding and his "magic". There was certainly a great depth of thought there.)

When I seek literature that will make me think, feed me intellectually or widen my horizons (which I do quite often, as it happens), I just very rarely pick something from the bookcase my Fantasy books are on. IMO Jordan has more depth than some think - and the layers beneath his story are of some interest for sure, IMO, but WOT is primarly meant to be entertainment, and IMO should be judged as such - by how well it succeeds at keeping the readers entertained. In this perspective, Jordan managed really well with me, in part out of his skills, in part because of special affinities and interests (I love extremely detailed stuff), so for me he's definitely a good writer. The next guy will be bored by WOT and think otherwise, and that's just fine. When it comes to entertainment, I don't think universal canons of what is to be judged good or bad truly apply. It's very much a question of personal tastes. Canons and standards apply much better to Art (to an extent, because the personal value of an artistic work is also very subjective and often has as much to do with the audience as with the artist.).