Aesthetic value emanates from the struggle between texts: in the reader, in language, in the classroom, in arguments within a society. Aesthetic value rises out of memory, and so (as Nietzsche saw) out of pain, the pain of surrendering easier pleasures in favour of much more difficult ones... successful literary works are achieved anxieties, not releases from anxieties.

The Western Canon (ed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) - ISBN: 9780547546483