I like this aesthetic amalgam proposed by Harold Bloom – another high-held yardstick by which to measure quality of writing.

‘One breaks into the canon only by aesthetic strength, which is constituted primarily of an amalgam: mastery of figurative language, originality, cognitive power, knowledge, exuberance of diction.’

For other Key Penmanship Indicators see the following inspired by quotations of Henry Williamson, Molly Peacock, Anthony Burgess, and Adam Nicolson’s kind reaction to this website.  And similarly, a Key Performance Indicator that could be applied as much to writing as to any other art, a response to Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico.

See also Borges on two types of aesthetic.

Source: The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, Harold Bloom (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 29

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