know what I like/I know it when I see it

I am sometimes inspired by what other people post. Bitterlawngnome replied to my remark that I didn't like "Prospero's Books" >>PB is maybe my favourite piece of art ever.<< I've been thinking a lot about it. I found a review online with a similar sentiment, someone else responding to a non-fan that it was a work of art. My initial thought was of Ellis Marsalis's comment in response to someone who didn't like jazz, who had said "I know what I like." EM: "You like what you know, and you don't know much." I like the kind of jazz that one typically associates with the Marsalis family, but I remind myself of this quotation often, when I make superficial judgments about any art form. Not that there is anything wrong with just having a gut reaction, but learning in depth is probably worth the time. The combination of "just looking" and Bitterlawngnome arose again from a post about the forthcoming Bring back the porn day https://bitterlawngnome.dreamwidth.org/1608475.html#comments I thought of Justice Potter Stewart's statement in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964), a case about the legality of certain forms of obscenity/pornography: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." (thanks, wikipedia. I had only remembered a little bit about this). I don't know that I have ever seen enough to know it when I see it. I tend to not watch or read sex scenes that might in any way be considered graphic. I wondered what my contribution should be (not that one needs to follow a prompt). I decided on this line from John Scalzi's recent novel "The Last Emperox," which struck me so much when I read it that I stopped reading, and then went back to write it down (actually type it). "...Kiva was aware that there was more to actual relationships than just banging each other senseless until sheets were soaked and fingers were wrinkled." It appears on the first page of chapter 10. Fingers were wrinkled. Whoa (what I said. Out loud).